The Whitsun Daughters by Carrie Mesrobian

Author:Carrie Mesrobian [Mesrobian, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2020-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Wade picked them up as soon as Violet left for church. Daisy had wanted to walk, but Lilah was feeling sick to her stomach and Poppy just wanted to get on with things.

“Get your fill of nature some other time,” she snapped. “Walk out the door and breathe in all that manure if you want. You don’t have to help with this, you know.”

Daisy knew. She had gone over it with Poppy, but still couldn’t find a way to be comfortable about being excluded from what was going to happen. How Poppy framed it, the whole thing was the consequence of not having anyone with sense in charge. Had Poppy been around, there would have been no dancing, no meditation, no refusing pills like a toddler clamping up over a spoonful of mushed peas. Had Poppy been around, she would have seen Lilah swanning about in the hallways, in tears one moment and rabidly flirting the next, and she would have known. She wouldn’t be stuck trying to induce a miscarriage at Wade Dunedin’s house on the one night neither Violet nor Carna was around. In Daisy’s head, another word flapped just out of view; she refused to say it.

It was Carna who was messing up the plans for Lilah, anyway. Her client wasn’t supposed to deliver this early; Poppy had banked on the woman lingering longer in labor. After much texting, Carna explained she was going to stay on in a postpartum doula role, as there was no family around on the holiday weekend to pitch in. That her mother didn’t know when she’d be home had Poppy in a frenzy, finally calling Wade to ask if they could do everything at his house. Mr. Dunedin had filled in on a haul to Texas the day before so there was nobody around.

Nobody, except for two guys in the backyard by an old camper, grilling a beer-can chicken over a tiny Weber grill and drinking Hamm’s from a Styrofoam cooler.

“Who the hell is that?” Poppy snapped, as Wade guided the truck toward his house.

“Ah, just my uncle Jay and one of his buddies,” Wade said.

“I thought you said no one was going to be home.”

“I did. And they’re not. He lives in his camper, not in the house. Jesus, could you stop acting like the world’s ending?”

“I don’t want anyone finding out about this,” Poppy said. “It’s nobody’s business.”

“He’s my drunk uncle Jay, who’s he gonna tell?” Wade asked, shoving out of the truck and extending a hand toward Lilah. “He only comes in the house to shower, and that’s not even every week.”

“Gross,” Poppy said, grabbing her bag of supplies.

The Dunedin house was a big, sprawling rambler and looked mostly the same as it had when Wade’s mother was married to his dad. Mrs. Dunedin had moved to Georgia last year when Wade graduated, to be nearer her new husband’s ailing mother. Since the divorce, the house had lost its gingham café curtains and giant jars of candy-apple-scented candles, but had acquired a giant television and a new sectional sofa.

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