Daisy's Choice (A Tale of Three Hearts) (59 page)

She dialed his cell phone. It went straight to voicemail. “Damn it, Aiden!” Daisy snapped. “Where did you go? Where would you go?”

Her windshield wipers barely gave visibility. She chewed on her bottom lip. The wind, punishing her car, rocked it when she slowed and pushed against it when she sped up. Pete’s words echoed in her head. So this is how Aiden resolved things? He goes and starts fights? She was sick of him resorting to anger and tantrums. When was it going to change?

“
Aiden, where are you?”

Daisy continued the nervous habit of nibbling her bottom lip as she made the next turn. If he was hurting and thought she didn’t want him, he might try again to put some distance between them. She would have to take a chance on where she knew he’d be.

She turned around in the street and headed for the private airport.

****

Mango Grove Landing Strip was located just outside of the beach resorts. Closed due to the storm, no other passenger jets were on the runway. Aiden Keane walked through the automatic doors. Rain beaten and dazed, the first person or friendly face he saw was his friend. Donovan rose from the plastic green airport chair leaning on his cane. Dry and in order, he stood there with six members of Aiden’s staff. These men took care of him and his dirty deeds. Now he knew why. Because whatever he touched on his own, he fucked up.

“
Where have you been?” Aiden asked, as he approached.

“
Around. You look like shit,” Donovan snorted.

“
Yeah, well fuck you,” he grumbled. He eyed the jet. “Are we cleared to leave?”

Donovan walked closer to him with the help of his cane. “I take it things didn’t work out with Daisy and the kid,” Donovan pressed.

Aiden ignored him. The pilot ran in from the storm with his hat pulled down low to his head. “Sir, the storm is moving west. We can leave now if you want. The tower is clearing us.”

“
Yes, let’s go,” Aiden said dryly. One of the faceless nameless members of his staff got ahead of him with an open umbrella. Aiden hurried, barely aware. Donovan followed. By now, Pete was probably on the phone to Daisy with what he’d done, relaying blow by blow the whole incident. He was sure her mother was there to warn her against him. And this time, he had no one to blame but himself. Aiden didn’t give up on anything, but the one thing he wanted, happiness, was out of his reach.

Climbing the ladder, he entered the jet and shed his soaked sports coat. Tossing it to the side, as he went for the bar in the side panel, he grabbed the whiskey he swore off, holding tight to it. “Get me the fuck out of Mango Grove! Now!” He headed to the back of the jet.

****

Daisy parked. She left the car running and hit the sidewalk fast, then hurried through the automatic doors. The first thing she saw was the Ferrari that Aiden drove around town. She hurried in through the cool small waiting area. It was empty. She didn’t see a person behind the ticket cubicle. She did, however, through the glass windows see a jet taxing.

“
Damn it.” She went for the exit doors.

“
Ms.!”

She ignored the call. On the wing tip of the plane was a shamrock. Aiden’s Shamrock.

Daisy stood there watching as it taxied away in the rain. The plane sped off and then lifted into the dark clouds.

“
Ms.! Can I help you?” the man asked, putting an umbrella over her. She stared after the plane with the drizzle covering her face. “No. No you can’t.”

The man looked up as Aiden’s plane disappeared into the dark clouds. “That was Aiden Keane.”

“
I know.” She turned and walked off.

****

Aiden stared out of the window. The plane had been in the air a short while before the city approached. The turbulence eased just as they cleared the last of the stormy clouds. When the jet coasted in over the Vegas lights, some of his anxiety eased. There was something to be said about the familiar, what was safe, predictable, controllable and his dominion. Home. He stared down at the city lights. Vegas was nothing without its lights, sinners, scavengers, dreamers, losers, winners and people he owned. He was nothing without Vegas.

Donovan sat to his left, unusually silent. Aiden appreciated it. Talking was the last thing he wanted to do. He shifted in the seat. The bottle was now emptied into a glass. He’d managed to kill half of it on the short flight. Twice, he eyed the phone and considered calling her. Twice he held back.

“
I’ve taken care of things. Clara Andrews won’t be your problem or Daisy's. She's mine.”

Aiden barely blinked. His lips moved to the glass and he drank a little more.

“
There are other matters. Things we’ve left unattended.”

“
Not now,” Aiden snapped.

The pressure in the cabin dropped. The jet lowered in altitude, preparing for a landing. His tongue and brain went numb, as his ears popped. The strange mix made his lids heavy. They were barely open. Emotionally exhausted, it was all he could do to keep them open.

“
I know you don’t want to hear this.”

“
Then don’t say it.”

“
It’s for the best, friend,” Donovan said. “She was never good for you. Things with her for you had gone too far. You told me years ago what you wanted, and what you didn’t. I’ve seen to it. You’ve trusted me then so trust me now. It was time for the madness around Daisy Johnson to come to an end.”

Aiden turned to face Donovan. “Let’s be clear on something,
friend
. What she is to me isn’t open for your dissection. Don’t fucking tell me how to feel about Daisy Johnson. Don’t you tell me anything you feel about Daisy Johnson. Subject is off limits.”

Donovan tipped his head in obedience. Aiden closed his eyes and downed the last of his drink, throwing the glass to the seat in front of him. It rolled off to the floor as the plane bounced on the tarmac. The pressure of the brakes skidding across the paved landing strip pressed him into his seat. Behind his closed lids, he saw nothing and thanks to the bottle he felt nothing. That’s exactly what he needed at the moment. Nothing.

****

Daisy sat in the car until the rain stopped, just like her heart. She was too tired and disappointed to cry. She didn’t think he’d give up on her. He’d fought harder when she pushed him away. It had to be his inability to love her and Amy. Was it all about possession with him? Her heart was torn apart over his abandonment.

Opening the car door, she got out and went inside her home. Daisy found the house quiet. Someone slept on the sofa, but she didn’t look that way. She just climbed the stairs. Someone called her name but she didn’t stop. She walked numbly into her bedroom, to her bathroom. There she shed her wet clothes, stripped down to her underwear and then shed them too. Trance like, she reached for her robe and slipped it on. Her future was undone in minutes. She never felt so detached.

“
Daisy?”

She looked up in the mirror. Denise stood there smiling. Her heart couldn’t take another fight with her family. They could think what they wanted. All she wanted was peace.

“
Did you find him?”

“
I want to be left alone,” she said sadly.

“
Then that means you didn’t, huh? Heard a lot from mama after you left about the argument you two had. I’m sorry. Mama, well she can be mama you know.”

“
She went too far, Denise. I didn’t mean to disrespect her, but she’s never respected me. Guess I just need to learn to live with that.”

“
Don’t be too hard on her. She sees a lot of you in her.” Denise came inside and closed the door.

Daisy looked up to the mirror once more, this time curious. “What?”

“
Auntie Adele told me something. Something I never told any of yawl, but now I feel like I should. I don’t know. Seeing mama going on this rant like this, Janette and Sandra think it’s daddy’s death. I know it's not. The way she acting, been acting since you left, makes me think the story might be true.” Denise stepped closer. She spoke in a whisper, eyeing the door as if their mother could hear them from behind it. “Aunt Adele said mama had run off from Perry when she was sixteen.”

Perry, Georgia was where their mother was originally from. Daisy had only visited once. She didn’t know much about her mother’s people there, except for Auntie Adele, who chewed tobacco and spit in a tin can she carried everywhere.

Denise leaned on the counter. “You better not tell Janette this. You know she can’t hold water.”

“
Why did mama run away?”

“
Wanted to be a singer. Can you believe that? And not in the church choir, honey. Our Mama sang the blues.”

“
That’s not true.”

“
That ain’t it. It was a white man she run off with too.”

Daisy frowned. She looked over at her sister in complete disbelief. “Are you crazy?”

Denise smirked. “No, girl. Promise me you won’t say anything.”

“
Tell me. Is this for real?”

“
Yes. She fell in love with some white trombone player or something. Auntie said he was low rent. No telling what that means. I don’t know all those details. Auntie was drunk or high on snuff. You never can tell. You know how she is.”

“
Which is why I don’t believe you.”

“
Listen to me. Here’s the thing. Mama was singing blues all over, city to city. Her and this white man, who said he was going to make her a star, hit all the chitlin spots. Auntie said mama hated Perry, Georgia. She hated everything about being poor and sharecroppers. She wanted to be famous and live in New York. Then the man left her. Auntie said he went to jail. Now that part I’m not sure about. But something happened and that’s for sure.”

Daisy struggled with believing the revelation.

Denise kept whispering. “She was singing in some spot outside of Hollow Creek. I think it might have been Dixon County. That’s when daddy first saw her. Girl, she got saved, baptized, found Jesus and the rest is history.”

Daisy sat down on the closed toilet lid. “You sure this true?”

“
I don’t know. Auntie Adele talks out of both sides of her mouth. But I asked daddy once if mama ever sang the blues. And he smiled and winked, Daisy. Never said a thing, but I swear I ain’t never seen daddy smile or wink like that. That’s for sho!”

She laughed, and Daisy couldn’t help but chuckle with her. Her head was spinning as she tried to pick the parts of the truth from the strange tale. Imagine, her mother wild and free. Her mother told her she was named after a wild grandmother. Blamed it on daddy’s side of the family. Why did getting full of the Holy Ghost give her amnesia?

“
Then why does she hate me so much, if this true?”

“
She don’t hate you, Daisy. You scare her. She sees too much of her in you. When you were gone, she was worried sick. Even asked the church to pray for you more than once.”

Daisy looked up and Denise nodded that it was true. “It broke her heart too. She’s loving you too hard.”

Daisy shook her wet hair. “So much time wasted.”

“
Exactly. That’s why you don’t need to listen to mama or Janette. If that man is what you want, then go get him, girl.”

“
That’s over.”

“
How so?”

“
He gave up. He left.”

“
So?”

“
I’m mad at him, damn it. He drives me crazy. Going around pounding on anything that gets him angry. He’s worse than a two year old,” she huffed. She was pissed. How could he let her mother convince him that she didn’t love him? The phone call sounded like he wanted to work through the madness, but yet he goes to Pete, picks a fight, then leaves. “Aiden has to stop being afraid of me, of us, and of himself. I can’t fight all his demons if he won’t.”

Denise stared at her for a moment. “Do you love him?”

“
What does that matter?”

“
Answer me, girl. All that stuff you said down there got that baby in the other room excited about her daddy coming home. I’m pissed with you about that. You can’t suck Amy into this if you ain’t sure. So, do you love him?”

“
Yeah, I do. I said it, didn’t I?”

“
Not to me. Say to him. Better yet, you ought to show him and not tell him. That’s what counts. Am I right?”

Daisy stared up at her middle sister. She was the one that said the least and the one most overlooked. Somehow, she managed to say exactly what she needed to hear. “He’s gone to Vegas. I’ll have to leave Amy with you and everyone while I go. And I don’t know what is going through his head. No telling what I’ll find in Vegas.”