said, “Come on,” and sat down on a log, pulling me down with her. She said, after a minute, “She’s jealous, you know. Frankie.”
“What, of me?” I sniffed, pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, wiped my face on my shirt, and gestured around me. “No car, no insurance to buy a new one, so there go my savings again, terrible flat that I can’t even go to, weeping on a log? Yeh, I’ve got it all.”
Honor laughed. “Yeh, you have. You’ve done it all, haven’t you. Pulled yourself all the way up. Got a good education. A good job. A place to live that’s all your own. Got your life together.” She paused, then said, “Got a good man, too.”
Everything in me stilled. I said, “I don’t—”
“Yeh, love,” Honor said. “I think you do. And I’m guessing Frankie wishes he was hers.”
I couldn’t say anything at all for long seconds. Finally, I said, “Oh, no.”
“Yeh,” Honor said. “Course, he’s the wrong one for her, and she’s not one bit ready to be with anybody anyway. Not ready to do anything except build herself back up again, one brick at a time, but that’s never stopped a woman from trying to take that shortcut. Escaping into a man, eh. Some man, and if he’s got a pretty house and is making a good wage, and isn’t too bad-looking, either? That’s a tempting escape. And then there’s you. Married to her husband first, weren’t you. You were the black sheep of the family, everybody said. She wanted to be like you, maybe, and maybe she also wanted to do better than you. She may have thought that she’d manage her marriage better, and that didn’t work, either. She had to run instead, and now she’s going to come second again.”
“Why would she think her shortcut was Gray, though?” I asked. “Because he … but he wouldn’t. He didn’t.”
“Too right he wouldn’t,” Honor said. “Gray with a seventeen-year-old girl? No. He’s so sweet to her, she says. Of course he is. She’s hurting, and she’s young. Not always sweet to you, though, is he?”
“No,” I said. “Or yes, mostly, but not always.”
“Yeh,” she said. “That’s how you know you’ve got the real man. He’s fighting himself to do the right thing with you. Trying to keep from pushing you to do what he thinks is best. Trying not to go too fast. Trying to listen instead. Not always doing so well with that, maybe.”
It took me a second, but all of that was true, so maybe the part about my sister was true, too. “So what do I do about Fruit— about Frankie?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Honor said. “You let me help her for a while instead. She needs a guide? I’m a guide, and no baggage along with it. You let her keep her distance for a while, find out who she wants to be in the world. How she wants to be in the world, because it’s all new. You tell yourself that you’ve got enough on your plate, and letting somebody else lend a hand doesn’t mean you’ve failed. You tell yourself that you don’t have to be everything to be enough. Not to Frankie, not to Oriana, and not to Gray. You just have to be Daisy.”
“Bitchy,” I said. “Bossy. Too tough. I know. It’s been mentioned.”
“Strong,” she said. “Tough, yeh, and there’s nothing in the world wrong with a woman being tough, but loving, too. Loving doesn’t mean hearts and flowers and pretty words and never losing your temper. Loving’s a thing you do, even when it’s hard. Even when it hurts. You got yourself out of that car in the middle of the river to go get those girls, and then you stood up to everything that scared you most. Moved in here even when it made you feel off-balance. You let Gray help, because your sisters needed it, and maybe he did, too.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
She smiled. “Because you are here, even though you didn’t want to be. Because I know people. And because I know my son.”
And then there was Oriana.
When I went farther down the track, after wandering around for a wee while, getting myself under control and feeling extremely tired, and found her? She was wearing overalls with the legs rolled up, on her knees in the dirt, weeding merrily away while Iris forked straw around the trunks of the fruit trees.