“Sometimes it feels like everyone has just gone and left me all at once,” Daisy said. Her voice was wistful, and I couldn’t tell if she was talking about me going on tour, Rose and her daddy dying, or Jay going off to war. There was a new crop of soldiers at Camp Taylor this spring, but I hadn’t seen Daisy talking to a single one of them.
“I’ll come back to visit, Daise,” I promised her. “And you know we’ll always be best friends. We’ll always find a way to see each other, no matter what.”
Daisy offered me a half smile. “I just never thought it would be so hard, Jordie,” she said softly.
“What’s that?”
She shook her head, and I reached up and smoothed back her hair. It looked a mess today—she had it back in a bun, but wayward wisps flew all around her face. I wondered if she’d given up on the egg yolks. “What’s so hard, Daise?” I tucked her flyaway hairs back behind her ears.
“Life,” she finally said. She sounded sad, and she sounded tired. “Growing up. Being an adult.”
I pulled her to me in a hug. I wished I could help her. If I won out on the tour, I’d eventually get some money. Not a lot, but something. “I’ll save up whatever winnings I can and send them to you,” I told her now, clinging to her fiercely. “Don’t do anything foolish while I’m gone,” I added.
But not even a month after I left, I received a letter from Daisy telling me she’d done it. She’d met the wealthy man who was going to save her.
Jordie, she wrote, I’m going to get Tom Buchanan to marry me, and then everything will be good again.
Daisy 1918
LOUISVILLE
“YOU HAVE TO MEET TOM Buchanan,” Anabelle said, grabbing onto my arm and pulling me out onto her moonlit balcony.
It was the end of April, and the air was thick with the smell of azaleas. With Jordan away, I’d forced myself into a sudden and quite vapid friendship with Anabelle this past month. Everyone knew her daddy came from the wealthiest family in Louisville, and she threw the most decadent parties. But Anabelle also had a persistent and silly laugh that reminded me of air escaping too fast from a balloon, and it was hard to force myself to laugh along with her rather than roll my eyes. Even when she said Tom’s name now, she let out a hollow giggle. I sighed, missing Jordan again. But I allowed Anabelle to pull me out onto the balcony. It’s why I’d befriended her in the first place, why I was here at her party tonight.
The Marlins’ large balcony was crowded with handsomely dressed partygoers, but I instantly knew who Tom was, even before Anabelle stopped giggling and pointed to him. Anabelle had been telling me all week that Tom would be coming tonight from Chicago, that he was worth dressing for in my finest gown. He’s so rich he smells like diamonds, she’d said, with another giggle, and I’d thought that was a silly way to describe a man, right up until the moment that I first saw him. All at once I understood, there was Louisville society money, and then there was Tom Buchanan money.
Though he stood alone, quietly sipping his drink, he was strikingly tall with a large, muscular frame and was dressed in a white suit that caught the shimmer of moonlight and almost seemed to glow. His face was all at once serious and perfect, like his features had been chiseled by an artist creating the exact man who was supposed to swoop into Louisville and save me from everything. And his eyes were an arresting blue gray, the color of dusk. “He played football with Benny at Yale, and now he’s a horse man.” Anabelle was still talking.
A horse man? Daddy’s fixation on horses had gotten us into debt. Could Tom Buchanan’s possibly get me and Mother out?
Tom looked at us, suddenly, and I wasn’t sure what it was that made him understand Anabelle was talking about him. The mention of her brother, Benny, football at Yale, or the horses.
“I didn’t just play football, I was the star,” Tom said, approaching us. His voice was deep and easy, free of even the smallest trace of worry. “And, Anabelle, you know I prefer the term ponies.”
“Horses, ponies, is there really a difference?” Anabelle rolled her eyes, and Tom shot her a look that made her erupt into another fit of airless giggles.
Tom turned to look past her then, right at me. His eyes met mine for a second, before trailing slowly down the length of my body, then slowly back up. His roaming gaze was so intense that it made my face turn hot.
“Tell me, though,” I said, my voice escaping hoarsely, when his eyes reached mine again. “What is the difference between a horse and a pony, Mr. Buchanan?” In my head I thought, Horses will bankrupt you; ponies are for the divinely wealthy.