The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

“I see.” Verna frowned. “Well, how do you know she wanted him to kiss her?”


“I’ve got eyes, haven’t I?” Rona Jean laughed shortly. “It was dark, but Mrs. Brewster always leaves the porch light on and they were standing by the gate where I could see them out of my window. She was leaning up against the fence and raising her face, the way they do in the movies. But he didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t kiss her. Just shook her hand and thanked her for a pleasant evening and said good night. She said something about maybe seeing him again, and he said that would be nice but you could tell—I mean, I could tell—that he wasn’t going to be beating a path to her door. That’s when she came upstairs and started crying. I wanted to go in and ask her if she needed something, water or something. But I didn’t think she’d want me to.”

The switchboard buzzer sounded and two lights began to blink at the same time.

“Oops!” Rona Jean said. “Gotta get back to work.”

Verna sat for a moment, thinking of Fannie, disappointed in love not just once (by Charlie Dickens) but twice (by Alvin Duffy), and counting her lucky stars that she had not been so foolish as to lose her heart to that insolent rascal.

Not Charlie Dickens, of course.

Alvin Duffy.





EIGHT


Lizzy Makes a New Start



After Grady left on Monday night, Lizzy had sat in the dark for a long time, curled up on her sofa, holding Daffy in her arms and wetting his orange fur with her tears. When she went to bed, she cried herself to sleep. And when she got up on Tuesday morning, her throat felt raw, her eyes were swollen, and she looked like a wreck. It would be better, she decided, if she didn’t go to work, especially since there wasn’t anything terribly crucial on her desk. So she called Mr. Moseley at home, saying that she had a little cold and wouldn’t be in.

But she must have sounded pretty terrible, because Mr. Moseley became so concerned that she found herself telling him the real reason she wasn’t coming to work—and taking a perverse pleasure in the unkind things he said about Grady.

Then, when she realized how she was feeling, she said, “Oh, please, stop! Please, Mr. Moseley. It wasn’t Grady’s fault. He—”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t his fault?” Mr. Moseley demanded gruffly. “He could have— He shouldn’t have—Oh, hell, you know what I mean, Liz. Of course it’s his fault! It’s always the man’s fault.”

Was it? Lizzy wondered. Always the man’s fault? But that wasn’t what she had meant, anyway. She had meant that sometimes things just happened, and nobody was to blame.

Mr. Moseley’s voice softened. “You take as much time as you need, Liz. I don’t want you to come back to work until you’re feeling better.”

“Thank you,” she said gratefully. “I’m sure I’ll be feeling better tomorrow. I can catch up then.”

“Don’t worry about catching up,” Mr. Moseley said. “Just concentrate on . . . well, feeling better.”

Lizzy hung up, thinking how lucky she was to have such a wonderful employer. She would take the whole day to get used to the idea that Grady was now permanently a part of her past. Tomorrow, she would face her future. But first—

But first, she should go across the street and tell her mother that Grady was getting married, before her mother found it out from someone else. She shivered when she thought about it. This wasn’t going to be easy. Her mother had her heart set on Grady’s becoming her son-in-law.