The fishing pole jerked hard in her hand. Daisy squealed and stood, making the boat rock. Immediately, Ken had one hand on her pole and the other on her hip, guiding her back down to a sitting position. “You got this,” he said. “Just set the hook and slowly reel it in.”
Following his instructions, she gradually reeled in the fish. It jerked to the left and right, but she held firm. Ken kept his hand ready to grab the pole in case she lost control. Soon, he leaned over the side of the boat and scooped the large bass into the net. It jerked, splashing him in the eye.
“Nice one,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her and grinning as he used his multi-tool to pull the hook out of its mouth. “Now, we have dinner.”
He opened the cooler and dropped it in with a splash. The two bass Ken had caught earlier sat still in the water, their gills moving in and out. As soon as the other fish joined them, they all swam in aggressive circles, jockeying for position in the confined space.
“Do we have to cook it? Could we just let it go?”
Confused, he thought for a moment, then frowned and shrugged. “What’s the point of catching it, then?”
“Well, we have yours, right?” She pointed down into the cooler. “The first one you caught is bigger, anyway.”
The ruthless sunshine pelted down on them. To combat it, Daisy had put on a white, wide-brimmed canvas hat. She wore a red T-shirt and denim shorts. Over her shirt, she wore an orange life preserver. He didn’t think he’d ever felt more attraction for her.
“You’re right,” he said. “We have mine.” He reached into the cooler and scooped her fish back out. It wiggled its tail furiously. “You really want to toss yours back?”
“Yes, please.”
“Alright. Hold out your hand, and you can toss him back.”
She held a hand up in a halting motion. “No, no. You do it.”
The fish plopped as it went back into the lake water. He silently stared at her long enough that she started to feel nervous. “What?”
“Just wondering what you’re going to eat, now.”
After a few seconds, Daisy realized he was teasing her and could not stop herself from laughing. Ken grinned. He set the net down and turned back to her. “You want to keep fishing?”
The expressions crossing her face made it clear that she did not want to stay out here, but she sat there obviously trying to decide how to word that thought so they could stay and keep fishing if he wanted to. The female brain fascinated him. He decided to end her misery. “I’m hot. Could use some of that air conditioning up at the cabin. Plus, I need to cook my fish while you figure out what you’re doing for dinner.”
Her face lit up in a way that made his mouth go dry. “Okay, sure. Let’s head back.”
Soon they had the boat under cover at the boathouse, and Ken carried the cooler around to the sink he’d installed over the water. A pump brought lake water through the sink, and the drain sent it back. On the side of the sink, he’d built in a thick wooden cutting board from oak and cedar. Daisy leaned against the wall of the boathouse as he set up to clean the fish. She slipped the hat off her head and fanned her face.
“Do you like it out here?”
He glanced at her. The red flush on her skin worried him slightly. He decided to watch her more closely. “Usually.” He slipped his fillet knife out of its sheath. “At night, the bugs get a little loud. There’s a family of hoot owls that lives up in those trees.” He pointed in the direction of a copse of pines with the fillet knife. “But after the first night, I barely hear them until the next time I come back.”
Daisy watched him quickly kill and begin to clean the smaller fish. “You like quiet, don’t you?”
Naturally, Ken didn’t bother to respond, making the answer to her question even more self-evident. His silence agreed with her and answered her at once. “Do you stay here a lot?”
“I buy bank foreclosures, refurbish them myself, and flip them. I do the work in the evenings and early mornings in-between my day job.” He looked up from the fish and took a long, hard look at the property. He went back to scaling the fish. “I stay here when I need to stop work all the way. Biblically, that means at least once a week. There are occasions I’m here more often, but that’s rare lately.”
She looked around, and he tried to see the place through her eyes. She took in the little cabin with the foldout bed, the boathouse twice the cabin’s size, the dock that stretched out far into the lake, the rope swing they used during summer parties. He considered this place his sanctuary from the world. For some reason, it felt terribly important that she see its beauty the way he did.
“Have you ever thought about living out here full time? Making this your home?”
How did he verbalize the depths of pondering he had dedicated to that concept? The emotions and the prayers? He thought about his desire to build a home on the adjacent acre where he would move when he retired, where his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren could escape from the city’s noise and lights and find peace beneath a blanket of stars. He’d build big enough to always have room for his brothers and their families. Did he give her the full rundown or keep it simple?
“Maybe someday. Not right now. It’s an hour or more into the city on a good traffic day.” He slit the belly of the bass in one smooth stroke. “But, one day.” He glanced at her as he pulled the innards out of the fish and tossed them into the lake. She wrinkled her nose, and he chuckled. “Ever clean a fish before?”
“No.”
He held out the knife. “I’ll teach you.”
With some hesitation, she stepped forward and took the knife from him. He stepped aside and positioned her in front of the wooden cutting board. He stood slightly behind her and to her side so he could guide her hand with the knife. As he leaned in, he could smell the sun in her hair and feel the warmth of her skin. He took a deep breath through his nose and let it out before he spoke.
“Put the blade here. Yes. Right there. Now, run the knife around the head. Careful. That knife is really sharp. Ease up. Not so much elbow grease. Just let the knife do the work. Yes, like that.” He put a hand over hers. The slight tremble in her hand made him curious. “Now press along until you feel the backbone. And go down. You hear that? You want that clicking sound as the knife touches the backbone.”
“I’m sorry.” Daisy dropped the knife and stepped to the side. “I think I got too much sun, but this is making my stomach upset.”
The color fled her face as if someone had pulled the drain. He pumped water with the pedal at his foot and rinsed his hands. “Hang tight.”
He rushed into the boathouse and onto his boat and grabbed a bottle of water out of the cooler. On his way back outside, he poured some water onto a clean towel. He found her leaning against the boathouse with her hands on her knees, and her head bowed. “This is gonna be cold,” he said as he draped the towel over the back of her neck.
She raised her head and looked at him. “How bad is it for our future that cleaning a fish made me sick?”
He held out the bottle of water and crouched until he was eye level with her. “Every relationship has its challenges.”
Something flashed in her eyes he didn’t understand, then she accepted the water from him and took a small sip. “They make counselors for things like this, right?”
With a grin, he kissed her temple and straightened. “Feeling better?” She nodded, took the towel from around her neck, and wiped her face with it. “Good. Why don’t you get on up to the cabin? Get the air conditioning going. I’ll finish the fish. Just a minute or two.”
Ken watched Daisy as she walked slowly up the hill toward the cabin. Once she crested the hill, and he couldn’t see her anymore, he turned back to the fish. It took him three minutes to finish filleting them and discarding the carcasses. He set the fish into the container he had left out, then scrubbed the cutting board and knife, cleaned out the sink, and rinsed out the cooler. He stored the cooler back in the boathouse and carried everything else up to the cabin. He found Daisy curled up into the corner of the couch with the towel over the back of her neck again. “You still feeling puny?”
“I’m feeling a lot better.” She looked up and smiled. “The cool wet just felt better.”
He held the container of fish up. “You gonna be able to eat this?”
“Are you kidding? I love bass. And this fresh? It’s going to be amazing.” She took a sip of her water. “But I am terribly embarrassed. I don’t normally get queasy over things like that.”
“No need to be embarrassed. It’s really hot out there.” He set the container in the refrigerator. “I shouldn’t have kept us out so long.”
“Gotta love Georgia in July.” She looked around the room. “Why do you have a kitchen that’s bigger than the living area? Hardly a single guy’s sanctuary.”
He examined the space. The kitchen had long counters, a double refrigerator, a big gas stove, and an oven built into the wall. The wide and deep double sink could accommodate restaurant-sized pots. By contrast, a couch and a chair crowded the small living space. Before he pulled the bed out of the wall, he had to move the chair into the kitchen.
“Easier to host parties when the kitchen can accommodate it. After the first big thing we had here, I redid the kitchen. Made it as big as I could and still have room to bring out the bed.”
He moved to sit on the other side of the couch and turned to face her. Much to Ken’s amusement, Daisy stretched out like a kitten. She spread her arms out and said, “I think if I had this, I would have a hard time going back to the city.” She smiled. “Have you thought about putting in a screened-in porch to overlook the water?”
He had. He just hadn’t taken the time to do it yet. “It’s on the list.” He smiled. “You up to a walk? Cooled off? I can show you the whole property.”
He wanted to show her everything. He wanted to take her to the acre next door and explain his dream house. He wanted to hike up the back trail that went around an inlet of the lake, let her see all the boundaries of his eight acres. She smiled, and her eyes lit up. “I would love to walk with you.”
She stood and pulled a hair tie out of her pocket, then grabbed her hair and twisted and turned until she formed a messy bun on the back of her head. “Do I need the hat again?”
Mouth dry, heart pounding, he stood and shook his head. “It’s mostly woods.”
As she turned away, he put a hand on her shoulder, and she stopped moving. She turned to look at him, and he cupped her cheek with his hand. Without a word, he kissed her, wanting to convey what he thought and felt without having to formulate the words. Why did he always have to talk? He felt like he had talked all day, and it made him feel tired. Finally, he said, “Daisy, I’m really glad you’re here.”
He could see the emotions in her eyes when she said, “Me, too.”
Daisy fielded a call from the bank that worked with her clients. The bank president sat on her Board of Directors. They had a deal that the bank would underwrite the loan for the land for the houses they would build regardless of the potential homeowners’ credit scores, provided the homeowners had no current outstanding debts.
“Good morning, Nigel. How are you?”
“Great. We have a problem with the upcoming closing.”
She frowned as she opened her desk drawer and pulled out the thick file for the Osborne family. “Oh? What’s the problem?”
“Credit report shows an outstanding debt to Atlanta Memorial. It’s small, but it needs to be resolved before we can finalize everything.”
She grabbed the sticky note and wrote Atlanta Memorial on it. “How much?”
“Ninety-eight dollars. It is three years in arrears and is currently in collections.”
“Okay. We’ll take care of it.”
She hung up the phone and looked up the number for Natalie Osborne. She answered on the second ring. “Hi, Natalie. Daisy Ruiz, here.”
After a brief pause, Natalie said, “Ms. Ruiz. Hi.”
“I got a call from the bank.”
“Oh no, we’re not to get the house, are we?”
The panic in the woman’s voice was the kind fueled by the desperation of living a life where nothing ever turned out the way it ought to. She had worked with this family several times. The place where they lived had two bedrooms, and they had four children. Her husband worked as a laborer for a construction company and barely made a living wage. Natalie worked as a server in a diner but had to juggle shifts with available childcare. Their oldest son had special needs.
“The bank can’t do the mortgage for the land if you have any outstanding debt.”
Natalie paused and said, “We paid everything. Remember? It took us two years.”
“Except for ninety-eight dollars to Atlanta Memorial.”
She heard Natalie’s intake of breath before she said, with a forceful voice that Daisy had never heard from her before, “No. We’re not paying that bill.”
“Natalie, you understand that if you don’t pay this bill, you don’t have land, so we can’t build a house? You get that, right?”
“We contested that bill. We shouldn’t have to pay it. It’s wrong.”
“What is a ninety-eight-dollar bill from the hospital for three years ago? That seems like a small amount.”
“That was the last of the bill, from when Sissy was born. We were paying regular like we said we would, and then someone told us to get a list. What do they call it? With all the charges on it?”
“Itemization?”
“Yes! We requested an itemized bill and found out they charged us for circumcision.”
It took a moment for Daisy to understand what Natalie said. “Circumcision on your daughter?”
“Yes! We wrote the hospital a note and said we wasn’t paying anymore. And they told us we shoulda contested it sooner and that we had to pay it. So, we just quit paying.”
Daisy nodded as if Natalie could see her. “Okay. I’ll take care of it.”
She hung up the phone and made some notes on the sticky note. Then she called Atlanta General and maneuvered her way through the automated phone system until she received a human being in accounting.
“Hi, I’m calling about a past due balance owed by Natalie Osborne.”
“Is this Natalie Osborne?”
“No. I’m calling on her behalf.”
She argued with the woman who answered the phone and finally managed to work her way up to a supervisor, her goal all along. As he answered the phone, she took a deep calming breath then explained the situation.
“I cannot discuss patient records with you.”
“I’m not asking for the records. I’m explaining to you that you charged a young mother for the circumcision of her daughter. That debt needs to be removed from the account, and if they paid any portion of it, it needs to be refunded to them.”
She heard the clicking and clacking of a computer keyboard, then the man’s gruff voice returned. “This bill was turned over to collections more than two years ago. You’ll need to settle the debt with the collection agency.”
Struggling not to sound impatient, Daisy said, “I’m aware. I am explaining that Atlanta General turned an incorrect charge that was billed in error over to collections. I’m calling you so you can correct the error and remove the debt.”
“I’m afraid that I cannot discuss this with you. Please have Natalie Osborne contact us.” The line went dead.
Daisy stared at the receiver of the phone, unable to believe that he had hung up on her. She turned to her computer and typed out an angry letter with all the legalese that she could muster. She copied the hospital accounting department, the hospital director, the head of the maternity ward of the hospital, and the member from her Board of Directors who also sat on the hospital board. She had plenty of experience with hospital bills holding up her families from getting their land financed.
Once she hit send on the email, she printed the letter, signed it, and set it aside for Beverly to mail out to all the parties.
She imagined she would start getting replies to her email by tomorrow morning, no later than nine. She rolled her eyes at the ridiculousness of going through this over something that common sense should have taken care of the first time the family contacted the hospital. The helplessness of people without resources facing bureaucratic red-tape made her so angry.
“It shouldn’t take this. It just shouldn’t,” she muttered.
She thought she might need to get up and go walk off some steam, but the phone rang. With Bev still running to the bank, she went ahead and answered it. “Gálatas Seis. How may I help you?”
“My name is Sasha. My cousin told me you helped him one time. My kids and I are about to get evicted from our apartment. Can you help me?”
Her anger toward the hospital accounting department dissipated immediately, and she pulled open the appropriate file on her computer. “Hi, Sasha, my name is Daisy. Let me get some information from you.”
An hour later, she got off the phone with the apartment manager. She checked her bank account and decided to get Sasha and her children some groceries. On a whim, she called Ken. “Are you free? I have some extra money, and I was going to go pick up some groceries for a family in need. Do you want to go shopping with me?”
When she pulled into the grocery store parking lot, she found Ken waiting for her. Out of the norm, he wore a pair of gray slacks and a white shirt and red tie. She smiled at him as she got out of the car. She hadn’t seen him since their fishing excursion on Sunday. “Wow, you’re sure dressing up for construction work these days. Where were you?”
He gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. “‘Bout a mile that way. New project breaking ground. Had a big hoopla with the press and City councilmen. It’s Brad’s job to smile pretty, but he had a conflict. Jon said he would cover it, but he had to go to New York for some reason, so he asked me to fill in.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Fill in as in pretend to be Jon pretending to be Brad?”
He frowned. “No. We don’t do that anymore.”
“I never could figure out how you got away with it anyway. You’re very different from Brad or Jon.” Ken gave her a one-sided grin but otherwise remained still. She gestured at the grocery store. “Ready?”
“Definitely. Thanks for the invite. I like stuff like this.”
She paused inside the grocery store and looked at the produce section. “I’m shopping for a single mom with three kids. I have no idea what their storage space is like, or even if they have electricity. Since Gálatas Seis just paid three months’ rent to keep them from being evicted, I almost want to say there’s likely no electricity. I think we need to be careful with what we buy.”
“What’s the address?” Ken pulled his phone out of his pocket. Daisy handed him the note pad that she had written the address on. She listened to him call the power company while she loaded the cart with apples, oranges, and bananas. He handed the pad back to her as he hung up his phone.
“What did they say?” Daisy asked.
He nodded. “You were right. No power. I paid the arrears and padded a few months and got it turned back on.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t have to do that. I would’ve gone through the proper process once I evaluated the entire situation.”
“No doubt. Just saving time is all.” He put a watermelon into the bottom of the cart. “Since the power was cut, we should probably assume they have no perishables at all.”
She nodded. “Good assumption.”
They bought canned meats, canned veggies, various kinds of boxed pasta, fresh meats, cheese, eggs, and milk. She saw yogurt with fun cartoons on the packages and bought a couple of packs of that. By the time they got up to the cash register, she had a full cart.
Ken followed her to the address. She recognized the neighborhood and the rundown apartment building. Only people with an income below a certain low threshold could live here. Ken grabbed two bags of groceries while she led the way to the apartment door. A little boy with a runny nose wearing a torn T-shirt answered her knock.
“Hi. Is your mom here?”
“Who is it?” The voice came from somewhere beyond the door.
She recognized Sasha’s voice and said, “Sasha, it’s Daisy Ruiz from Gálatas Seis.”
Immediately the door opened, and a young woman in a fast-food uniform answered. “Daisy, thank you. You saved us. And the electricity, I didn’t even ask for that.”
Daisy gestured toward Ken. “We have some groceries, too. Do you mind if we bring them in?”
Tears filled Sasha’s eyes and streamed down her face. “I don’t know how to repay you.”
She took the offered bags of groceries from Ken. He left to get more, and she stepped inside. “Sasha, I don’t do this to be repaid. Help someone one day when you can.”
The children danced around the groceries, exclaiming every time one of them pulled something exciting out of a bag. She wondered how many children in middle-class America got excited over groceries. Every child had bitten into a piece of fruit before Ken even finished bringing all the groceries in.
“Sasha, it’s not a requirement to receive help from us. But, if you would like to attend, I do a monthly budgeting class. We can look at your total income and what you need for output and help you determine how you can keep up with everything.” She put her card on the worn kitchen table. “Like I said, no pressure.”
“Ain’t no one ever wanted to help us before. Seems like I have to scratch and beg for everything.” As she and Ken started to make their way out of the apartment, Sasha said, “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.” Daisy watched the power and beauty of the storm of emotions raging behind Ken’s eyes. She knew he wanted to whisk Sasha and her kids away and put them in a bigger, nicer home. She didn’t need to tell him that Atlanta had thousands of Sashas, and they could only help as much as they could.
On the way down the stairs to the parking lot, he stopped her. “Thanks for calling me,” he said gruffly.
She didn’t understand why God had allowed someone as incredible as him into her fractured life. She stepped into his kiss and hugged him tightly to her. His body felt hot and strong, like warm metal. But his lips, oh, his lips, and his kiss made her entire body hum and vibrate. She thought if she could just keep kissing him, she might not even need to sleep, or eat, or breathe. All she needed was his kiss.