IN THE FALL of 1917, I was sixteen years old, and Daisy Fay was still my best friend and, as Daddy always said ever since the chicken incident, my worst influence. Her younger sister, Rose, was my age, and Daddy always wondered why she wasn’t the one I spent time with instead. Rose was fine; I had nothing against Rose. But she wasn’t Daisy.
“I don’t like the way Daisy runs around with all those soldiers,” he said to me over breakfast one morning that fall. Daddy and I had taken a walk through Belgravia Court last night after supper, and on the way home, we’d seen Daisy driving by in a car with a soldier. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last, either. Daisy loved to play, to flirt. Daisy loved to be admired. “You know better than that, Jordan,” Daddy was saying now. “I hope you’re not off doing that with her.”
“Oh, Daddy, she’s just having a little fun,” I told him. “And I have no interest in those soldiers. They’re all so… old.” It was true. Most of them were in their late twenties or early thirties, and I, at sixteen, did not find them appealing whatsoever.
Daddy nodded approvingly, turned his attention back to his newspaper, and told me to go to the club to work on my swing. I finished the last bite of my breakfast, stood, and kissed him on the top of his round, bald head.
Daddy started teaching me golf when I was five, just after Mama died. He said he couldn’t bear to leave me, so he would take me with him to the club on Saturdays. To his surprise, I picked up how to swing. And now, what would you know? Eleven years later, and I was a better shot than him, a better player than any other man in Louisville for that matter. Which was something he would remark on with pride to whomever he could, whenever he got the chance. Now Daddy was always after me to practice.
Most well-to-do fathers of daughters in Louisville worried about marrying her off to a man from a good family. Daddy imagined me on the professional golf circuit, winning championships. Never mind that the circuit only included men. Daddy believed that would change soon, that I would be a part of it. I loved him more for it. Because that was truly what I wanted for my future too. Not a man, not a marriage. Golf.
And the truth was, I agreed with Daddy about Daisy and the soldiers. What good would come of it? Eventually they’d all leave, ship out to this war so far away it almost felt imaginary. And what would Daisy be left with then?
When we were little girls, Daisy, Rose, and I used to play with Daisy and Rose’s porcelain dolls, giving them pretend lives and hopes and dreams. And that was sort of how I felt about Daisy, hanging around with the soldiers. None of it was real. It was all playacting.
Until it wasn’t.
* * *
“JORDIE,” DAISY WHISPERED my name one lazy afternoon in October, not even a week later. “I have to tell you something.”
We were lying across her giant four-poster bed, talking about what we should wear to Adelaide Cummings’s engagement party that weekend. We both despised Adelaide, who was an incurable ninny. (Once, I’d overheard her poking fun at Rose’s limp.) I couldn’t have been more delighted that she was marrying a multimillionaire from Chicago and would move there with him directly after the wedding. Good riddance, Daisy had said with a giggle when Adelaide had first announced the engagement. Good riddance indeed. But the question we were hashing out, before Daisy announced her need to tell me something—should we wear our finest dresses to Adelaide’s engagement party or something awfully ugly just to spite her and throw off the photographs?
I rolled over and turned my attention to Daisy, and whatever it was she wanted to tell me. Her face looked serious, her milky-white skin paler than usual. Her hair, though, was shiny as ever and splayed across her pillow. I reached my hand over and absently twirled a lock of it around my finger. “What is it, Daise?”
“I think I’m in love,” she said, her silken voice suddenly huskier than usual.
I stared at her for another moment, not saying anything. Her pale blue eyes matched the opal she wore on a chain around her neck, a sixteenth birthday gift from her parents. “In love?” I repeated her words, my own voice breaking in disbelief. Sure, I’d seen her around, laughing with the soldiers, but that was just flirting, nothing serious. Love?
She sat up suddenly, and I let go of her hair.
“I met him at the end of August, Jordie. His name is Jay. Jay Gatsby. He’s at Camp Taylor. I didn’t mean to love him. I don’t want to love him…” She held her hands up dramatically, then flopped back on her pillow.
“So don’t,” I said softly. As if it could be just that easy. Was there a way to change your feelings, to stop yourself from loving someone? I wish I knew.
“I want you to meet him,” she said. “That’s why I’m telling you. You’re the only one, Jordie. The only one I can trust.”
“Me? Not even Rose?” I asked.
“Especially not Rose.” She shook her head. “Rose is too good. She wants me to be good, too. But I don’t want to be good. I want to be happy.” Daisy sounded petulant, but oddly, it was the first time it had ever occurred to me that there might be a difference between the two, that it might be impossible to be both good and happy. “I want you to tell me the truth about him.” Daisy was still talking. “You’re the most honest person I’ve ever known, Jordie.”
“The truth?” I asked, meekly. Deep down, I wasn’t sure I’d ever fully told Daisy the truth about anything.
“The truth about whether he’s worth it.” Daisy got out of her bed and gestured around her beautifully furnished room. “Whether he’s worth giving up all this.”
“Daise,” I said, and this was maybe the most truthful thing I’d ever tell her, “no one is worth giving up all this.”
“But Jordie,” she said, “I think Jay is.”
* * *
AS IF ADELAIDE Cummings’s engagement party weren’t bad enough, now I had to worry about meeting this soldier Daisy was infatuated with. No, in love with. Jay. What kind of a name was that? It didn’t sound like a real name, a man’s name, a soldier’s name. It sounded like a bird and not even a full bird, half a bird at that. Blue Jay. Magpie Jay. Ground Jay.
“Jordie.” Daisy grabbed my arm and motioned with her head across the dance floor. The music was so loud that I couldn’t hear the rest of what Daisy was trying to tell me. Or maybe it was that I wasn’t listening. I watched him instead. He was tall with cropped blond hair. His green uniform fit him well and matched his eyes. He had a serious face, until he saw Daisy, and then all at once, his face changed. He looked younger, a little boy playing dress-up in his army uniform, not a man.
“Isn’t he a dream?” Daisy murmured. Then he reached her, grabbed her fiercely, kissed her too brazenly on the mouth. He pulled her away from me, onto the dance floor.