The Daylight Marriage by Heidi Pitlor Read Free Book Online

the eyes,” she said.
    â€œHe obviously felt the same way about you. Let me tell you, it was a real joy to share the tent with you both.”
    She laughed. “Oh, come on. He was off helping the other tourists most of the time. And he slept outside on the sand, remember?”
    â€œI’ve got work to do,” Lovell said. It was a guillotine to the conversation. “Listen. That kid at school? He’s not your problem.”
    She realized that she had shut her eyes, and she opened them now. “I guess not.”
    â€œI’ll see you later?”
    â€œYeah, fine.”
    The hallway had been empty. On a cork board to her right had hung a row of messily painted apples with children’s names. The boy would be all right, she had repeated to herself. Someone else, a teacher or an older kid or someone, would walk past and help him.
    Now, as she left the school, she told herself she would drive back home, of course. Today would be a good day. It would be a good day.
    Everyone had encouraged her to immerse herself more in work. Lovell, Sophie, Leah—each had a career. This was the answer. Turn your gaze outward. Busy yourself. A month or so ago, she had breezily suggested to Lovell that she open her own flower store, and he loved the idea: “Do it! Why not?” Sophie and Leah had similar reactions. This was just what they wanted for her. Her children were old enough now. Plenty of mothers with younger children had gone back to work full-time. So today she would begin. Once she got home, she would call their bank to make an appointment to discuss loans, look through the local paper for commercial rentals in town, arrange meetings with some area potters, research obtaining a license to import, check the latest regulations for organically grown flowers. She would have to make a list of all the steps to be taken—the business plan, the statement of purpose, her résumé, the bank loans, the rentals and phone calls—and of course there was the question of square footage and how large a store she would want.
    She let her forehead fall onto the steering wheel. She had gotten a job delivering flowers just out of college on a whim. It had been the first job she had gotten on her own, not in her father’s office, not assisting her mother at the agency. In the end, it had been a default career.
    Mostly it was women who received flowers, girlfriends on Valentine’s Day and anniversaries, mothers on Mother’s Day, women who chatted with this twenty-two-year-old and asked whether it was safe for her to be knocking on strange doors. “I have a bodyguard in the van,” she half joked with them. Sometimes she did share her route with a father of three who had recently emigrated from Haiti.
    It was a surprise so many years ago to open the metal door of an apartment in Brighton and see that the strange, old-fashioned name belonged to a guy about her age. “This must be from my mother. I just graduated,” he said as he took the wrapped flowers from her. Another man, smaller, with strawberry-blond hair, passed behind him. An overweight yellow lab lay on its side on a couch, two legs in the air. It could have been Hannah’s own dog, Marmalade, waiting for someone to scratch her belly. The apartment was narrow and messy and she saw a hump of laundry in the middle of the hallway behind him. She smelled sweaty sneakers and lemon room deodorizer.
    â€œThese are irises. ‘Butterfly Wings,’” Hannah said. “Your mother has good taste.”
    â€œSomeone at the store must have helped her.” He took in her face. She glanced down at the bent metal threshold, then looked back up at him and saw that his eyes were the oddest color. Brown but also gold, or a hint of green maybe. He was tall, unusually tall. He reminded her of some big, friendly kid that had just woken. She had no sense that this would be the person she would marry.
    A week later she delivered