not even his legal guardian. I'm an ex-con he picked up in a gas station rest room, and he's been pretty much taking care of me, instead of the other way around."
"Nevertheless," she said, "you're an adult and he is still a minor."
Gradually Dallie's intelligence won out over his sullen-ness, although later he would insist she had just worn him down with all her dirty books. She talked him back into school, moved him into her college-bound class, and tutored him whenever he wasn't playing golf. Thanks to her efforts, he
graduated with honors at age eighteen and was accepted at four different colleges.
After he left for Texas A &M, she missed him dreadfully, although he and Skeet continued to make Wynette their home base and he came to see her during vacations when he wasn't playing golf. Gradually, however, his responsibilities took him farther away for longer stretches of time. Once they didn't see each other for nearly a year. In her dazed state, she had barely recognized him the night he found her sitting in the thunderstorm on the curb at Main and Elwood wearing her nightgown.
Francesca had somehow imagined Dallie living in a modem apartment built next to a golf course instead
of an old Victorian house with a central turret and pastel-painted gingerbread trim. She gazed at the windows of the house in disbelief as the Riviera turned the comer and slipped into a narrow gravel driveway. "Are those rabbits?"
"Two hundred fifty-six of them," Skeet said. "Fifty-seven if you count the one on the front door. Look, Dallie, that rainbow on the garage is new."
"She's going to break her fool neck one of these days climbing those ladders," Dallie grumbled. Then he turned to Francesca. "You mind your manners, now. I mean it, Francie. None of your fancy stuff."
He was talking to her as if she were a child instead of his lover, but before she could retaliate, the back door flew open and an incredible-looking old lady appeared. With her long gray ponytail flying behind her and a pair of reading glasses bobbing on the gold neck chain that hung over her daffodil yellow sweat suit, she rushed toward them, crying out, "Dallas! Oh, my, my! Skeet! My goodness!"
Dallie climbed out of the car and enveloped her small, thin body in a bear hug. Then Skeet grabbed her away to the accompaniment of another chorus of my-my's.
Francesca emerged from the back seat and looked on curiously. Dallie had said his mother was dead, so who was this? A grandmother? As far as she knew, he had no relatives except the woman named Holly Grace. Was this Holly Grace? Somehow Francesca doubted it. She'd gotten the impression Holly Grace was Dallie's sister. Besides, she couldn't envision this eccentric-looking old lady showing up at a motel with a Chevy dealer from Tulsa. The cat slipped from the back seat, looked around disdainfully with his one good eye, and disappeared under the back steps.
"And who is this, Dallas?" the woman inquired, turning to Francesca. "Please introduce me to your friend."
"This is Francie… Francesca," Dallie amended. "Old F. Scott would have loved her, Miss Sybil, so if
she gives you any trouble, let me know." Francesca darted him an angry glare, but he ignored her and continued his introduction. "Miss Sybil Chandler… Francesca Day."
Small brown eyes gazed at her, and Francesca suddenly felt as if her soul was being examined. "How
do you do?" she replied, barely able to keep herself from squirming. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
Miss Sybil beamed at the sound of her accent, then extended her hand for a hearty shake. "Francesca, you're British! What a delightful surprise. Pay no attention to Dallas. He can charm the dead, of course, but he's a complete scoundrel. Do you read Fitzgerald?"
Francesca had seen the movie of The Great Gatsby, but she suspected that wouldn't count. "I'm afraid not," she said. "I don't read much."
Miss Sybil gave a disapproving cluck. "Well, we'll soon fix that, won't we? Bring the suitcases inside, boys. Dallas, are you chewing gum?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Please remove it along with your hat before you come inside."
Francesca giggled as the old woman disappeared through the back door.
Dallie flicked his gum into a hydrangea bush. "Just you wait," he said to Francesca ominously.
Skeet chuckled. "Looks like ol' Francie's gonna take some of the heat off us for a change."
Dallie smiled back. "You can almost see Miss Sybil rubbing her hands together just waiting to get at her." He looked at Francesca. "Did you mean it when you said you haven't read Fitzgerald?"
Francesca was beginning to feel as if she'd confessed to a series of mass murders. "It's not a crime, Dallie."
"It is around here." He chuckled maliciously. "Boy, are you ever in for it."
The house on Cherry Street had high ceilings, heavy walnut moldings, and light-flooded rooms. The old wooden floors were scarred in places, a few cracks marred the plaster walls, and the interior decoration lacked even a modest sense of coordination, but the house still managed to project a haphazard charm. Striped wallpaper coexisted alongside floral, and the odd mix of furniture was enlivened by needlework pillows and afghans crocheted in multicolored yarns. Plants set in handmade ceramic pots filled dark corners, cross-stitch samplers decorated the walls, and golf trophies popped up everywhere-as doorstops, bookends, weighing down a stack of newspapers, or simply catching the light on a sunny windowsill.
Three days after her arrival in Wynette, Francesca slipped out of the bedroom Miss Sybil had assigned to her and crept across the hallway. Beneath a T-shirt of Dallie's that fell to the middle of her thighs, she wore a rather astonishing pair of silky black bikini underpants that had miraculously appeared in the small stack of clothing Miss Sybil had lent her to supplement her wardrobe. She had slipped into them half an hour earlier when she'd heard Dallie come up the stairs and go into his bedroom.
Since their arrival, she'd barely seen him. He left for the driving range early in the morning, from there went to the golf course and then God knew where, leaving her with no one but Miss Sybil for company. Francesca hadn't been in the house for a day before she'd found a copy of Tender Is the Night pressed into her hands along with a gentle admonition to refrain from pouting when things didn't go her way. Dallie's abandonment upset her. He acted as if nothing had happened between them, as if they hadn't spent a night making love. At first she had tried to ignore it, but now she had decided that she had to start fighting for what she wanted, and what she wanted was more lovemaking.
She tapped the tip of one unpainted fingernail softly on the door opposite her own, afraid Miss Sybil would awaken and hear her. She shuddered at the thought of what the disagreeable old woman would do if she knew Francesca had wandered across the hall to Dallie's bedroom for illicit sex. She would probably chase her from the house screaming "Harlot!" at the top of her lungs. When Francesca heard no response from the other side of the door, she tapped a bit harder.
Without warning, Dallie's voice boomed out from the other side, sounding like a cannon in the still of the night. "If that's you, Francie, come on in and stop making so damned much noise."
She darted inside the bedroom, hissing like a tire losing its air. "Shh! She'll hear you, Dallie. She'll know I'm in your room."
He stood fully dressed, hitting golf balls with his putter across the carpet toward an empty beer bottle. "Miss Sybil's eccentric," he said, eyeing the line of his putt, "but she's not even close to being a prude. I think she was disappointed when I told her we wouldn't be sharing a room."
Francesca had been disappointed, too, but she wasn't going to make an issue of it now, when her pride had already been stung. "I've barely seen you at all since we got here. I thought maybe you were still angry with me about Beast."
"Beast?"
"That bloody cat." A trace of annoyance crept into her voice. "He bit me again yesterday."