And then her friend had died. “Bad news, kiddo,” Hannah had said on the phone one afternoon, her normally ebullient voice so muted that Daisy almost hadn’t recognized it. “The docs found a lump.” She’d named it—of course she had—but even after Larry the Lump had been excised, even after a round of radiation and three months of chemotherapy, there’d been more lumps. Son of Larry, and Return of Larry, and Larry Two: Electric Boogaloo. Then they’d found masses in her liver, and spots on her lungs, and Hannah had stopped making jokes.
“I don’t think I’m going to beat this,” she said. She’d lost her hair and thirty pounds by then, and was sitting in bed, her tiny frame swimming in a flannel nightgown, with thick fleece socks on her feet. “To the extent that it was ever a battle or a war, I’m pretty sure my side isn’t winning.”
“Yes, you are. Don’t say that!” Daisy had taken her hand. “Zoe needs you. Eric needs you.” She’d swallowed hard. “I need you.”
“Oh, kiddo.” Hannah had squeezed her hand, but her eyes were far away, and Daisy thought, She’s already only mostly here. Part of her is already gone. She’d thought Hannah had fallen asleep, but then her friend had licked her lips and opened her eyes again.
“I need you to promise me something,” Hannah had said.
“Of course,” Daisy said. “Of course. Anything.”
With a visible effort, Hannah rallied herself. She’d licked her dry lips again and said, “I’ve already given Eric permission to remarry,” she said. She stared up into Daisy’s eyes, her cold hands feeling claw-like as she pulled Daisy closer. “But you have to promise—and this is my sincere dying wish, so you have to swear to me—to keep him away from that whore Debbie Conover.”
Daisy started laughing. Then she’d started crying. Sniffling, she’d squeezed her friend’s hand. “I promise,” Daisy said. “I promise.”
Three days later, Hannah had died. A few months after that, Eric had put their row house on the market, and he and Zoe had moved to Wisconsin, to be closer to his parents. Daisy missed her friend with a pain that felt physical, a wound that refused to close. She had plenty of acquaintances, other moms she could call up for coffee or a barre class, but Hannah had been her only real friend.
In preparation for her meeting with Diana, Daisy had done her googling, but she hadn’t learned much. Diana.S@earthlink was Diana Starling, the founder and principal of a business called DS Consultants. She had a website, but it was full of lingo that Daisy, as a non-businessperson, found completely incomprehensible. We help our clients transform and evolve in our fast-moving modern age and embrace transformation and disruption as a continuous way of working. She knew what each of those words meant, on its own. Combined, though, they might as well have been a language she’d never learned.
There was a picture of the other Diana on the website, a headshot of a middle-aged white woman with dark hair and a confident look about her. The “about our principals” page listed her degrees: undergraduate from Boston University, MBA from Wharton, and no information about when those degrees had been awarded. From what she knew about the working world, Daisy supposed it made sense. Young women were seen as ditzy and clueless and inconstant; flighty things who could quit at any moment to have a baby. Older women were barely seen at all. “Ms. Starling is based in New York City,” read her bio. There were no details about where the other Diana had grown up, or any hobbies she had, or if she had a spouse or a family.
Daisy had continued her search on social media. The DS Consulting Twitter account specialized in bland retweets of Wall Street Journal and Business Today stories and Contact us today to see what we can do for your business! It also seemed to delete its tweets after six weeks, which didn’t give her much of a history to peruse. Diana Starling was on Instagram, but her account was private, the picture it displayed a version of the headshot on the corporate website. Same with Facebook. The only information Daisy was able to glean came from the misdirected emails, which suggested a life of revelry and glamorous destinations; parties and dinners and girls’ nights out, although the other Diana had been quick to assure her that this was not the case. I promise you, these are work obligations disguised as parties.
“Regional train one eighty-six making station stops in Trenton, Metro Park, Newark, and Penn Station, New York. All aboard!” called the conductor. Daisy brushed croissant crumbs off her top and got in line. When she boarded the train, she found two empty seats in the quiet car. An excellent sign. She sat, settling her purse in her lap and wondering if she would look hopelessly dowdy next to the other Diana. She’d blown out her hair, to the best of her abilities, and packed a black knit jersey tunic to wear over leggings and black boots, along with a necklace made of gumball-sized blue glass beads that the salesgirl at J.Crew told her was a statement piece. As a size fourteen, her options were limited, but even if they hadn’t been, fashion had never been her thing, and she was too old to reinvent herself as a fashionista.