Marrying Daisy Bellamy by Susan Wiggs Read Free Book Online Page B

too.”

Four
    â€œH ey, buddy,” said Daisy, perching on the edge of Charlie’s sandbox. “Guess what?”
    Her son smiled up at her, green eyes twinkling in a way that never failed to catch her heart. “What?”
    â€œYou’re going to have a sleepover with your dad.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œDoes that sound like fun?”
    â€œYep.” He went back to the trench he was digging in the sand.
    The afternoon light filtered through the new leaves, glinting in his fiery red hair. “Silly question,” she said, pushing a toy truck along one of the roads he had paved. “You and your dad always have fun together, right?”
    â€œYep.” He filled a dump truck with sand. The backyard sandbox was elaborate, a gift from his O’Donnell grandparents for his third birthday. Charlie loved it. His grandpa O’Donnell claimed this was because shipping and transport—the O’Donnell family business—was in his blood, same as his red hair and green eyes.
    He looked so much like Logan that Daisy sometimes wondered what part of her their son carried inhim. Looking at Charlie felt like peering through a strange lens that took her back across time, to Logan as a child. Before she knew it, Charlie would be starting kindergarten; he’d be the same age Logan had been when Daisy had first met him. That was freaky to contemplate.
    Logan’s mother, Marian, loved showing Daisy pictures of Logan at Charlie’s age. “It’s uncanny,” she would say. “They could be twins. Logan was always such a happy child,” Mrs. O’Donnell often added.
    A happy child who had nearly ruined his life by the age of eighteen. Daisy suspected Logan had grown up under enormous pressure from his parents. He was the only boy of four kids, and his family was very traditional. Much had been expected of him. He was supposed to excel at academics and sports in school, and he had done so. He and Daisy had attended the same rigorous Manhattan prep school, where she’d watched him swagger through the halls with a twinkle in his eye. He came from a privileged background, and he’d been groomed to carry on the tradition—an Ivy League college, or at the very least, Boston College, his dad’s alma mater, followed by a position in the family’s international shipping firm.
    Daisy looped her arms around her knees and watched Charlie, who was lost in a world of play. Why did parents saddle their kids with expectations, instead of letting the kid become whoever he wanted to be? Didn’t they know it made kids want to do the opposite?
    It was a sports injury that precipitated Logan’s descent into drug addiction. A soccer championship was on the line, and Logan had suffered a knee injury. He discovered if he swallowed enough painkillers, he could keep playing.
    Hide your pain and keep on playing. It was the O’Donnell family way.
    Daisy pushed her son’s toy truck over a plastic bridge and silently vowed never to pressure him about anything. Ever. She wondered if her own parents had made that same vow about her. Didn’t every generation promise to be better parents than their own parents had been? How come it never worked out that way?
    â€œGood, it’s all settled, then,” she said to Charlie. “A sleepover with your dad.”
    â€œBecause you’re working?” Charlie asked, scooping out a hole with a yellow plastic shovel.
    That was the only reason she ever left him. To work. This time was different.
    She paused her truck at the end of the bridge and took a breath. “This is not for work. I’m going to see Julian.”
    Charlie didn’t stop digging and he didn’t look up. “Daddy-boy,” he said quietly.
    â€œOkay?” she asked.
    No response.
    â€œJulian’s got something important to do called a commissioning ceremony.” It was the moment Julian would actually be given his