But this was different, Lizzy thought excitedly. A story about Lorelei LaMotte, famous Broadway performer, would give her a chance to do some serious writing about a woman who surely had a fascinating personal history of success in a difficult profession, with a few intrigues and adventures here and there. It would definitely be a literary challenge, which was just what she had been looking for.
For years Lizzy had read everything—good, bad, and indifferent—that she could get her hands on. She kept a notebook, writing little stories about people she knew and places that captured her attention and events that took place here in town. And even though nothing very big or exciting ever happened in Darling, there were always lots of little things going on, surprising crises that poked up unexpectedly out of the serene surface of the day like . . . well, like those lilies, those naked ladies shooting suddenly up out of the grass when you had absolutely no idea they were there and dazzling you with their astonishing blooms. They weren’t the kinds of stories you’d read in the newspaper, which was usually full of facts and figures, but Lizzy enjoyed writing them.
But while Lizzy was a small-town girl who knew she could comfortably write about Miss LaMotte’s small-town beginnings, she couldn’t even begin to imagine the life of a vaudeville performer. She would have to do a huge amount of research—talk to Miss LaMotte at length and maybe Miss Lake, and read entertainment magazines like Variety and Billboard—before she could even think of writing anything. She frowned. But if she couldn’t imagine Miss LaMotte’s life, maybe she’d never be able to write about it, no matter how much research she did. It’s hard to write about something that is entirely foreign to you.
Occupied with these thoughts, Lizzy had crossed Dauphin and Franklin and reached her block of Jefferson Davis. She was home almost before she knew it, walking up the steps to the front porch, putting her key into the lock and turning it, with the special happiness that she felt every time she stepped through the green-painted front door and into the tiny front hall, which was just big enough for a single shelf, an oval wall-hung mirror, and a row of coat hooks, where she now hung her floppy-brimmed hat.
Home. The word had taken on a new and very special meaning a couple of years before. Until then, Lizzy had lived her whole life with her mother. Her father had died when she was a baby, leaving his widow a nice little cache of money, safely and prudently invested. It wasn’t enough to allow her mother to live an extravagant life, but it was certainly enough to keep her from working or worrying her pretty head about anything of any consequence. This fiscal consideration had allowed Mrs. Lacy to focus every bit of her attention, energy, and concern on Elizabeth, her only child. She loved sewing and hat-making, and she dressed her daughter in her beautiful creations: ruffled and embroidered dresses and hats piled with ribbons and silk flowers.
Her mother’s attentions had not bothered Lizzy so much when she was a little girl, but as she grew older, the fuss over what she wore and how she fixed her hair turned to a constant, quarrelsome nagging. It was “Elizabeth, if you keep on frowning, your forehead will be permanently wrinkled!” and “Elizabeth, stop chewing your nails this instant! Your hands are a scandal!” and “Elizabeth, I simply will not allow you to bob your hair!” And every time Lizzy turned around, her mother had made her another new hat—or redecorated an old one—and insisted that she wear it.
The only way she could escape was to close the door to her room and write in her journal or read, for Mrs. Lacy couldn’t follow her into the pages of The Railway Children (who were blessed with a very agreeable mother) or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Huck had no mother at all). The trouble with writing in her journal, of course, was that Lizzy was writing about the secret places of her own inner life, and she could never be sure that—no matter how carefully she hid her work—her mother hadn’t found and read it. Lizzy was under no illusions. Her mother was that kind of mother.
Sometime during her last year of high school, Lizzy realized that she was never going to have a life of her own if she didn’t find a way to escape. Unfortunately, there weren’t that many options. The Lacys were well enough off to live comfortably in the house Mr. Lacy had left them, but not so well off (at least, that’s what her mother said) that Lizzy could go away to college. There hadn’t been any available jobs in town at the time, and the thought of leaving Darling for some unknown city was so daunting that Lizzy (more timid then than she was now) couldn’t even think it.
The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies
Susan Wittig Albert's books
- The Face of a Stranger
- The Silent Cry
- The Sins of the Wolf
- The Dark Assassin
- The Whitechapel Conspiracy
- The Sheen of the Silk
- The Twisted Root
- The Lost Symbol
- After the Funeral
- The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
- After the Darkness
- The Best Laid Plans
- The Doomsday Conspiracy
- The Naked Face
- The Other Side of Me
- The Sands of Time
- The Sky Is Falling
- The Stars Shine Down
- The Lying Game #6: Seven Minutes in Heaven
- The First Lie
- All the Things We Didn't Say
- The Good Girls
- The Heiresses
- The Perfectionists
- The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
- The Lies That Bind
- Ripped From the Pages
- The Book Stops Here
- The New Neighbor
- A Cry in the Night
- The Phoenix Encounter
- The Dead Will Tell: A Kate Burkholder Novel
- The Perfect Victim
- Fear the Worst: A Thriller
- The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct
- The Fixer
- The Good Girl
- Cut to the Bone: A Body Farm Novel
- The Devil's Bones
- The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5
- The Bone Yard
- The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel
- The Inquisitor's Key
- The Girl in the Woods
- The Dead Room
- The Death Dealer
- The Silenced
- The Hexed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Night Is Alive
- The Night Is Forever
- The Night Is Watching
- In the Dark
- The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Cursed
- The Dead Play On
- The Forgotten (Krewe of Hunters)
- Under the Gun
- The Paris Architect: A Novel
- The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush
- Always the Vampire
- The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose
- The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree
- The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star
- The Doll's House
- The Garden of Darkness
- The Creeping
- The Killing Hour
- The Long Way Home
- Defend and Betray
- Madonna and Corpse
- Bone Island 01 - Ghost Shadow
- Bone Island 02 - Ghost Night
- Bone Island 03 - Ghost Moon
- Last Vampire Standing