Lizzy folded her arms. “Try me,” she said icily.

In the end, Mrs. Lacy surrendered the key.

SIX

The Dahlias in Full Bloom

The Dahlias met at their clubhouse at two in the afternoon on the second Sunday of every month. During nice weather, there were usually several absences, since moms and dads liked to pile the kids into their Fords or DeSotos or Chryslers on Sunday afternoons and drive out to visit their kinfolk. But when Lizzy called the meeting to order, she saw that everybody was present except Myra May, who was working Violet’s shift on the switchboard. Lizzy suspected that the rest of the Dahlias might have shown up out of self-defense. They knew the club would be discussing the talent show. If they missed the meeting, they’d likely find themselves appointed in absentia to chair a committee.

Lizzy never handled angry encounters very well, and the scene with her mother had been so nerve-wracking that she was still shaking when she called the meeting to order. But she pushed the awfulness to the back of her mind and focused as intently as she could on the business at hand. After Ophelia’s minutes and Verna’s treasurer’s report were approved, she called on Miss Rogers to present the program, then sat down next to Verna.

Miss Rogers, still wearing her Sunday-go-to-meeting navy faille dress and narrow-brimmed baku braid hat, read a paper she had submitted to the Southern Regional Garden Club Newsletter. It was all about late-season flowering shrubs that ought to do well in the Gulf Coast’s hot, humid climate, especially the Holly tea olive (Osmanthus heterophyllus), senna (Cassia corymbosa ), and sasanqua camellia (Camellia sasanqua). She spelled out the Latin names not just once but twice, so that people who were taking notes could get them right. The reading went on a little long and when she was finished, her audience rewarded the conclusion by clapping—those who were still awake, that is. The scattered applause woke the others up and they sat up straight in their chairs, pretending that they had just been resting their eyes.

The next item was a little livelier. Bessie Bloodworth reported on the garden jobs they could check off the club’s to-do list and the things that still needed to be done before the first freeze. Bessie took names for the work days. Lizzy was happy to see that everybody volunteered—all but Mrs. Johnson, who regretted that she was expecting company from out of town.

Then Aunt Hetty Little (everybody called her Aunt Hetty because she was near kin to almost everybody in town) gave a report on the repair work on the clubhouse, paid for out of the Treasure Fund.

“Donny Lee Arnett charged us seventeen dollars and fifty-two cents to fix the leaks in the roof,” she said, “and it cost us four dollars and seventy-five cents for Raby Ryan to repair the front and back steps so we don’t all sprain our ankles.”