Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing: Book 4 (Magnolia Parks Universe)
Daisy Haites: Chapter 32

They say that at around 2:17 in the morning her lights went out.

Me and Tiller’s lights went out a little bit ago. Probably before Christmas I’d say, but definitely and undeniably by New Year’s Eve, our lights were out and maybe if we actually listened we might have been able to hear the rumbling start of us bending and creaking and cracking apart down the middle.

It was weird, he doesn’t forget things, really. It’s very unlike him, but I guess it’s forgivable, what with our sinking ship and all. He’s just trying not to drown.

I spotted it on my vanity in the bathroom after my mid-afternoon shower, his badge. Just sitting there as out of place as he is here. I sighed when I saw it because I felt like I should bring it to him.

It would be the nice thing to do. The girlfriend-y thing to do. It’s not like I’m all that busy. I only have my private lessons with the doctor my brother hired three days a week, and this isn’t one of those days. I already did the reading he asked me to do this week in an hour, and I invented an essay topic for myself. Four thousand words on the ethics of pharmaceutical pricing.1 No one asked me to. It’s not even on topic, I just miss learning and my days are unfortunately empty at the moment, thus I don’t have a reason to not go and bring it to him other than it’s not what I wanted to do with my day. Not because I’m selfish, I’m happy to help him. It’s just — you know in romantic comedies, when the girl walks into her boyfriend’s office and everyone makes a big deal of her and them and listen, I don’t have a silly daydream of me walking into the NCA and him kissing me in front of all his policeman friends, confessing his love for me, announcing how unshakable we are — though that would be nice and maybe we’d kick our way through the freezing water to a lifeboat and survive the night. But we are shakable and he’s not going to kiss me when I walk in. He hasn’t kissed me since we had that fight about my brother a few days ago. That’s a bad sign, right?2 Sometimes he’ll hold my face in his hand and just stare at me. His eyes looks sad like he’s sorry and he misses me, and I stare back like I am too. He loves me still, I know that, it’s not a question. It’s just not enough anymore. But love never seems to be enough to coast by on these days.

I wander down to my brother’s office looking for Miguel. They’re watching Formula One reruns on the TV over his fireplace and they both look over at me.

“That new?” I nod over at a glass sculpture.

My brother glances at it, nodding. “Walter Furlan.”

I walk over to it, expecting it.

“Like it?” Julian asks, standing by me.

I don’t usually like Abstract Expressionism but this is quite exquisite — the craftsmanship is, at the very least.

I shrug because I don’t feel like giving Julian the satisfaction, nor do I want him thinking it would be fine for him to start displaying Impressionist and Expressionist pieces around our home.

“Are you good to drive me somewhere?” I ask Miguel as I turn to him. He stands and nods.

“Where are you going?” my brother asks.

“The NCA.”

“Ah.” He nods coolly. “Just what every criminal wants to hear his live-in sister say.”

I cross my arms, annoyed. “Don’t say ‘live-in’ like I’m here by choice.”

“Just trying to keep you alive, Face!” My brother tosses an arm around my shoulder. “And to what does the NCA owe the pleasure?”

I flash him Tiller’s badge and he plucks it from my hands.

“Oi, do we really feel like returning this is the right choice?”

“We do.” I nod once.

My brother gives me a look. “Are we sure?”

“We are.” I nod again. “I don’t feel like you stealing my boyfriend’s secretive badge is going to help our relationship.”

“And they need all the help they can get!” Miguel announces and I give him an unimpressed look.

“You know—” I stare over at my bodyguard. “The older you get the more you become like one of the grumpy men in the balcony on The Muppets.”

Miguel sounds the keys on his index finger and wiggles his eyebrows up and down. “That’s what I’m going for.”

I roll my eyes and walk towards the door.

“While you’re there will you check I’m still their number one?” Julian calls after me.

“Even if you are—”

“I am,” he interrupts and I ignore him.

“—I don’t think they keep your photo on a cork board or anything.”

Julian rolls his eyes. “Tell Tills I said hey.”

I flash him a thumbs-up and head to Miguel’s car.

“You and Tiller are doing okay?” Miguel asks after about a minute of silence.

“Mmhm.” I nod, looking out the window.

“So that wasn’t you I heard crying the other night when you had a fight and he left?”

I side-step the question. “He didn’t leave, he went for a run.”

“Til 3am?” Miguel asks, shooting me a look.

Is that what time he was gone til? I didn’t know. I cried and put on The Great British Bake Off3 to fall asleep. Tills was there when I woke in the morning. We didn’t talk about why we fought and I don’t remember why we did now, but we sort of always fight these days, now that our lights are off.

“Want me to come in?” Miguel nods at the door as we pull up outside.

I shake my head. “I’ll just be a minute.”

I check in with security, tell them who I am. Their eyes pinch at me how you’d imagine they would and they pat my body down even though they don’t do it to anyone else who walks in. Luckily I left my gun in the car.

I take the elevator up to Tiller’s floor and ask for directions to his office. I’m escorted there by a man who makes no effort to conceal his suspicions of me, and when Tiller’s nowhere to be found, I just leave the badge on his desk.

I wish for a second that this man wasn’t hovering around me like he is, so I could have a moment in here, try to imagine a life where I might fit in, where Tiller and I work without having to compromise the parts of ourselves we each love more than we love each other — but the man doesn’t offer me that. He stands there impatiently by the door, glaring over at me for no reason other than my last name, and there aren’t many places in the world I feel intimidated in, and it bothers me that I feel so here. I cross my arms over my chest feeling self-conscious and say nothing to the man as I walk past him, making my way back towards the elevator. There’s a build-up of agents waiting for it and I get a wave of nervousness, thinking about how it might feel to stand alone with them, without Tiller4, 5 there to protect me. I don’t think they’d hurt me, but you never know and my gun’s in the car, so I decide to take the stairs.

“Are you going to come to the bar with us again tonight?” a woman says. I can’t see her, she’s somewhere in the stairwell.

And that’s when I hear his voice. My heart does this little skip of relief, like it thinks for a second it’s safe now, but it isn’t.

“I should probably go to the Compound — see Daisy, you know?”

“Why?” says the woman, and even though I can’t see her, I know it’s his ex. “So you can keep putting off breaking up with her?”

I freeze. Listen for the sounds of them. They’re not walking either.

I hear my boyfriend sigh. “Who said I’m breaking up with her?”

“Oh, come on!” groans the ex. “You volunteering for every possible assignment and staying at the bar til closing every night this week?”

Someone’s feet shuffle and I back myself up against the wall so they can’t see me but I can keep listening.

“What are you waiting for?” the ex presses.

“It’s complicated, Michelle.”

“Yeah.” She snorts. “She’s a criminal and you’re not—”

I can’t see his face, but I want it to be completely offended or be down and out furious, or at least for him to just frown at her defensively. Anything more than what I think it must look like as he sighs defeated. “Don’t call her that.”

“Why?” She sounds so capricious. Happy to drive wedges between us. Maybe that’s fair though, I guess I drove one between them. “It’s what she is. It’s actually all she is,” she tells him, and I wait for him to jump in, tell her I’m so much more than that. That I’m clever and beautiful and funny and nearly a doctor and that I’m so many other things but in particular I am his girlfriend and she should speak about me as such but he says nothing.

Somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean at 2:20am on April 15th, 1912 the Titanic sank shortly after she broke in half.

“I’m going to be in archives,” Tiller tells his ex. “Come grab me before you leave.”

“Okay,” she says.

Footsteps start making their way towards me and I jog up two flights with the stealthy silent skills a criminal like me would have.

I wait til I hear two different doors close and then I jog down the stairs, my blood boiling and my heart equal parts a bit broken and a bit relieved. I climb back into Miguel’s car and put my gun back where it belongs on my body.

Miguel frowns over at me. “All good?”

I stare at him for a few seconds, not saying anything.

“Take me to The Lion’s Gate.”

“Isn’t that a cop bar?”

“Yes.”

Miguel’s face falters. “Is that where Tiller is?”

“Nope.” I pull out my phone to text someone. “But he will be.”

Christian
1:35pm

Hey

Hey

Do you have plans later

Not important ones. Why?

Can you meet me somewhere?

The Lion’s Gate

Yeah.

When?

5 o clock

Ok

Are you good?

Don’t be late.

1 Spoiler alert, the ethics for pharmaceutical pricing are there are none.

2 You don’t need to answer. I already know.

3 Imagined there was someone else in my bed watching it with me which made me cry more.

4 Or Julian.

5 Or Christian.