The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

This jealousy thing was on her mind because the previous Friday, she’d run into Alice Ann Walker at the post office, and Alice Ann had told her that her husband, Arnold, had seen Grady driving around with a girl from Monroeville. The girl was blond and very pretty, Arnold had said. And young, barely twenty.

“Just thought you should know,” Alice Ann said sympathetically, and reached out to squeeze her hand.

Now, the thought of another girl riding around in Grady’s Ford was troubling, and Lizzy pushed it away. Rumbling his anticipatory purr, Daffodil was rubbing against her ankles. “Come on, Daffy,” she said, and scooped him up. “Let’s get your supper.”

As she went down the hall, Lizzy savored the quiet space—a space that was all hers. On the left, polished wooden stairs led up to the two upstairs bedrooms. On the right, a wide doorway opened into the parlor, with its small Mission-style leather sofa, a used armchair that she had reupholstered in brown corduroy, a Tiffany-style stained-glass lamp, and several bookshelves lined with books. Behind the parlor was the kitchen with its dining nook and the window that looked out into the garden. At the end of the hall, the bathroom (converted from a storage room) held a claw-footed tub, a tiny sink, a pull-chain toilet, and newly tiled floor. It was the most perfect house in the world, Lizzy felt, a perfectly private place, a sanctuary from all the dark things that were going on around it.

She put down a dish of cooked chopped beef liver for Daffy and fixed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk for herself. Then she ran upstairs and took her pretty blue silk crepe dress—Grady’s favorite—out of the closet, the one with the ruffled cape sleeves and the shiny blue belt. In front of her vanity mirror, she brushed out her golden brown curls and fastened them back with a pair of blue barrettes, then added a smudge of rouge to her cheeks and some glossy pink lipstick to her lips. She smiled at herself, thinking that for someone who was past her thirtieth birthday, she looked . . . well, young. Not as young as that girl in Grady’s car, maybe, but not nearly old enough to be an old maid.

She heard Grady’s knock and ran down the stairs to open the door. He was wearing his usual date-night clothes, a white shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled above the elbows, showing tanned, strong arms; dark twill wash pants; and a brown felt fedora tipped to the back of his head. His brown hair was rumpled, as usual, and a little long on the back of his neck.

But he wasn’t wearing his usual rakish, devil-may-care grin. Instead, he had what Lizzy thought of as that “Grady look” on his face, the intent, frowning expression he wore when he was thinking of something serious.

And he didn’t tilt his head and say, “Hey, doll, ready to rumble?” the way he usually did. Instead, he pulled off his hat and said, “May I come in, Liz? I need to talk to you.”

“Sure,” Lizzy said, stepping back to let him in. “But hadn’t we better be going?” Monroeville was fifteen miles away, and Grady always insisted that they get to the theater in time to get their buttered popcorn and Cokes and find exactly the right seats before the newsreel began.

Grady didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped into the little parlor and gestured toward Lizzy’s corduroy-covered chair. “Have a seat,” he said, and sat down on the sofa, hunching forward, elbows on his knees.

Lizzy perched on the edge of the chair. “I don’t understand,” she said, uncertain. “Is something wrong? Why are we—”

“Because we are,” he said huskily. He looked at her with the oddest look, his eyes lingering on her blue dress, her hair, her face. It was a hungry look, as if he were storing away the memory against a famine.