“Have you seen my mice?” she asked.
Daisy was certain she’d misheard. “What?”
“My mice,” Beatrice said impatiently. “They were right here, on the top shelf, behind the pie crust.”
Daisy looked at her daughter, who stared back at her calmly, as if she’d asked her mom for a glass of milk or a ride to the mall. “Beatrice,” Daisy said, her voice faint. “Please tell me you haven’t been keeping dead mice in the freezer.”
“Why not?” Beatrice asked, shrugging. “They’re, like, double-bagged. They’re not touching anything.”
“I don’t care!” Daisy said. Or, rather, screamed. “I don’t want dead rodents in my freezer, near food that you and I and your father are eating! Food that I’m feeding other people, who are paying me to learn how to cook! Jesus, Beatrice, what if someone got sick?”
“How are dead mice any different than dead chickens? Or dead lambs, or dead cow?” Beatrice yelled back. “You’re a hypocrite.”
“Well, I’m also the adult. This is my house.”
“Like you paid for it,” Beatrice sneered. “Like either one of you did.”
Daisy made herself ignore the jab, choosing instead to be grateful that Beatrice said it to her. God knows how Hal would have reacted to the idea that there was something in his life he hadn’t earned—and, even if he had given his brother money amounting to what Jeremy might have realized from the sale, paying for half of this house had been significantly easier than paying for all of it. “When I tell you that you cannot keep your mice in my freezer, I expect you to have the courtesy to respect my wishes.”
“So where am I supposed to keep them?” Beatrice asked, eyebrows lifted. “Do you want me to buy a completely separate freezer for a few mice?”
“Well, ideally,” Daisy snapped, “I would like for you to have a hobby that doesn’t involve dead rodents. But seeing as how you’re not going to do something normal, like join the school paper or the choir, I would like for you to find somewhere other than my freezer for your mice.”
Beatrice’s lower lip trembled, her eyes welled with tears. “Well, jeez. I’m sorry that I’m not the normal daughter you wanted,” she said.
Instantly, Daisy went from feeling furious to feeling sad, and deeply ashamed for making her daughter doubt herself, for making her cry. Beatrice turned and stormed out of the kitchen. “Wait,” Daisy called. “Wait, Bea, you know that’s not what I meant!”
“Yes, it is,” said Beatrice. “I’m not the kind of daughter you ever wanted.”
Daisy swallowed down the bitter taste of guilt, because hadn’t she said something very close to that, in New York, when she’d been with Diana? “Trixie…”
“Don’t call me that!” Beatrice shouted. Before Daisy could apologize, she said, “I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment,” and ran up the stairs to her room.
Daisy’s shoulders slumped, and the pleasant anticipation she’d been feeling in advance of preparing dinner disappeared. She plodded to the freezer, emptying the shelves one after another, removing pie crusts, the containers of chili and lentil soup and chicken and dumplings that she’d made and frozen, the pints of ice cream and the bags of frozen peas and corn and cranberries and the chicken fingers she’d kept as a kind of break-glass-in-case-of-emergency dinner for her daughter. Wedged into a corner of the top shelf, she found a plastic Ziploc bag containing six tiny gray frost-stiffened mouse corpses. She considered them a minute, her breath condensing on the icy plastic. How had Beatrice turned into a girl who played with dead mice and despised her mother? What had Daisy done to cause this, and how would the world treat Beatrice when she was an adult?
Slowly, Daisy put the mice back and surveyed Beatrice’s leavings: the uncapped jar of peanut butter, the unwrapped loaf of bread, the open jar of honey, the sticky knife and the crumbs all over the counter. She refilled the freezer, cleaned up the mess, and finally got started on dinner. Cooking always soothed her, and she thought that it would help. She seasoned the pork roast that she’d thawed before her trip. She peeled russet potatoes, sliced them thin, and fanned them out around a buttered baking dish, layering in pats of cold butter and sprigs of thyme, sprinkling Parmesan cheese on top. The pork and potatoes were both in the oven, the table was set, and she was whisking vinaigrette when Hal came home.