The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

“You don’t have to.” Lizzy took a deep breath and stood up. “It’s all been said. There’s nothing more to say.” She dropped a quick kiss on her mother’s head and went to the porch steps. “Oh, by the way, I’m taking Sally-Lou out with me after supper.”


“Elizabeth!” Mrs. Lacy shrilled angrily. “You come back here this instant! I won’t have you talkin’ to me in that tone of—”

“Thank you, Mother. Have a good evening.” And with that, Lizzy went down the steps and across the street, and home, to her own dear little house, where Daffy was waiting on the porch railing, his ears glinting golden in the afternoon sunlight.

She picked him up and buried her face in his soft fur, feeling the low rumble of his purr vibrating against her cheek.

All grown-up. Was she?

She hoped so.





TWENTY





The Dahlias Score


Bessie left Miss Jamison on the front porch and went across the street to Magnolia Manor. She had several things to do to get ready for tonight’s card party. But she was still shaken by what Miss Hamer had told her, and she couldn’t get it out of her mind. Her own father had paid Harold to go away? He had told Harold’s sister what he was going to do, had even bragged about it?

At first she refused to believe it. It was just another of the old woman’s crazy stories, an explanation that satisfied her because it absolved her of responsibility. But after a little while—after Bessie had mixed up a batch of her mother’s favorite lemon chess squares for tonight’s card party and put the crust in the oven, then poured herself some cold tea and taken it outside to the shade of the willow tree—she began to think that it was possible. And after a little while longer, that it was probable. And then that it was likely.

The part that she didn’t understand, though, was the business about her father actually paying Harold. For as long as Bessie had known him, her father had been a miserly skinflint who paid his employees not one penny more than he had to and doled out the housekeeping allowance as if it were the crown jewels. She just couldn’t imagine that he would offer a large amount of money to anybody, for any purpose, under any conditions. And how much would it have taken to tempt Harold to leave Darling and go into what amounted to a lifelong exile? Fifty dollars? A hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?

The late afternoon breeze lifted the willow leaves over her head and Bessie sighed, remembering Harold’s gentle smile, his beckoning glance, his young man’s eager hunger for her young woman’s willing body. She shook her head in disbelief. Miss Hamer was right. Harold had been proud and stubborn—and passionate. Bessie couldn’t imagine that he would willingly abandon her—the girl she had been then—for anything less than a king’s ransom. And she certainly couldn’t imagine her scrooge of a father forking over more than a few dollars for what was at bottom an uncertainty. There wouldn’t have been anything to keep Harold from taking the money, leaving for a few days, and then coming back.

A blue dragonfly, its transparent wings quivering, dropped onto a blade of grass at Bessie’s feet and she sat very still, watching it. Her father had been a volatile, temperamental man who was given to explosive outbursts. If Harold had refused his offer, had stood up to him and announced that he and Bessie were getting their rings and meant to be married whether he wanted to or not, he might have— “Bessie!” It was Maxine, shouting from the back screen door. “What have you got in the oven? Smells like it might be scorching!”

Bessie jumped up and flew into the kitchen. After she rescued her crust and added the lemon filling, Leticia and Roseanne came in to start supper. They planned to eat early, because Leticia, Maxine, and Mrs. Sedalius were all going to a baby shower for Maxine’s granddaughter. Then Miss Rogers came in, asking Bessie’s advice on a dress pattern she was sewing. There was so much commotion that she could not pursue the unbearably ugly thought she had broken off when the cookies began to scorch.

It was just as well.

She didn’t want to think it. She didn’t dare.