Into the Storm (Signal Bend #3)(16)

But when Daisy turned thirteen, what she’d desperately wanted for her birthday was a room of her own.

All three girls had always shared a bedroom, and Daze had been feeling more and more crowded as she’d entered her teens. So Show had built a little shed, what Holly took quickly to calling her playhouse, for the crafts, running electric to it and everything. And Daisy had taken this narrow little room. He’d polished the floor and painted the walls the deep plum that she’d picked. It made the room seem like a burrow, close and dark. She’d loved it.

She had a bookcase full of books, a small table she used as a desk, an old dinette chair, and a tall, narrow chest for her clothes. She’d had only three pairs of shoes, and they were lined up neatly against the wall next to her chest. With that and her twin bed and little nightstand, the room was packed. But she’d kept it neat and had decorated it with posters of bands and movies.

Her little clothes hamper was full. Show stood and walked over to it, pulling a plaid shirt from the top.

He pressed it to his face and breathed deeply. Under the dust, he could still smell her, just faintly. Or maybe it was only the memory of her smell. Either way, it made his heart hurt so badly he doubled over with a groan.

He picked up the hamper and dropped her shirt back in it. Then he took it to her bed and put her t-shirt and pajamas in. He stripped her bed. Then he carried the hamper down the stairs and out to the closed back porch, where the washer and dryer were. There was a stack of folded towels, now thick with dust, on the dryer.

He opened the washer and put all of Daisy’s dirty clothes in. He hadn’t done a load of laundry in…he’d never done a load of laundry. But there were instructions on the inside of the lid. Apparently, he should have sorted the clothes by color, but that was more than he was capable of undertaking. For good measure, he put the dusty towels in, too. The load was full, but he made everything fit. He poured detergent in and figured out how to start the machine.

Then he grabbed some of the boxes left over from packing up for Holly and went back up to Daisy’s room. He spent the afternoon packing her life into those boxes and sealing them shut. When the buzzer on the washer went off, he figured out the dryer. When her laundry was clean, he packed that up, too. He packed almost everything. He left out Neuromancer; and a silver charm bracelet she’d been adding to since she was five; and her red second-place ribbon from the Crawford County Science Fair when she was in sixth grade. And a small stack of bound books he’d found in her bottom drawer—she’d kept a diary. He’d never known. Once he’d understood what he’d found, he couldn’t bring himself to read them, but he wanted to be able to someday. A new piece of Daze. He didn’t think she’d mind if he read them, when he could.

When he was done, he sat down on her make-do desk chair. It had been his intention to try to move back into his house on this day, to move back to Daisy. He had not intended to pack her away. He’d done it almost without thinking about it, without seeing what he was doing. Now, he sat and waited for the guilt to claim him.

It didn’t. He was sad and missing Daisy as much as ever, but there was no guilt for packing her away.

There was something else, something lighter. Relief? No, that wasn’t it. But something like it. A more manageable pain.

He hadn’t packed her away. He’d brought her closer. He had her with him again, and not merely her death. He had who she’d been. Reading weird books—all books, really. Learning chess with him. Hiking through the woods. Developing a taste for Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. Crushing on her teacher—and on Isaac. He remembered that now, the way she got all pink and tongue-tied around his friend. He grinned, recalling how she’d flutter when Isaac winked at her.

Restless. She’d been restless. Of course she had. She was fifteen, on the cusp of her real life. There was so much she hadn’t gotten to learn about, to experience. All she’d had were dreams.

He picked up her diaries, Neuromancer, her prize ribbon, and her bracelet and carried them into the room he’d shared with Holly. They’d shared a room, but not a bed. They’d had separate twin beds, which Holly had pushed together every morning and made up like a king bed, so the girls wouldn’t know.

Somehow, she’d managed to pull that off for years. But well before the end, she could barely stand for him to touch her at all, even in passing.

He set the stack of Daze’s things on the dusty, made beds and went into the closet, pulling a big grey lockbox off the top shelf. He set it on his dresser and thumbed the combination. When it was open—mostly empty but for his father’s Colt pistol and a few old papers, he put the diaries, bracelet, and ribbon in it. He put it back on the shelf it had come from. Neuromancer he took with him. He would read the last book his girl had read. He would finish it for her.

He wasn’t ready to live in this house again. Maybe he wouldn’t ever be. The memories were heavy and viscous, and they pressed down hard on his shoulders. But if Daisy’s ghost was here, he thought he’d made some peace with her. Maybe she’d come with him to the clubhouse. He wouldn’t mind that.

oOo

When he got back to the clubhouse, Isaac was sitting on one of the couches, watching ESPN. The clubhouse was otherwise empty, as it tended to be these days in the early evening. The Horde and their hangers-on had jobs or families, or both. Now that the town was safe again, and they were out of the meth business, the clubhouse got quiet in the daylight hours. It would get moving again after supper.