Free Marrying Daisy Bellamy by Susan Wiggs

news, to really have a chance to talk to her, but now was not the time. Likely the same thought had occurred to her;she was doing that thing she sometimes did, lifting her camera up, like a shield between her and the world.
    â€œShe’s a famous photographer,” Connor told Uncle Claude as she crouched down for a shot of a manicured campus garden with Remy and Mimi in the background.
    â€œGet out,” said Daisy, her face flushed. “I’m not famous.”
    â€œShe’s a professional,” Julian explained, happy to contradict her. “She’s one of the youngest photographers ever to be published in the New York Times .”
    â€œYour work was in the New York Times? ” Julian’s mom perked up. Anything having to do with fame and image generally intrigued her.
    â€œIt was one assignment,” she said. “I had a lucky break involving a local baseball player.”
    â€œEverybody starts somewhere,” his mom said. “I’d love to see the pictures.”
    â€œYou’re going to love this even more.” Daisy positioned Julian and his mom side by side, with Cornell’s clock tower behind them. “The light’s really pretty here.”
    Starr glanced back at the tower. “Looks like the set of a sniper movie I was in a few years ago. The shooter was up on the ledge surrounding the clock, and we had to figure out a way to escape.”
    â€œAnd did you?” Julian asked.
    â€œYep. As I recall, I set something on fire and created a smoke screen. Who knows, now that you’re going to be a hotshot in the air force, you’ll be doing things like that for real.” She turned her gaze up to Julian, and he recognized a rare flash of pride in her regard. His mom knew so little about his life. In a way, that saddened him, but in another way, it was very liberating. She never had any expectations for him to live up to, so he had no trouble exceeding them.
    â€œHas anyone ever mentioned you look like Heidi Klum?” Daisy asked.
    Julian could feel his mom’s gratification in her posture. “You think?”
    â€œSure.” Daisy took several shots.
    â€œI like this girl,” said Julian’s mom. “Where’d you find her?”
    His eyes met Daisy’s, and he read the question there. No, he’d never explained Daisy to his mother. In the first place, Starr was too self-absorbed to actually care. And in the second place, his relationship with Daisy often seemed to defy explanation.
    Since Starr had asked him a direct question, he went with the digest version. “We met the summer before our senior year of high school. Remember, the summer I spent at Willow Lake.”
    Looking back, Julian now realized he’d been saved in more ways than one that summer. Camp Kioga and the Bellamys had been a revelation to Julian. He met not just Daisy, but a whole group of people who were nothing like the cholos he hung out with in his industrial town east of L.A. The people he’d met that summer saw life as filled with promise, not a dead end, even for a kid like him. He simply had to pick his path and do what he needed to do in order to get where he wanted to be. Despite its simplicity, this was a concept that had not occurred to him before.
    â€œYou’ve been together since high school and you never told me?” his mother chided him.
    â€œUm…” Daisy looked uncomfortable and lifted up her camera again.
    â€œMom, check it out.” With perfect timing, Connor interrupted, pushing the baby stroller into her path. “Zoe just woke up, and she’s ready to see her grandma.”
    The little two-year-old eyed her glamorous grandmother with cautious interest. Absorbed with her life in L.A., Starr had only seen the tot one other time, soon after Zoe was born.
    â€œOf course she wants to.” Starr clasped her hands, beaming at the pretty, yellow-haired child. “But ‘grandma’ sounds