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Chapter Two: Daisy Chain - Part Five
Olive
Olive had given up the spy business.
Truly, she had.
So she wasn’t spying.
Not really.
She just didn’t understand why Uncle Lark was sitting on the gazebo bench in the middle of the pond all alone.
It was a nice day, she supposed. Sunny and colorful with a brisk breeze kicking up the fall of leaves in swimming swirls. As she burrowed deeper into the evergreen bush she was hiding in, the scents of warmth and fire smoke mixed with the pine, a comforting smell.
But it didn’t look as if her uncle was enjoying the weather.
She’d seen him like this before. A long time ago. When her daddy had first disappeared. She knew her daddy and her uncle had been twins. So alike in looks and voice, they’d often fooled and confused folks, but Olive had always known the difference.
Her daddy—who, no matter how many years passed, she still remembered and longed for—had been a softer man than her uncle, more relaxed and freer with his smiles and laughter. He’d lived life as if it were a game, as if everything was just one great, big sport.
Her life with him—those few short years she could remember—had been happy ones, always filled with new things, new people, new experiences.
Then, one day, the light that her father had filled her life with died out. The door had rung while they were playing Hide and Seek. She’d smiled from her hiding spot—in the coat closet under the stairs—while she watched him open the door, thinking that the interruption would stall him and cost him the win.
He’d pulled open the front door to answer it, only to step outside once he did, closing the door shut behind him. So she’d waited there in that closet, counting the minutes.
That had been more than three years before they’d even come to the hotel—then thirty years more than that—but she still remembered those hours, like a vivid vision that even time couldn’t erase.
At ten minutes, she’d been impatient, wondering what was keeping her father.
But, at fifteen, it’d been wiped away by the giddy knowledge that she’d won.
At twenty, she’d become bored and irritated again, tapping her toe against the boxes of winter boots.
But, by thirty minutes, worry had edged its way in.
So, tired of waiting, she’d snuck out of the closet and opened the door, but her daddy and whomever had been at the front door were gone.
It had been hours—hours of nervous worrying and wretched waiting—before she’d thought to call her uncle, who had rushed to her side and hadn’t left it for more than thirty years.
Uncle Lark didn’t smile as much as her daddy had. He didn’t laugh or join her games as much or as enthusiastically. But he was steady and constant, a permanence in her life that came when she needed him and never wavered.
But he wavered now.
His clothes—his gray suit so clean and perfect with its long, thin white stripes—now hung drooping on his slumped frame. His back—usually straight and proud—was bent over while he laid his head in his hands weakly with his elbows on his knees. His blue eyes were bleary and dazed as he stared out over the pond, watching the sun slowly climb across the sky.
He looked so sad.
She understood that. She was sad too.
She wanted Mei back.
But everybody—Flax and Calla and Rowan and even Mei herself—had told her that she had gone. That she wasn’t going to—couldn’t—come back.
But Olive still didn’t really understand why.
All she knew was that the last time she’d seen her, Mei had come to her, had cried and held her, before leaving her room, disappearing behind yet another door.
Olive sniffled and hugged her doll Daisy tight to her while she watched her uncle sit alone in the middle of the pond. She wanted to go to him. Wanted to curl up in his lap. She needed to hold him and be held by him.
But Flax had told her not to. Had said to give him time.
Time for what?
She didn’t understand. She knew that she would feel so much better if she could just go to him; wouldn’t he feel the same?
Alone; how could he want to be alone? Alone, she was just sad and scared and so terribly lonely, and she just couldn’t see how that could help anyone.
She shook her head. No, alone was not the answer.
But whenever she went to him, he just seemed sadder. The look on his face when she’d barged into Mei’s room—the bleak sorrow of it—scared her.
She huffed and her face pinched in confusion and dissatisfaction. She had to do something. So she squeezed Daisy under her arm and scurried closer, crossing the bridge over the pond to hide behind him on her knees at the gazebo’s arch.
Peeking through the holes in the birch wood lattice, she saw that her uncle wasn’t just staring out into nothing. He was facing one of the hotel’s gardens and the group of servants tending it.
She studied him closely and noticed his gaze followed one in particular, a maid with a long, black braid, plaited down her back. A few loose, midnight strands waved about, wild and free, desperately whipping her smooth, unfeatured face.
Turning back to her uncle, she saw that he was crying. Quiet, slow tears slipped almost unnoticeable down his rough, unshaven cheeks. It broke her heart to see it, her own tears sliding wet and cold down her face.
She buried her face in Daisy’s hair, letting the downy, citrus, Clementine curls sop up her sadness. She closed her eyes and breathed in the doll’s sweet, powdery scent, feeling a warm, welcome sense of calm and comfort sweep over her.
Her eyes popped open and her mouth let out a silent sigh.
Daisy.
She was the answer.
Olive never felt so very alone when she had Daisy with her. Gratefully, she brushed the doll’s hair back off her delicate, porcelain face.
She glanced up at her uncle. She didn’t want to give up her doll, didn’t want to be all alone again, but he needed her—needed someone—more than Olive did. If Olive couldn’t help him herself, she could give him Daisy and hope that she could help her uncle find some small measure of peace.
Olive smiled and took a deep, determined breath before sneaking toward the bench. On her hands and knees, she crawled quietly to him, laying the doll against the bench leg for him to find before, just as swiftly, crawling back to her hiding place in the evergreen brush.
She settled back into place when she saw her uncle turn toward her. She held her breath, wondering if he’d seen her. But then he turned back again, his stiff legs shifting.
He stopped when the bench moved, causing the small, fragile doll to fall onto the soft, pinkish wood floor with a muted thud. Olive saw him stop as if too surprised to move for a moment before leaning down and picking up the doll in his large hand, holding her gently.
The smile that touched his face was small and brief, but it was there and it warmed Olive like an embrace.
He looked up again, his eyes searching the area—for her, she supposed. But when he didn’t see her, he clutched the doll in his hand before tucking her protectively into the crook of his elbow and heading back toward the hotel.
She watched him go and, though she was all by herself hiding among the pine-scented leaves, knowing that he wasn’t made her feel less alone.
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