The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

“Whatever you say,” Ima Gail said. “Talk to you tomorrow, Verna.”


Verna unplugged and took off her headset, feeling that—if nothing else—she had gotten the ball rolling. She was getting up from her chair when Rona Jean looked up and said, tentatively, “You were asking about Mr. Duffy?”

Verna sat back down. “I thought you were too busy to listen.”

Rona Jean, a thin, plain-faced girl in her early twenties, pushed her straggly brown hair out of her eyes. “I wasn’t listening,” she protested. “I mean, I wasn’t trying to listen. But you’re sitting right next to me. I couldn’t help but overhear it when you actually spelled his name.”

“Okay.” Verna gave up. “So what about it?”

“Well, I was just sort of . . . um, wondering. I mean, you know I live at Mrs. Brewster’s?”

Verna hadn’t known, but she wasn’t surprised. There were only two places in Darling where unattached females could board—that is, unless they were wealthy enough to take a room at the Old Alabama Hotel. One was Bessie Bloodworth’s Magnolia Manor, next door to the Dahlias’ clubhouse. Bessie catered to congenial widows and spinsters of a certain age who liked to play mah-jongg or sit out on the Manor’s front porch in the evenings, listening to the radio, with glasses of cold lemonade and their knitting.

The other option for ladies was Mrs. Brewster’s, over on West Plum. That’s where the young working women—the two first-year schoolteachers and Miss O’Conner, the home demonstration agent—boarded. Mrs. Brewster, who wore long-sleeved black dresses with a ruffle of white lace around her throat and wrists, liked to promise the parents of her young ladies that she would act in loco parentis. This was supposed to mean that she would be just as strict as they were, although in most cases, her young ladies decided that she was twice as strict, and found another place to live as soon as they could.

“Living at Mrs. Brewster’s can’t be much fun,” Verna said sympathetically.

“It’s what I can afford,” Rona Jean said with a shrug. “I don’t go out at night much anyway, and I don’t have a boyfriend. But you were asking on the phone about”—she broke off and lowered her voice—“Mr. Duffy.” She gave Verna a meaningful look. “His personal life.”

Verna’s skin prickled. What could Rona Jean Hancock possibly know about Alvin Duffy? He surely hadn’t approached her, had he? Why, she couldn’t be more than twenty-one!

“What about his personal life?” she asked.

“Miss Champaign is sweet on him,” Rona Jean said, with the excited air of someone who is holding on to a tantalizing secret. “You know—the lady who has the hat shop. She just got back from Atlanta a couple of weeks ago.”

Verna knew that, of course, although she hadn’t seen Fannie since her return. She had no idea that Fannie even knew Alvin Duffy, let alone—

“Sweet on Mr. Duffy?” she asked skeptically.

Rona Jean nodded. “I don’t think it’s mutual, though. Because of the way he acted. And because of what Miss Champaign did afterward.”

“Wait a minute, Rona Jean. How do you know all this?”

“Because Miss Champaign wanted him to kiss her when he brought her home from the movie on Saturday night. But he only shook her hand and tipped his hat. Then I heard her crying in her room.”

“In her room?” Verna asked, feeling confused. “You mean, she’s boarding at Mrs. Brewster’s? But Fannie—Miss Champaign has an apartment over her hat shop!”

“She did,” Rona Jean amended. “While she was staying in Atlanta, she rented her apartment to Miss Richards, the supervisor over at the Academy. Miss Richards has the apartment until June, when the school year is over. Meanwhile, Miss Champaign is boarding at Mrs. Brewster’s.”