The late afternoon breeze lifted the willow leaves over her head and Bessie sighed, remembering Harold’s gentle smile, his beckoning glance, his young man’s eager hunger for her young woman’s willing body. She shook her head in disbelief. Miss Hamer was right. Harold had been proud and stubborn—and passionate. Bessie couldn’t imagine that he would willingly abandon her—the girl she had been then—for anything less than a king’s ransom. And she certainly couldn’t imagine her scrooge of a father forking over more than a few dollars for what was at bottom an uncertainty. There wouldn’t have been anything to keep Harold from taking the money, leaving for a few days, and then coming back.

A blue dragonfly, its transparent wings quivering, dropped onto a blade of grass at Bessie’s feet and she sat very still, watching it. Her father had been a volatile, temperamental man who was given to explosive outbursts. If Harold had refused his offer, had stood up to him and announced that he and Bessie were getting their rings and meant to be married whether he wanted to or not, he might have—

“Bessie!” It was Maxine, shouting from the back screen door. “What have you got in the oven? Smells like it might be scorching!”

Bessie jumped up and flew into the kitchen. After she rescued her crust and added the lemon filling, Leticia and Roseanne came in to start supper. They planned to eat early, because Leticia, Maxine, and Mrs. Sedalius were all going to a baby shower for Maxine’s granddaughter. Then Miss Rogers came in, asking Bessie’s advice on a dress pattern she was sewing. There was so much commotion that she could not pursue the unbearably ugly thought she had broken off when the cookies began to scorch.

It was just as well.

She didn’t want to think it. She didn’t dare.

The Dahlias’ Monday evening card party—they almost always played hearts—was open to all the club members, but only seven or eight usually came. Voleen Johnson, Miss Rogers, and several others never played cards, while Aunt Hetty Little played only poker. Mildred Kilgore often played hearts, but she had phoned to say that she and Mr. Kilgore had been asked out to supper at the country club. Alice Ann Walker and Lucy Murphy, also regulars at the card party, had gone to a meeting of the quilting club. Myra May had to work the switchboard. So it would be just one table of four: Bessie, Verna, Lizzy, and Ophelia. And since the Magnolia Ladies were all otherwise occupied tonight, they could set up their game in the parlor.