The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

“Well, I’m not surprised,” Bent said. “I told Mickey I didn’t think the judge would go for it, but he wanted me to ask. He’s really torn up about his little brother. He’s going to take this hard.” He paused. “Aren’t you going to go out and get yourself some lunch? I ran into Mrs. Tidwell going into the Dispatch office. You can probably catch her if you hurry.”


“I have a sandwich.” Liz hit the carriage return and kept on typing. “I thought I’d eat it here at my desk. I brought a library book that’s due back tomorrow and I want to finish it.”

Bent regarded her. This was unusual, since it was a pretty day, the sort of day on which Liz and her friends Verna and Alice Ann Walker usually ate out on the courthouse lawn. But if she was avoiding them, he couldn’t blame her. She probably didn’t want to risk seeing people who would have heard about the upcoming wedding and would regard her with curiosity and a pitying glance.

She hit the carriage return again, typed three more words, and stopped. “There. That’s done.” She rolled the paper out of the typewriter. “What about you, Mr. Moseley? Aren’t you going out to lunch?”

“I had a late breakfast with Ed McFadden at the Old Alabama this morning. I’ll get something after Charlie Dickens finishes interviewing Mr. Johnson. I’m meeting him there in”—he glanced at his watch—“twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

She added the typed page to the stack on the desk and squared the edges. “An interview?”

“We’ve got to do something to change the way this town is thinking about George Johnson. Yes, he’s made some mistakes with that bank. But he’s not the villain he’s being painted. Charlie’s agreed to write a story that may dispel some of the blame that people are slinging at him.”

She flipped the stack of pages. “Blame can be hard to dispel.” Her head was down, her voice muffled. He knew she wasn’t talking about George Johnson.

He took his tobacco pouch out of his pants pocket, then pulled a chair close to the desk and sat down. “Liz, I want you to know how sorry I am.” He busied himself with filling his pipe and tamping the tobacco. “About Grady Alexander, I mean. I would never in this world have imagined that he would do anything like—”

He broke off, covering his embarrassment by striking a match to his pipe and shaking it out. “I’m not saying this right. But I am sorry.”

And he was. He couldn’t understand why any man could fool around with another woman when somebody like Elizabeth Lacy cared for him. Grady Alexander might be a very smart guy—he was, after all, the county ag agent, so he’d been to college. But he obviously didn’t have a lick of sense.

For her part, Lizzy was embarrassed as well, and she felt the color climbing into her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said, wishing she could change the subject but not sure how. To give herself something to do, she opened her desk drawer and took out the paper bag she had brought to work. Her sandwich was in it—peanut butter and grape jelly—and a couple of cookies left from the Dahlias’ party the night before. She got up and took the pot of coffee from the hot plate on the shelf behind her desk.

“Would you like a cup?” she asked, holding up the pot.

“Sure. Pour one for me.” He shifted in his seat. “Look, I don’t quite know how to put this to you, so I’ll just come straight out with it, Liz. A lawyer friend of mine up in Montgomery—Jeremy Jackman—is looking for someone competent to fill in for the next couple of months, while his office assistant is out having surgery. I spoke to him about you, Liz. You would be perfect for the job, since you’d be doing pretty much what you do here, for me. He’s ready to make you an offer.”

Perfect for the job? Lizzy looked up, startled. Mr. Moseley was suggesting that she leave Darling and take a job in Montgomery?