Chapter 1

March 1940

Oslo, Norway

My dearest Anne,

It's 1914 all over again.

This disturbing thought has been rolling around in my head ever since the news broke last September that Great Britain would come to the aid of Poland and join the fight against Germany. But never has it seemed so near as it has after this long deadly winter. My mind keeps returning to our years in France during the last great cataclysm, and I want to weep all over again for the failures that have led us back, barely twenty years later.

C aught up in a web of memories, Daisy paused, her pen resting on the paper. The afternoon light faded to silver, fog shrouding the Oslo city streets surrounding the US minister's residence. Kim dozed at her feet, the old German shepherd whuffling as his back legs twitched in dream. A few cars grumbled their way up the narrow street of Nobels Gate and turned into the legation's drive. It would be the wives. Five of them were meeting downstairs. Daisy had begun these weekly knitting parties as a way to support the Norwegians and show US solidarity, two neu tral countries standing shoulder to shoulder. But the afternoons had become a welcome respite, a way to keep hands and minds distracted when every broadcast and newspaper article brought unsettling news.

The new heating system rattled and groaned as it fought a losing battle to warm the residency. Not for the first time, Daisy wished her office had a fireplace like the one in the drawing room. She shifted in her chair, feeling every one of her sixty-nine years in the groan of her hips and the ache along her back, but immediately dismissed her discomfort as nothing an aspirin and a small sherry wouldn't cure. Besides, it was only four in the afternoon. After her knitting circle, she had meetings at the foreign office followed by a cocktail party at the French embassy then a small reception at the palace. She would be lucky to find her bed before the wee hours of the morning.

It was times like this when she questioned the wisdom of accepting President Roosevelt's appointment. She could be tucked up comfortably at home in Washington, DC, with nothing more daunting than a cozy dinner with friends or a leisurely hack in Rock Creek Park ahead of her. She blamed it on Ethel. Her daughter had practically dared her to take the ambassadorship. An adventure, she'd called it. As if Daisy hadn't already lived a life greedy with excitement. A box seat on America, her friend T had once called this strange luck of hers that allowed her to be witness to the country's shaping. Was it luck, or was it her unquenchable curiosity and enthusiasm that led her to places few women dared venture?

A dot of spreading ink drew her back to the present, the period at the end of her sentence now outlandishly large and spidery. She thought about starting her letter over and decided against it. Mail delivery had grown spotty since war had broken out, and she wanted to make sure the letter went out this afternoon. Her sister-in-law's declining health kept her trapped at home these days, making Daisy's regular correspondence more important than ever. A fact made clear to her when Anne's latest note hinted that Daisy's silence must mean she was off on another of her little jaunts, traipsing about the Arctic with craggy fishermen or playing starry-eyed tourist in Saint Petersburg.

A rather unfair assessment of the situation, Daisy thought. Those trips had been part of her work. The best part, of course, but work nonetheless. If she didn't know better, she'd think Anne had been talking to Jefferson Patterson. While an enormous help in so many ways, her former deputy chief of mission had never quite approved of those trips either. He saw them as time not spent at her desk. Time not engaged in the serious work of the legation. He'd never quite blamed it on the fact that she was a woman, but it was there beneath the polite words and the accommodating smiles all the same. Still, she preferred his veiled condescension to Vice Consul Whitney's more obvious disdain.

A tap at the door brought Kim instantly awake and alert, but it was only Miss Kristiansen with the tea tray. Accompanying the pot of Earl Grey and plate of jammy biscuits was a less savory stack of folders and a bundle of envelopes with very red, very official-looking stamps.

Daisy's secretary offered Kim a treat from her skirt pocket then poured out a cup, adding sugar and lemon. "Just as you like it, Mrs. Harriman," she said with a smile.

"Thank you. I'm sure it will help me choke down the news from Washington."

The US legation had been fortunate to gain the services of this daughter of an American nurse and a Norwegian merchant seaman. Petra Kristiansen spoke both languages fluently along with Danish, French, and a smattering of German and was also a skilled clerk and typist. But it was that certain Scandinavian something that made her invaluable to Daisy. She had a confidence and easy grace that allowed her to move in any circle and adapt to any situation, all while looking positively flawless.

If Daisy had been forty years younger, she'd be jealous as hell.

Thank heavens Petra and that young assistant military attaché had formed an attachment. It didn't pay to have a girl that pretty stirring up drama among the unmarried staff.

"There is an important cable from the president, ma'am, and"—Petra slid an envelope to the top of the pile—"a letter from Mrs. Vanderbilt."

"Oh dear. I haven't even finished replying to her last letter. I hope it's not bad news."

Feeling only slightly guilty, Daisy set aside FDR and tore into Anne's letter, but only a few words in and she was setting down her cup with a rattle that nearly broke the saucer before she rubbed at her temple, where a headache threatened.

"Is anything wrong, ma'am?" Petra asked.

"Wrong doesn't begin to cover it."

Anne was fine, thank heavens. But Daisy's goddaughter Clementine was missing.

Not missing as she had been since she'd run away from home on the eve of her wedding, precipitating the scandal of the season. But truly missing as in not a soul had seen or heard from her in months. The last anyone knew, she was living in sin with a jazz musician, trailing after him like a camp follower. But that had been before the war. There was no telling where she might be by now.

"Sorry, Franklin. Family comes first," she muttered. Crumpling her earlier letter, Daisy tossed it in the trash, uncapped her pen, and started over.

Dear Anne . . .

"V elkommen til Oslo, Fr?ken Jaffray!"

Cleo winced at the young woman's perky salutation as she handed back Cleo's papers. It was far too early in the day. Cleo had had far too little sleep. And the dangerous steamer crossing from Hamburg dodging British mines had left her pea green with seasickness and jumpy with nerves. She put her passport and travel documents away carefully, taking time to guarantee they would be safe. Papers were more valuable than gold these days. " Takk ," she mumbled. "Thanks."

The woman smiled wider. "You are American?" She switched to English, her accent thick but understandable. Thank heavens. Cleo knew exactly three phrases in Norwegian, gleaned from looking over the shoulder of a fellow traveler with a guidebook— thank you , please , and I do not understand .

"That's right." Cleo wobbled as the ground under her feet continued to sway ominously, her stomach rising into her throat. She and boats had never been friends. Not as a girl in Newport retching over the side of the very eligible Jimmy van Speakman's sporty little ketch. Not now with tons of steel and three decks between her and the Baltic. If there had been any other way to get to Oslo, she'd have taken it in a shot. Train, taxi, horse-drawn sledge. But she was broke, her purse containing only a tiny jumble of various coins and none of them adding up to enough for anything but the price of a third-class steamer ticket. If only the necklace she wore was real, she might have arrived in style trailing her luggage with a handsome young porter to help her. But the pink costume diamond, while gaudily pretty, wouldn't even buy her a sandwich and a cup of coffee from the steamer's canteen. Still, it meant more to her than any treasure from Tiffany's. "Can you tell me how to get to the US legation?"

Immediately, the woman sobered as if suddenly noticing Cleo's scuffed and mismatched luggage, her worn coat with the matted fur collar, and her general air of nervous tension that had only grown worse since she'd left the Hungarian city of Kassa alone and nearly broke. No doubt, she wasn't the first American caught out by this ridiculous war that the customs clerk had come across. But at least here she was safe. Norway was neutral, like the US. There would be no checkpoints. No daily humiliations. No smirking soldiers whispering sordid invitations one always risked turning down.

"There is a taxi stand outside," the woman said, already starting to turn away to the next passenger.

Being rushed through the weather in a warm dry taxi sounded the height of luxury, but even stretched, Cleo's coins wouldn't be near enough. "And if I decided to enjoy a nice walk to clear my head? How far would it be?"

The woman snuck a glance out the windows of the terminal to where a cold sleet slanted like needles from a slate gray sky. She chewed her lip for a moment before digging in her pocket. "Here." She handed Cleo a few banknotes. "Take this."

Once pride would have prevented Cleo from stooping so low as to accept a handout. Not anymore. It was amazing what poverty and fear did to one's vanity. She'd learned to live with the poverty, but she'd never grown used to the fear. Even now, the copper tang of it seemed to settle at the back of her throat, sit like a stone in her stomach. She rubbed her arms as if she could wipe herself free of it.

" Takk ," she repeated. " Takk very much," and hurried out onto the sidewalk in case the generous official changed her mind.

Outside, the sleet numbed her cheeks while the March damp gnawed into her bones. She thought New York winters were harsh. Scandinavian springs were ten times worse. She shrugged deeper into her hand-me-down coat. Not much farther, and she could finally rest. At least that was the hope she'd carried with her the last few weeks.

Aunt Daisy would help her.

Aunt Daisy would find Micky.

She repeated this mantra to herself as she bumped and joggled her way through the press of fellow passengers queueing for taxis and buses. Businessmen, sleek as cats. Workers with faces chapped by wind and sun. Soldiers in uniform. And then were the refugees like her, flotsam being blown this way and that by the war. Things might be quiet now—the Finns ceding territory to the Russians, the Germans and the British sizing each other up like boxers before the bell—but it was only a matter of time until they all came out of their corners swinging.

One taxi stood waiting at the end of the row. Cleo picked up her pace despite the blister on her heel and the suitcase bumping against her hip. She reached the taxi just as a businessman in an expensive wool coat and a fedora pulled low against the chill handed off his bags to the driver.

"Twelve Ole Fladagers Gate, my good man." A Brit. That was a relief. They were always the easiest to sway. Must be those centuries of noblesse oblige imprinted on their brain cells. Cleo hunched deeper into her coat and shivered. Not a hard act to pull off. She was freezing cold, her head and stomach swimming, and she'd not eaten in twenty-four hours.

"Please, sir," she said in her best little matchgirl voice. "I'm desperate to get to the American legation. The war, you see and my"—no doubt his middle-class paunch equaled middle-class morals—"my husband. He went missing in Poland after the Germans invaded. I'm hoping the US minister..." At mention of Germany, the man bristled, eyes going hard. She sensed his outrage on her behalf and doubled her efforts at looking pathetic. Easy after these last uncertain months when subservience was the difference between life and death. "But I see you're in a hurry. I'm sure there's a bus or something..."

A sympathetic smile lit his round face. "Nonsense. We can share a taxi. I'm in no hurry. I can drop you off and still make my meeting. Those Krauts have bloody nerve. We thrashed them once. We'll do it again."

Cleo gave a watery smile as she slid into the cab, leaning her head against the window to watch as Oslo slid by in a blur of handsome buildings and broad avenues swept by snow. They swung past the university, a theater, around the royal palace, with the Brit acting as tour guide in between his diatribes on the sorry state of the world, the duplicity of the Nazis, the courageous Allied soldiers, the havoc in the markets caused by such global instability.

Her eyelids grew heavy. There was nothing she could add that he would understand. Once she found Micky, she would do what she should have done in September—go home. This war wasn't her war. This fight wasn't her fight.

She wasn't her father.

She was just sliding into sleep when the man's hand on her shoulder jolted her awake. "The US legation, Mrs. Jaffray."

When had she told him her last name? She was obviously more exhausted than she thought. But he gave no sign of recognition or made any type of connection between her and the minister. If he had, he'd have probably lobbied for an introduction or an audience or some kind of special favor. "The residence is that one there. The chancery offices are housed in that smaller building across the way." He pointed at an unassuming structure that looked like it had once been a carriage house or garage.

The familiar fear clenched her belly, though whether it was fear for Micky or fear of her upcoming reunion with her intimidating godmother, she couldn't decide.

The driver set her bag on the curb before diving back into the taxi and disappearing up the street and around the corner with a rattle and a puff of black smoke.

She pushed through a high gate into a walled courtyard. Grounds stretched away to one side and what appeared to be a tennis court, the net put away for the winter. The residence was large and rambling, steps swept clear of snow and ice. The chancery itself was less than impressive and gave off a stark, utilitarian air.

She imagined people staring down at her from the windows, wondering who she was, why she was here. She expected guards to pounce any moment to whisk her away, but there was only one young man in an officer's cap and a heavy wool army overcoat, sleet dripping from his dark hair and damping his ruddy cheeks.

"Can I help you?" he asked politely. His features beneath the cap were blunt and plain. Not handsome, but friendly. His nose was slightly crooked. His brows were sharp arrows sloping over clever brown eyes.

Instinctively, she rounded her shoulders, sucked in her cheeks to make her face appear hollower, glanced up at him through lowered lashes. "Please," she said in a soft, wobbly voice perfected over months of living under occupation. "I'd like to speak with Mrs. Harriman. It's very important. A matter of life or death."

He gave a sorrowful shake of his head. "You could be in the pictures with acting like that," he replied, unmoved at her attempt at waifishness. "Not good pictures, but still... there's a certain Betty Boop feel about you. Maybe it's the big eyes or the bobbed hair."

His words shocked her out of character for a moment, her hand unconsciously touching the unflattering cap of dark curls at her ears, necessary after a week in that horrible hostel outside Budapest. Heat rose in her chest to burn her cheeks. "One learned very quickly in German-occupied Poland to use whatever advantage came to hand. I'd pretend to be Minnie Mouse if it kept me safe for one more day."

Shame replaced his earlier amusement. "Sorry. You are?"

"Cleo Jaffray." She narrowed her Betty Boop eyes as she paused to prepare the dagger stroke that would cut this tinpot soldier down to size once and for all. "Minister Harriman's goddaughter."

"M rs. Harriman is in meetings all afternoon. She is not to be disturbed." Cleo had been greeted by Aunt Daisy's personal secretary, Miss Kristiansen, Sonja Henie in a brown pencil skirt and beige cardigan, her only adornment a blue-and-gold enameled brooch in the form of a butterfly pinned at her throat.

Cleo tugged at her own soiled blouse and tried not to shrink under the stare of this statuesque blond Valkyrie. "I'm sure she'd make an exception for family. You can tell her it's the prodigal goddaughter. She'll understand."

Perhaps it was naive, but of all the scenarios that had played out in Cleo's mind as she made her chaotic, frightening escape from Poland to Norway, her godmother not being available when she arrived hadn't ever crossed her mind. She'd imagined standing before Aunt Daisy properly penitent. Suffering whatever brutal dressing-down she cared to mete out. Letting the abuse spill over her, her mind as numb as her frozen fingers. Just so long as when the shouting was over, Aunt Daisy would agree to help. Now she felt unaccountably let down. An actress awaiting a cue that never came.

Miss Kristiansen looked over Cleo's head to the soldier who had introduced himself as Lieutenant Bayard. "I checked, Petra," he said. "She is who she says she is."

"Very well. I'll let Madam Minister know you've arrived." Her English was nearly as perfect as her ivory complexion, cornsilk hair, and glacier-blue eyes. Too perfect. Cleo didn't trust perfection. She'd had a lifetime of it stuffed down her throat until she choked.

"I'll show Miss Jaffray somewhere she can freshen up while she waits." Cleo hadn't realized how raw she'd become until she flinched when Bayard stepped forward, taking her elbow in the same way a guard might escort a prisoner. "Come on. You look dead on your feet."

The last few weeks on the road seemed to have caught up with her all at once and now her swaying had nothing to do with a long night spent on the ferry. The room he led her to was on the top floor off a small hallway. Not exactly the servants' quarters, but neither was it a VIP suite reserved for embassy dignitaries. Somewhere in between.

Like her.

Despite its lack of square footage, it was cozy and inviting, though at this point a broom cupboard would have seemed the height of luxury.

"So Mrs. Harriman is family?" he asked.

She'd offered enough information to get her inside. More was... complicated. But if it would get him to go away and leave her to wrap herself in the enormous duvet on the bed and sleep, she'd answer whatever questions he asked.

"She's my godmother really, but I've always called her Aunt Daisy. She was my father's second cousin on her mother's side."

"Was?" He either followed this convoluted family tree or didn't care enough to question it further.

"He died in France during the last war, but she and my mother are still close."

Aunt Daisy had been invited to the wedding. Cleo had seen the invitation on the top of the gilt-edged pile waiting for the post. The afternoon before the big day, she'd heard the bustle of her godmother's visit to the house on East Fifty-Seventh from her upstairs bedroom, her bag open and stuffed with what she thought at the time she couldn't live without. For a moment, guilt pressed weighty fingers on her heart, but ten months and far greater regrets had dulled the sharpest edges, and the feeling quickly passed.

"What brings you to Oslo, Miss Jaffray?"

"I'd have thought it was obvious." From her old coat to her scuffed shoes and battered valise, she could hardly be confused for a tourist in town for a spot of shopping and a look at the local sights.

"Humor me," he said simply. She studied him for any sign his interest could be used against her, but his gaze remained unreadable, his features thoughtful rather than prying. Habit had her starting to dissemble and deflect, but she was far too tired and her half-truths felt as heavy as boulders. Maybe it was better to confess everything to this stolid, square-jawed officer than to her godmother, who would be scowling as ferociously as any of society's infamous Four Hundred. Aunt Daisy had always been an open-minded and progressive soul, ahead of her time in so many ways, but even she had her limits. It would make sense to have an ally, someone in Cleo's corner who could go to bat for her if her godmother chose to be difficult.

"Right. It's a long story, but I've come to ask for her help."

C leo couldn't say what woke her. Her skin wasn't damp with sweat. Her heart didn't race. Her body didn't feel frozen in shock and terror. The room was dark, but beyond the window, she could see the golden halo of streetlights, lamps burning in windows, the wash of car headlights sweeping over the ceiling. The haze of the city reflecting off the clouds made the air glow pink and peachy.

No steady drumbeat of marching boots in the street outside. No screams or sudden gunshots that left your stomach soft as a poached egg. No breath-stealing anticipation of the shouted re quest to prove her American citizenship as if she hadn't proven it the day before and the day before that. The authorities had finally suggested she and Micky pin an American flag to their clothes and tack another to the door of their apartment—just in case. They didn't have to ask in case of what. They did as they were advised in a vulgar counterpoint to their neighbors' Star of David armbands.

Still, Micky had chosen to stay, and she, unwilling to go without him, stayed too.

Cleo refused to look back to those moments when they could have made different choices. Regret was too painful.

A hiss of ice tapped at the window like fingers. She rolled deeper into the duvet, closing her eyes, but the tapping increased until she realized it was someone at her door. The darkness and her own blurry exhaustion had made her think it was midnight when more likely it was early evening—dinnertime. Her stomach growled, reminding her it had been at least a day since she'd had anything more to eat than a bar of waxy chocolate and a tepid cup of coffee.

"Coming." Dragging the duvet around her shoulders, she answered the door to find neither the lieutenant nor a helpful maid bringing her food, but Aunt Daisy herself. She was dressed in a grandmotherly wool twinset and pearls, her silver hair coiffed in soft becoming waves, but her stature and the burning light of curiosity gleaming in her eyes made Cleo take a cautious step back.

"Clementine Verquin," her godmother demanded, staring down her long regal nose, "where have you been? We've been worried sick." Even as Cleo's confidence shriveled at the tone, Aunt Daisy surprised her by pulling her into a perfume-scented hug. "Thank God you're safe."

Cleo fought the urge to sink into that embrace and weep like a baby. Instead, she stepped back and lifted her chin in a bid to meet her godmother face-to-face. "It's Cleo these days. I go by Cleo. Not Clementine and certainly not Verquin." Just saying it left a bad taste in her mouth.

There was only the veriest pause before a shift took place behind Aunt Daisy's eyes, a filing away of information. "Very well. I never did approve of your mother naming you after the village where your father died. Maudlin, to say the very least. But I was up to my eyes with the Red Cross. By the time I found out, it was too late. The deed was done."

"I'll try not to hold it against you, ma'am," Cleo quipped then immediately regretted it. She was going for contrition, not wit. "Have you heard from my mother?"

"If you mean, has she forgiven you, the answer is yes. I'm not sure I have."

Cleo had been expecting that, but it still hurt. She'd always looked up to Aunt Daisy, the maverick in the family. Not content to remain simply a wife and mother, she'd stepped onto a bigger stage. Become a force in New York, then in Washington. Reveling in the political back-and-forth, the drama and the deals, Aunt Daisy had championed women's rights and workers' rights, causes she believed in even when those fights put her at odds with family and friends.

Cleo had always harbored the tiny flicker of a hope that of everyone, her aunt Daisy would understand why she'd run and, more importantly, why she'd returned.

"I'm truly sorry for all the trouble I've caused."

"Sorry? That's all you have to say? As if it's the least bit adequate. Your poor mother had to face an entire church full of people and tell them her daughter had run off and there's poor George Cliveden looking like a confused codfish through the whole thing. She barely left her house for three months until the worst of the talk died down, and George... I suppose your loss was Miss Sweeney's gain, but still..." She gave Cleo a very familiar, very heavy what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you sigh. "I should give you the proper drubbing you deserve, but you look as if you've been punished enough, so we'll say no more on the subject."

Funny, but now that she started, Cleo felt an urge to come clean. She couldn't excuse her actions, but she wanted to at least try to defend them. "I thought I could marry him, Aunt Daisy. I really did. But the closer it came, the more it felt like the walls were closing in, and Mother wouldn't listen. I panicked. I thought once everything settled down, I could come back and explain."

"You always did prefer asking forgiveness over permission. Your father was the same way."

Was he? Cleo wouldn't know. All she knew of Paul Jaffray was the stories she'd been raised with, the somber portrait over the drawing room fireplace, the clothes still hanging in the wardrobe, the silver-backed brushes on the shelf, and the box of medals Mother kept as shiny as the day they'd been pinned on his chest. Paul Jaffray had been handsome, charming, honorable, selfless. He'd been a hero. Perfect in every way.

Cleo hated him for it.

"Yes, well. She forgave him for running off, didn't she? Me? I was disowned and cut off without a dime."

She waited for Aunt Daisy to launch into the same old sorry reasoning that had dominated Cleo's childhood. When taxed, her mother had always flung words like liberty and democracy and principles around as if that made his abandonment all right. Her godmother merely clenched her long hands together in front of her—strong hands, ropy with blue veins, but long-fingered, long-boned. "She was angry, and I suppose there are only so many times one can watch a loved one leave before it becomes too much to bear."

The guilt Cleo had tried so hard to avoid crashed over her as if the last year had never happened. The midnight escape down the back stairs, the taxi to the wharf, the open sea with freedom at the other side. She had run as fast and as far as she could. Another comparison to her father that left her bleeding. Would it never end? She'd fled halfway around the world and yet he still haunted her.

"I'm sorry," Cleo repeated, feeling put in her place. Daisy Harriman might look the part of someone's doting grandmother, but there was steel in that spine and razor-sharp intelligence in that bright gaze.

"It's your mother you should be apologizing to. Write to her, Cleo. Tell her what you told me."

"She won't understand."

"Give her a chance. You might be surprised."

They dined alone in Aunt Daisy's upstairs sitting room. The butler brought trays up from the kitchen, and Cleo tore into her food as if afraid he might grab it from under her nose. She felt Aunt Daisy's stare like a blade at her neck, but she was too busy eating to care. It was only after she'd mopped up the last bit of gravy with her dinner roll that she sat back in her chair. The silence had given her time to form her words, prepare her arguments. And if need be, build a defense.

"When was the last time you had a proper meal?" Daisy asked.

Surprised but relieved at the turn of the conversation, Cleo shrugged, trying not to remember last summer and the noisy, happy dinners with Micky and his friends. The laughter and shouted conversations over bowls of stew or plates of sausages and potatoes. And the music. So much music. Those dinners crackled with energy and life. So different from the meals they shared after the Nazis arrived in Zakopane, where every word was parsed for potential trouble and there was little room for food in a belly tight with anxiety.

"You aren't the first American citizen turning up on my doorstep looking for help getting home." Aunt Daisy slid one finger down the seam of her napkin. "I've had them lining up five deep on some days. Passage out of Bergen, Trondheim, and the other coastal cities is practically impossible to find, and even the overland route through Russia is risky right now."

"I don't want to go home. That's not why I came to see you."

For the first time, her godmother registered surprise. The napkin slid from the table to the floor, but she made no move to claim it. Like the woman checking Cleo's passport at the steamer terminal, Aunt Daisy seemed to focus for the first time, not on the frayed collar of Cleo's cheap flowered dress or the chopped, uneven cut of her short hair, but on her face, as if she'd suddenly seen her for the first time. "No?"

Cleo had told the British businessman she'd lost her husband, but Aunt Daisy would see through that lie in a wink. She was no man's fool and no woman's patsy. "I've been in Poland. I was living there with a musician—an American musician—named Micky Kominski, who I met on the ship to Le Havre last summer."

To her credit, Aunt Daisy remained still as stone, giving nothing away. Cleo was reminded of that lieutenant from earlier in the way her godmother could make herself go perfectly silent, her face open, waiting. It invited further conversation. Shared confidences. Spilled secrets.

FDR knew what he was about when he sent Daisy Harriman here as his emissary.

"He's gone missing," Cleo continued, swallowing back the lump choking off her breath. "I came to ask your help to find him. Please."

Aunt Daisy maintained a careful watchfulness over her plate of roast chicken and potatoes. Still keeping quiet. If it was supposed to ease Cleo's nerves, it was doing just the opposite. Daisy bent and retrieved her napkin, settling it back on her lap. She sipped at her glass of wine. There was an intensity in her eyes, as if she was running through a mental list. At last, she cleared her throat. "Impossible."