The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

With that incentive, all the Dahlias were eager to pitch in and help. All, that is, except for Voleen Johnson, wife of the town’s banker. Mrs. Johnson didn’t like to get dirt under her manicured fingernails. She did agree, however, to take money at the Saturday market, although she wore her fanciest hat and a pair of dainty white gloves to keep the dirty coins and bills from soiling her hands.

“Hard work and hot work,” Ophelia put in cheerfully. “Wonder if it’s going to be like this all summer. I swear, it must have been ten degrees above normal all this week.” She got up from the table and turned on the small electric fan, aiming the cooling breeze at the group around the table. “If it gets any hotter, I’m going to have to sit down at the Singer and run up a couple of cotton sundresses for Sarah. Mrs. Snow gave me some material for them.” She gave her head a rueful shake. “That girl is growing faster’n a weed. Seems like I’m always letting her hems down another inch.”

Ophelia was one of the younger Dahlias. She and Jed Snow (the mayor of Darling and the owner of Snow’s Farm Supply) had two children: Sam, a boisterous fourteen, and Sarah, just eleven but taller than her mother. A dedicated mother and a talented seamstress, Ophelia made their clothes instead of buying them at Mann’s Mercantile, which saved quite a lot. She was also raising chickens so she could sell eggs at the Saturday market. Of course, Mrs. Hancock, at Hancock’s Groceries, would buy the eggs, but Ophelia could earn more by selling them herself. Lizzy knew that every penny counted for the Snows right now, because business at the Farm Supply was falling off, and what trade there was, was mostly on credit. The farmers didn’t have much cash money for seed and fertilizer and none at all for new equipment, which meant that it was lean times for the Snows—and for all the merchants who depended on the farmers’ trade.

Verna Tidwell tilted her glass and drank. “Normal,” she muttered darkly, pouncing on Ophelia’s word. “These days, I wonder what normal is. I’m not sure anybody knows. And I’m not talking about the temperature, either.”

Unlike Ophelia, who had a reputation for smiling through even the most calamitous events, Verna had a much darker view of human nature. She had a habit of peering “under the rocks,” as she put it, on the lookout for anything suspicious. Her prickly skepticism put some people off—but not Lizzy, who admired her friend’s sharp eyes and even sharper mind. Verna ably employed her talents as manager of the Cypress County probate clerk and treasurer’s office, in the county courthouse. That’s where she heard the whispers about who was doing this or that or the other bad thing and what was going to happen when word of these misdeeds got to the wrong (or the right) person.

And since Verna never expected to find anybody behaving any better than anybody else, she was never disappointed or distressed when she discovered that so-and-so had lied about his property boundaries or siphoned twenty gallons of fuel oil out of the tank behind the county road maintenance building or was operating a whiskey still over on Shiner’s Knob.

“Comes with the territory,” she always said in a matter-of-fact sort of way. “If you don’t want to smell folks’ dirty laundry, you should stay out of the probate clerk’s office. That’s where it all hangs out.”

But in the past couple of weeks, Lizzy had noticed that Verna’s expression was darker than usual, and more frowning. She was unusually silent, too, and there were fewer barbed remarks. Something was troubling Verna, and Lizzy could guess what it was. In the law firm of Moseley and Moseley where she worked, she often picked up bits of courthouse gossip. She’d heard that there was some sort of trouble—serious trouble—with the county treasurer’s accounts. But while Verna usually shared her personal life with Lizzy, she was always closemouthed about things that went on at the office. So Lizzy didn’t ask what was going on. If Verna felt the need to talk, she’d do it—in her own sweet time.

Now, as if to endorse Verna’s dark view of normal, there was a flash of lightning and an almost instantaneous clap of thunder so loud that it rattled the windows in the old house. All four of the Dahlias jumped.

“Sakes alive,” Bessie exclaimed. “That one was too close for comfort. Wonder if it struck somewhere here in town.” She shook her head. “One year, I remember, the Free Will Baptist Church was struck by lightning. Burned right down to the ground while the preacher and his flock were having a baptizing in the river. When they got back, there was nothing left but ashes.”

Lizzy chuckled. This was the kind of story that Bessie always came up with. She knew more local history than anybody.

“It’ll be over soon,” Ophelia reassured them. “Give it fifteen minutes and the sun will be shining again. That’s what normally happens around here.”