“Unfortunately, Daisy’s interests and her mother’s may not coincide.”

“Look, all I know is I don’t like being put in the middle like this. I’ve told you as much as I know. The rest of it is your problem. I hope Daisy gets what she wants, but not at Violet’s expense.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “I guess in the long run, it’s theirs to deal with. I’ll find her if I can. What the two of them do with it is up to them. Daisy’s struggling with the notion of rejection. She doesn’t want to think her mother walked off and left her without a backward glance.”

“Violet wasn’t necessarily rejecting her. Maybe she was saying yes to something else.”

“Bottom line in that case? She put her interests above Daisy’s.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time a woman did that. Sometimes the choices are hard. If she had a guy and he was really good for her, it might have been worth the price. I don’t mean to keep defending her, but the poor woman isn’t here to defend herself.”

“That’s fine. I understand. She meant a lot to you.”

“Correction. Not ‘a lot.’ She meant everything to me.”

“Which puts you and Daisy in the same boat.”

“Not quite. I didn’t think I’d recover, but here I am and life goes on. Daisy should learn to do the same.”

“Maybe she’ll get to that one day, but for now she feels stuck.” There was a momentary pause while I roamed over the stories I’d h eard, looking for something else. I’m sure she was wishing I’d leave her alone. “What happened to your boyfriend?”

“What?”

“Your boyfriend. Weren’t you going steady with a guy back then?”

“That was Ty Eddings. How’d you hear about that?”

“Somebody mentioned him. I forget now who. We were talking about all the stuff that went on in the same time frame. The two of you broke up, right?”

“More or less. He left the day after Violet.”

“Because?”

“I have no idea. I mean, it’s not like we had a falling out. Sunday morning, we were going to meet and spend the day together. Instead, his mother drove in from Bakersfield and hauled him off. I never heard from him again.”

“That’s a tough one.”

“Yes, it was. He was the love of my life. He was a bad boy, but so adorable. I was crazy about him. He was seventeen-three years older than me. He’d been in trouble-truancy and poor grades-things like that. His parents sent him to Serena Station so he could start fresh. I thought he was doing fine.”

“There was no relationship between him and Violet?”

“You mean like he’s the one she ran off with?”

“Bad boys can be appealing if you have a reckless streak.”

“Ah, I see what you mean, but there’s no chance. We spent every waking minute together, and if I wasn’t with him I was with her.”

“Just a thought.”

“It wasn’t him. I can guarantee you that.”

“You really suffered a double whammy, losing Ty and Violet virtually the same day.”

Her smile was fleeting. “Luck of the draw. You play the hand you’re dealt. There’s no point in dwelling on it afterwards.”

15

Tom

Wednesday, July 1, 1953

Tom Padgett sat in the Blue Moon, working on his second beer while he brooded about life. Thinking about it later, he could visualize that sequence of events-narrow slivers of reality lined up like the pickets in a fence. Or maybe not the pickets so much as the spaces between. Over the course of three months, his perception had shifted, and suddenly he realized the world was not as he’d imagined it-fair, equitable, or just. People were grasping and self-centered. People were busy looking out for themselves. That had actually shocked him, discovering that truth, though it was apparently obvious to everyone else. In a remarkably short period of time, he’d gone from hope and optimism to a much bleaker view of human nature until, finally, reluctantly, he’d realized he was among the disenfranchised, which was perhaps where he’d been all along.

The first glimpse he’d had of what was coming his way occurred in a counseling session back in the spring. April Fool’s Day in point of fact, which should have been a clue. He and Cora had been married for three years, knocking heads for the better part of two. They were like two dogs tugging on opposing ends of a towel, going round and round, yanking and jerking, but neither one giving ground. Basically the struggle was about power, and the measure of power was related to control of the funds, of which she had the bulk. He couldn’t remember who’d suggested the meeting with the minister at the church where he and Cora attended services. He wasn’t a religious man himself, but Cora felt church was important and that was good enough for him. She was, of course, fifty-six years old, closer to her demise than he was at the age of forty-one, so that might have had its effect. Where he’d sworn up and down the age difference between them didn’t mean a thing to him, he could see that it was going to be tougher as the years went by. Cora looked every bit of her fifty-six years. Her face, not beautiful to begin with, had suffered a collapse in the course of one year, right after she turned fifty-five. He had no idea why, but it was as if somebody yanked a chain and a curtain of wrinkles descended with a thud. Her neck looked like something that had sat unattended in the dryer for days. Her hair had thinned. She started going to the beauty parlor twice a week to have it fluffed and back-combed into an appearance of volume. The problem was he could see right through the ratting to the scalp beneath. She needed constant reassurances, anything to soothe her insecurities. The one thing that gave her confidence was all the money she had. Tom was coming into his prime, but he hadn’t made quite the success of himself that he’d hoped. Part of that was Cora’s fault because she had the wherewithal to help, but she refused to lift a finger. Which is what had brought them to the pastor’s study. Tom had made a cursory study of the Old and New Testaments, and he was pleased with the many admonitions about a wife’s duty to her spouse. She was meant to be his helpmeet, submissive in everything. It said so right there in 1st Peter 3, verses 1 through 12.