Daisy clicked it open. “I’m so sorry you keep getting my emails. I apologize on behalf of my friends.”
Daisy stared at the missive, and then, before she could overthink, she wrote back. “No worries,” she typed. “I’m enjoying living your life vicariously （in lieu of having my own）。” The instant she’d hit “send” she was awash with regret. Had she sounded too flip? Too snobby? Did anyone say “in lieu” anymore? Should she have included an emoji, or at least written “LOL”？
She’d been on the verge of panic when her in-box had dinged again. “LOL,” the other Diana had written. “I’m a corporate consultant based in NYC. It’s nonstop glamour.” With the rolling-eye emoji after that.
“Anything is more glamorous than my life,” Daisy typed. “I have a teenager who hates me, a husband who’s never home, and an old dog with digestive issues.” She hit “send” before she could rethink it. “Sorry, Lester,” she murmured. Lester gave her a mournful look, loosed a sonorous fart, and rearranged himself against her leg, where he promptly went back to sleep… and, then, again, her in-box was pinging. This time Diana had sent three emojis, all of the scrunched-up, tears-coming-out-of-its-eyes laughing face. “I don’t have any children, but I have teenage nieces. I truly believe that teenage girls are God’s revenge on women for what they did to their mothers,” she wrote.
“I know she doesn’t really hate me. She’s trying to be independent. It’s what she’s supposed to do,” Daisy wrote back. After three different people had recommended it, she’d read a persuasive book that made the case about teenage girls and the work of separation, and she was trying hard to believe the words as she typed them.
“You’re right,” Diana replied. “But it still must be hard.”
“She’s probably going to be expelled from her school,” Daisy typed. “My husband and I are leaving first thing in the morning to drive to New Hampshire to meet with the dean.” Daisy, who’d been raised casually Jewish, had never been to a confessional, but she imagined the rite to feel something like this, sitting in the dark and telling all your sins to a stranger.
“Yikes,” wrote Diana. “Is that why you’re awake at two in the morning?”
“I have insomnia,” Daisy wrote. “Me and every other middle-aged woman.”
“Same here,” wrote Diana. “It’s the worst. And I’m sorry about your daughter.” Daisy appreciated that the expression of sympathy wasn’t paired with a request for information, a demand to know what Beatrice had done to get in trouble. “Do you feel like you’re the one who’s been called to the principal’s office?” Diana wrote.
“Dean, not principal,” Daisy typed, rolling her eyes, even as she felt grateful. For all his complaining, for all of his fury at Beatrice, Hal hadn’t seemed to realize that Beatrice’s expulsion had left Daisy feeling like she’d been the one found lacking. “And yes. I feel judged.”
For a moment, there was nothing. Then another email appeared, “I bet you could use a treat. If you’ve got a free night and can meet me in New York, I’ll buy you the best Bloody Mary of your life.” And again, Daisy barely hesitated before she typed the word Yes.
* * *
Six hours later, Daisy saw Hal’s jaw tighten as he pulled into a visitor’s parking spot on the Emlen campus parking lot. He turned off the car’s engine, unfolded his legs, stood up, and slammed the door harder than he had to. Daisy stared down at her lap for a moment, gathering herself, before opening her own door and stepping out into the early-spring chill. It was a gray, windy afternoon, with patches of snow visible under the leafless trees.
They crossed the quad, following a wide slate path up the hill to Shawcross Hall, a brick building that had been constructed, the tour guides liked to say, at the turn of the century—“the eighteenth century.” Each of the stone steps leading to its front door had a shallow depression at the center, worn from centuries of students’ feet. The panes of window glass were thick and wavery, and the room where they were told to wait for the dean, Dr. Baptiste, was dim and low-ceilinged. She and Hal perched on a pair of spindly-legged antique chairs, with Hal in his newest chalk-striped gray suit and Daisy in a black wool jersey dress, already sweating beneath her arms and at the small of her back. A radiator clanking in the corner filled the room with steamy air and the smell of wet wool. Daisy sighed and fanned her face with one of the admissions brochures arranged on the coffee table, until she saw Hal frowning. Carefully, she set the brochure back down.