OK I'm clearly averaging more than two chapters a week, but like I said, I'm having too much fun writing this story. Plus I'll be gone on vacation next week and I may not be able to write much during that time. So I guess I'm compensating for that, as well. Enjoy!
In the days following the incident, Daisy's cheek swelled to the size of a small apple, her skin darkening to a blue bruise that distorted her beauty. All in the McCoy household were curious of the origins of the injury, no one more so than her mother, who chided Daisy for her apparent clumsiness.
"Fell at the festival?" the older woman had asked one afternoon as she and Daisy fed the chickens that lived in a small enclosure behind the home. "What on earth were you doin', Daisy? Were you drunk?" Daisy had winced at the accusation, at the memories it provoked in her mind. For a brief and dark moment, she could see only the angry fist of an intoxicated Thornton, descending on her with all the force of a bolder tumbling down a cliff.
"Of course not, mama," Daisy had answered quietly, throwing the feed out towards the chickens and their eager pecks. "I was just being careless."
Her mother had shook her head in disapproval, but had said no more on the matter. In fact, after the first initial questions, everyone seemed to forget about Daisy's face. Unless, of course, the boys, returning from an adventure, hyped up on adrenaline and testosterone, entered the house too brashly and came face-to-face with the beast that had once been their sister. They called her names, as young men are wont to do, and teased her for her new affliction. "Melon head!" "Pumpkin face!" "Goodness me, Daisy, I wouldn't let Thornton see you like that!" Only Calvin remained silent, always standing a distance behind the others, measuring Daisy's expression. She never allowed her features to alter into anything beyond an amiable smile, teasingly smacking one brother or another for the sort of jokes that had always been a part of their sibling repertoire. Calvin was the sole McCoy boy to take note of the coldness in Daisy's eyes, hanging high above her plastered grin like the icy peaks of mountains.
In time, the bruise diminished and the swelling deflated, until Daisy had returned to the delicate and quiet creature that she was before the realization of Thornton's anger. She was able to leave the house again if she pleased, to attend dances and festivals and trips to visit her sister Roseanna. But Daisy did not venture outside of the confines of her solitude for some time, afraid of what waited for her back in the real world, where people were prone to gossip. What if she came upon Thornton? What would she do? What would he do? She had heard through her brothers that Thornton had stumbled out of the woods long after the festival was over, complaining of an ache in his head that persisted for three long days. From what Daisy could tell of the small scraps of information she received from her family members, Thornton had said nothing of the scuffle, and Daisy silently prayed that the blow to his head had wiped the entire event from his memory.
And Cap…what of Cap? Even if there was news of him and his brave attack on Thornton, her siblings were not likely to relay the message back to Daisy. He was, after all, a Hatfield. In that way especially, life returned to what was once deemed normal. The home was quiet, serious, Ma and Pa worn down by their daily lives and their seemingly increasing dislike of one another. They were too distracted by their own problems, by their mistrust of people like the Hatfields, to take notice of Daisy's newly reclusive habits. They did not seem to mind that the once vibrant girl now spent most of her days – when she wasn't working, that is – in the corner of the bed she shared with her smaller siblings. She pretended to read, as was always her way, but truly she was ruminating over the prospect of a dim and hopeless future in which she could not hope to be independent. That was the trick of the time: the dependency on a husband, on an open-minded man, to free a woman from her familial oppression so that she may become some semblance of autonomous. Daisy decided that the whole thing was foolish, especially if married life meant a quiet endurance of what her mother and father had, or worse, of what Thornton would offer her. She began to relish the idea of a peaceful existence with Roseanna and their aunt.
X X X
A month after Thornton's attack, Calvin came knocking on Daisy's door. It was early afternoon, the bright sun spilling through the small square window above Daisy's big communal bed. She lay on her stomach, sprawled across the misshapen expanse diagonally so that she consumed as much space as possible. This was the only time of day when the bed was entirely hers. She was trying desperately to read a book on Joan of Arc, a female warrior from centuries ago who was burned alive for her convictions. But Daisy could not concentrate, chalking it up to the chill in the air, or the screams of the children playing outside; anything, really, but the truth.
"Daisy?" Calvin said quietly, and she sighed, closing the book and craning her neck back over her shoulder to look at her brother in the doorway. The light from outside hit his face in a brilliant square of white, illuminating his eyes. "What are you doin'?"
"Nothin', I reckon," she replied, turning back around to rest her heavy head on a curled fist. The day was unrelenting in its brightness.
"No," Calvin said, coming around the bed to look upon Daisy's face. He pulled a chair forward from the corner of the room and pushed aside the clothes that piled atop it. "I mean, what are you doin' to yourself?" Daisy's eyes met her brother's.
"What do you mean?" she feigned ignorance. Calvin's concern had been palpable, reaching across time and space to ignite a sort of gnawing guilt in Daisy's heart. She did not want to disappoint her favorite brother, but she didn't think that anything could be done for it. She was wilted, used, wary of everything and everyone.
"You know what I mean," his gaze did not falter, but matched hers more fervently. "You've been mopin' for weeks about what Thornton did to you, Daisy, and I'm gettin' sick and tired of it."
"You're gettin' sick and tired of it?" Daisy flatly mocked, her interest suddenly taken by a loose thread in the bed's quilt. Perhaps she could make bedding for happy families once she went to live at her aunt's house. That would serve as a promising means of income.
"That's not what I meant," Calvin clarified. "I meant I'm gettin' sick and tired of you lettin' someone like Thornton control your entire life." Daisy hesitated, the pause filling the small room with Calvin's anticipation of her reply.
"You don't know what he did to me, Calvin," she said slowly and softly, and Calvin sighed and sat back in the chair, looking about himself in defeat.
"I know enough. I know what you've been like since then, and I know it's not who you really are, Daisy. You are so smart, sometimes too smart for your own good, and you're lettin' some drunken fool like Thornton take that and everything else away from you. He's just one person, Daisy – one unimportant person who can't do nothin' but drink and beat on women. Are you gonna let someone like that control the rest of your life?"
Daisy spent a moment pouring over Calvin's words, like a river rushing over stones. Deep down inside the most rational part of herself, she knew that Calvin was right; that she was too intelligent to let the violent advances of Thornton dictate her entire being. She tried to imagine the person she had been before the day of that festival, numbering all of her dreams and desires. The sights, the sounds, the places she needed to visit, the things she needed to try. The world was too large a place to let one small flaw dirty the whole experience. He's just one man, she thought. There are others… Still, a veil of hurt hung over Daisy's demeanor.
"I don't know," she partly conceded to Calvin, never affording her brother, even in the toughest of times, the opportunity to boast.
"Listen," he said, pulling himself forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "There's a barn dance tonight, just down the road at the old Thomas farm. I want you to come with me."
"A dance?" Daisy echoed, lifting her eyes to glare at Calvin's hopeful face. "Calvin, I don't think I'm ready for…"
"And when will you be ready, huh? In another month? Another year? Excuse the language, Daisy, but you've already let that sonofabitch take up enough of your life. He don't deserve no more."
Daisy considered the questions that hung suspended in the air. Downstairs she heard the front door open and slam, and recognized the familiar and heavy step of her father's boots. He called out to his wife, forgoing the formalities of arrival to slide into another speech on the shortcomings of the Hatfields and all the folk who were like them. Daisy's father was consumed by that hate, his life spent in bondage to the people and things he would rather the world be without.
"I'll go," Daisy said.