Late that afternoon, Daisy boarded a bus for Nick's. Staring out the window, she gazed blindly at the passing scenery and allowed the gentle rocking, the monotonous stops and starts, to lull her into a drowsy, near-hypnotic state. Unbidden, her mind began to wander.

If there was one thing she had learned in her twenty-eight years, it was that men don't stick around. Growing up, it had mostly just been her and Mama. The men who'd come and gone in their modest house in the suburbs had seemed more like visitors than anything resembling family. She supposed her father qualified as family, but he had traveled almost constantly, and besides, he'd taken a hike when she was nine years old.

Mama had often touted herself as a woman who needed a man to feel complete. "You'll understand, baby, when you're a little older," she used to say. But Daisy never did quite grasp the concept. From everything she'd observed, it simply meant that a woman set herself up to spend the majority of her life feeling incomplete. For instance, her mother had married again when Daisy was eleven, but Papa Ray had already been gone by the time she turned twelve.