The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

Lucy leaned forward, her face intent. “Don’t you believe everything that man tells you, Ophelia Snow. Girls have every bit as much right to a college education as boys do. Every woman ought to have a shot at independence. At freedom.” Her voice was low and fierce, and there was a kind of longing in it that Ophelia had never heard before.

“Freedom?” Ophelia asked uneasily. “What kind of freedom?”

Lucy came from Atlanta, so she had a somewhat different view of the world than women who had lived in Darling all their lives. She was different in other ways, too. She said what she thought and felt without holding back, and she was . . . well, romantic. Ralph had complained once that she wore her heart on her sleeve where it could get knocked around and hurt, and Ophelia thought that was probably true. It might also account for some of the gossip about her.

Lucy bit her lip, as if she wished she could bite back what she had said. And when she spoke, she didn’t quite answer Ophelia’s question.

“I just mean . . . well, things are getting better now. There’s finally some hope, when we’ve all been feeling hopeless for so long.” She took a breath. “You don’t want Sarah stuck in Darling for her whole entire life, do you? She ought to get a college degree so she can get a decent job if she wants one, or a career. So she can go places and do things. And doesn’t have to depend on a husband to support her.”

That last sentence startled Ophelia, and she suddenly saw what Lucy was driving at. She shifted uncomfortably. She was holding down two jobs and helping to support the family, and she thought of herself as a modern mother—modern enough, anyway, to buy that red swimsuit for Sarah, even if she didn’t dare put on a pair of slacks.

But she hadn’t given a lot of thought to Sarah’s future. She had assumed, more or less unconsciously, that her daughter would get married, settle down right here in Darling, and start having babies. Ophelia had always wanted lots of grandbabies to hold in her lap. To croon to and cuddle. And that’s what girls wanted, too, wasn’t it?

But maybe she ought to think beyond that, for Sarah. For the sake of Sarah’s future. Maybe college—

Lucy drew back. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m probably way out of line. Sometimes I wish I could have done it differently myself, that’s all.” She sighed and waggled a hand, resigned. “Well, you know, Opie. Water under the bridge. We can’t have everything we want out of life. And maybe I’m just depressed, thinking about what happened to Rona Jean. It seems so awful, dying like that, so young. She never had a chance to see the world or go to college or anything. Just think of all she’s missed.”

Ophelia studied Lucy’s face sympathetically. Lucy didn’t have many friends, even among the Dahlias, because she lived outside of town. But since Ralph was Jed’s cousin, she and Lucy had occasionally talked, and she knew it wasn’t the first time Lucy had felt stuck in her marriage. But people in Darling always said that when you’ve made your bed, you have to lie in it. That was what most folks did, as best they could, even though they might not like it. Not all of it, anyway, and not always. The thing about Lucy, though—the thing that made her different from everybody else—was that she didn’t pretend to like it.

“I appreciate what you were saying about Sarah and college,” Ophelia said quietly. “I’ll start thinking about it and see if I can’t put a little more in the cookie jar, without telling Jed. Then when the time comes, maybe Sarah will have an option.”

That made her feel . . . well, disloyal, like buying their daughter a bathing suit she knew Jed wouldn’t like, only more so. College was a bigger, more consequential thing than the bathing suit, but either way, she was going against his wishes. Still, she ought to be thinking of what was best for Sarah, which probably wasn’t what Sarah’s father—or her mother, for that matter—might like.