The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “So sorry, Grady.” She reached across the empty space between them for his hand. Sorry for you was what she meant, but she didn’t say that.

He took her other hand then, and they sat, linked across the widening emptiness, two continents pulling apart, while the April twilight deepened outside the window and a mourning dove called sadly out of the shadows of the sycamore tree in the corner of Lizzy’s front yard.

And then Grady dropped her hands. He stood and kissed her gently on the forehead and left.

He didn’t say good-bye.





SIX


Twyla Sue Spreads the News

Tuesday, April 11



The announcement of Grady Alexander’s impending marriage sped around Darling as fast as a wildfire on a hot, windy day. And as might have been expected, Grady’s mother stayed indoors with the blinds down and a cold compress on her forehead, refusing to speak of the wedding even to friends. Liz’s mother had nothing to say, either. She wasn’t answering the telephone.

Since the bride-to-be lived more than twenty miles away, the news would not ordinarily have traveled through Darling with such an incendiary rapidity. But it happened that Sandra Mann’s uncle, Archie Mann, owned and operated Mann’s Mercantile, on the Darling courthouse square. Her aunt by marriage, Twyla Sue Mann, was a prominent Darling resident. Twyla Sue was understandably proud of Sandra for landing as fine a catch as Grady Alexander, even if it was a have-to case, which of course she didn’t mention when she announced the wedding to her many friends. They would have guessed, though. Brides-to-be preferred to leave at least three months of daylight between the engagement and the wedding, just so people wouldn’t draw the wrong conclusion. Regardless of the cause, a hastily scheduled ceremony always got folks’ attention.

Beulah Trivette, owner of the Beauty Bower, heard the surprising news when Twyla Sue arrived on Tuesday morning for her regular shampoo and set. She was a stout lady with several chins, thinning hair, and a large brown mole beside her nose—one of Beulah’s more daunting challenges in the beauty department. She was lying back in the shampoo chair with her feet up on a stool and her head in the shampoo sink when she dropped the bombshell.

Astonished, Beulah stopped right in the middle of a vigorous shampoo massage. “Grady Alexander?” She wasn’t sure she had heard right. “Your niece is marrying Grady Alexander?”

“Archie’s niece,” Twyla Sue corrected primly, in her chirpy voice. “She may be a Mann, but she’s a beauty. You know the old saying. Girls are like peony plants—you can tell from the time they’re little whether they’re going to bloom or not. Sandra’s one of the bloomers, I’ve got to say—even if she ain’t but my niece by marriage.”

Bettina Higgens, Beulah’s beauty associate, had just finishing shampooing Leona Ruth Adcock in the neighboring sink and was about to wrap her head in a towel. She turned sharply to stare at Twyla Sue. “You say she’s marrying Grady Alexander? But what about—”

Bettina realized that Mrs. Adcock was all ears and bit back the question, but not quite in time.

“Grady Alexander is gettin’ married?” Mrs. Adcock sat bolt upright, her gray hair hanging down like a wet floor mop. “But what about Liz Lacy? Why, her and Grady have been on the brink of gettin’ married for three or four years, according to their mamas.”

Beulah’s heart sank. Leona Ruth was the biggest gossip in all of Darling. This juicy bit of information, true or not, would be the talk of the entire town by sunset. Liz would hear it and—