The Secret Hum of a Daisy Read Free Page A

had a tiny silver cross at her neck, the only delicate part of her, it seemed, and a habit of touching it, like it was a raft floating in the middle of our wide and deep silences.
    I’d written letters to Grandma when I was eight. Forbidden letters. The only thing in my life I kept secret from Mama. The letters started from a school assignment where we had to write to our grandparents. I asked questions you might ask a grandmother. How to make pie, for instance. Or knit. I was forever seeing grandmas out there making pie and knitting, and figured I had a right to know. There were plenty of angry letters too. I asked how she could turn her back on her own child, pregnant at seventeen.
    I’d written a total of twenty-seven letters and bundled them with string like a miniature stack of newspapers. I still carried them from place to place in my army duffel.
    â€œThere’ll be some house rules, of course,” Grandma said as we drove. Her voice was low and husky like Mama’s.
    I continued to look out the foggy window.
    â€œCertain rooms are off-limits. Your Grandpa’s office right off the kitchen, my room. The kitchen is free to use as long as you clean up after yourself.”
    We passed a large wooden sign with letters branded into it that read BRANNIGAN . In the distance beyond the fence were two horses, one dark brown and the other whitish gray with darker gray splotches, like a stormy sky. They grazed, tails flapping. The gray one lifted her head and looked at us. She was beautiful, with a big round belly. Endless amounts of grass will do that to a horse, I figured.
    Just past the horses, Grandma slowed and turned into a curved gravel driveway. Along the left edge, sun-bleached fence posts strung with rusted wire kept tall weeds from escaping a pasture, and the house sat at the top of a slight hill up ahead. There was a broken-down barn in the pasture, and a sturdy shed sitting off to the right. A thin metal smokestack poked out the top. Mama’s and my car, Daisy, was parked beside it.
    â€œYour sofa is in there,” Grandma said.
    â€œIs that your garage?”
    â€œUsed to be your grandfather’s workshop.”
    I’d found a picture of Grandpa once, in one of Mama’s dresser drawers. He had silver and black hair, a big smile, and clearly loved the little girl who sat on his lap. Mama came into the room as I was looking at it, and took it carefully out of my hands. She told me three things before she put it away.
She loved Grandpa almost as much as she loved me.
He could build anything from a birdhouse to a skyscraper.
He was a birder and took her everywhere he went in search of rare birds.
    She said that putting her junk-art birds together was her way of remembering.
    Mama never told me anything about Grandma except the fact that she’d sent her away when Mama had needed her most. I supposed she figured that was enough.
    Grandma drove up the gentle climb of the driveway and stopped in front of the house. There were two stories with attic windows on top, peeling sky-blue paint with white trim, also peeling, and a wood porch with two chairs covered in yellowed plastic and pine needles. Brass numbers hung on the front porch post, the middle number missing. I could tell from the tarnished outline that it had been the number 4. Piles of Tupperware and glass dishes covered in foil were set neatly beside the front door, a stack of firewood next to that.
    Grandma sighed. I climbed out of the truck, thinking about the impossibility of eating, when I heard it. It was coming from behind the house. Distant and soft.
    I couldn’t help but follow the sound, through the backyard garden, which looked like something from a magazine with its rock walls and graceful trees. I walked fast, then ran toward the thick forest at the back. The gray horse I’d seen in the front pasture was running along the fence line beside me and stopped as I went into the trees.
    â€œWhere in