“You don’t have to.” Lizzy took a deep breath and stood up. “It’s all been said. There’s nothing more to say.” She dropped a quick kiss on her mother’s head and went to the porch steps. “Oh, by the way, I’m taking Sally-Lou out with me after supper.”

“Elizabeth!” Mrs. Lacy shrilled angrily. “You come back here this instant! I won’t have you talkin’ to me in that tone of—”

“Thank you, Mother. Have a good evening.” And with that, Lizzy went down the steps and across the street, and home, to her own dear little house, where Daffy was waiting on the porch railing, his ears glinting golden in the afternoon sunlight.

She picked him up and buried her face in his soft fur, feeling the low rumble of his purr vibrating against her cheek.

All grown-up. Was she?

She hoped so.

TWENTY - The Dahlias Score

TWENTY

The Dahlias Score

Bessie left Miss Jamison on the front porch and went across the street to Magnolia Manor. She had several things to do to get ready for tonight’s card party. But she was still shaken by what Miss Hamer had told her, and she couldn’t get it out of her mind. Her own father had paid Harold to go away? He had told Harold’s sister what he was going to do, had even bragged about it?

At first she refused to believe it. It was just another of the old woman’s crazy stories, an explanation that satisfied her because it absolved her of responsibility. But after a little while—after Bessie had mixed up a batch of her mother’s favorite lemon chess squares for tonight’s card party and put the crust in the oven, then poured herself some cold tea and taken it outside to the shade of the willow tree—she began to think that it was possible. And after a little while longer, that it was probable. And then that it was likely.

The part that she didn’t understand, though, was the business about her father actually paying Harold. For as long as Bessie had known him, her father had been a miserly skinflint who paid his employees not one penny more than he had to and doled out the housekeeping allowance as if it were the crown jewels. She just couldn’t imagine that he would offer a large amount of money to anybody, for any purpose, under any conditions. And how much would it have taken to tempt Harold to leave Darling and go into what amounted to a lifelong exile? Fifty dollars? A hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?