S Is for Silence

even if I had.”
    “You still feel protective?”
    “Yes, I guess I do. If there was a guy and they figured out who, it might tip them off to where she went.”
    “I thought you said you wanted to help Daisy. If you have any ideas, it’d be nice to hear.”
    “I didn’t say that. I said I was glad she was doing this for her sake. It’s not like I’m withholding information. I mean, what if Violet doesn’t want to be found? Shouldn’t she be left in peace?”
    “Unfortunately, Daisy’s interests and her mother’s may not coincide.”
    “Look, all I know is I don’t like being put in the middle like this. I’ve told you as much as I know. The rest of it is your problem. I hope Daisy gets what she wants, but not at Violet’s expense.”
    “Fair enough,” I said. “I guess in the long run, it’s theirs to deal with. I’ll find her if I can. What the two of them do with it is up to them. Daisy’s struggling with the notion of rejection. She doesn’t want to think her mother walked off and left her without a backward glance.”
    “Violet wasn’t necessarily rejecting her. Maybe she was saying yes to something else.”
    “Bottom line in that case? She put her interests above Daisy’s.”
    “Wouldn’t be the first time a woman did that. Sometimes the choices are hard. If she had a guy and he was really good for her, it might have been worth the price. I don’t mean to keep defending her, but the poor woman isn’t here to defend herself.”
    “That’s fine. I understand. She meant a lot to you.”
    “Correction. Not ‘a lot.’ She meant everything to me.”
    “Which puts you and Daisy in the same boat.”
    “Not quite. I didn’t think I’d recover, but here I am and life goes on. Daisy should learn to do the same.”
    “Maybe she’ll get to that one day, but for now she feels stuck.” There was a momentary pause while I roamed over the stories I’d heard, looking for something else. I’m sure she was wishing I’d leave her alone. “What happened to your boyfriend?”
    “What?”
    “Your boyfriend. Weren’t you going steady with a guy back then?”
    “That was Ty Eddings. How’d you hear about that?”
    “Somebody mentioned him. I forget now who. We were talking about all the stuff that went on in the same time frame. The two of you broke up, right?”
    “More or less. He left the day after Violet.”
    “Because?”
    “I have no idea. I mean, it’s not like we had a falling out. Sunday morning, we were going to meet and spend the day together. Instead, his mother drove in from Bakersfield and hauled him off. I never heard from him again.”
    “That’s a tough one.”
    “Yes, it was. He was the love of my life. He was a bad boy, but so adorable. I was crazy about him. He was seventeen—three years older than me. He’d been in trouble—truancy and poor grades—things like that. His parents sent him to Serena Station so he could start fresh. I thought he was doing fine.”
    “There was no relationship between him and Violet?”
    “You mean like he’s the one she ran off with?”
    “Bad boys can be appealing if you have a reckless streak.”
    “Ah, I see what you mean, but there’s no chance. We spent every waking minute together, and if I wasn’t with him I was with her.”
    “Just a thought.”
    “It wasn’t him. I can guarantee you that.”
    “You really suffered a double whammy, losing Ty and Violet virtually the same day.”
    Her smile was fleeting. “Luck of the draw. You play the hand you’re dealt. There’s no point in dwelling on it afterwards.”

15
    TOM
    Wednesday, July 1, 1953
    Tom Padgett sat in the Blue Moon, working on his second beer while he brooded about life. Thinking about it later, he could visualize that sequence of events—narrow slivers of reality lined up like the pickets in a fence. Or maybe not the pickets so much as the spaces between. Over the course of three months, his perception had shifted, and suddenly he realized the world was not as he’d imagined it—fair, equitable, or just. People were grasping and self-centered. People were busy looking out for themselves. That had actually shocked him, discovering that truth, though it was apparently obvious to everyone else. In a remarkably short period of time, he’d gone from hope and optimism to a much bleaker view of human nature until, finally, reluctantly, he’d realized he was among the disenfranchised, which was perhaps where he’d been all along.
    The first