But time passed, as time has a way of doing, and one morning Bessie woke up and discovered that Harold was only a dim memory, a distant melody, like a song sung so far away that it could scarcely be heard. She no longer wanted to pretend that he was coming home, and she found to her surprise that this was all right. “Time heals all wounds,” she reminded herself, and felt that the hoary old proverb was true. She still loved Harold, she supposed, and she still longed to know what had happened to him and whether he was well and happy. But she was ready to stop living on the hope that he would come back.
There were other changes in Bessie’s life, not all of them as healing as this one. Her father had become increasingly temperamental and hard to live with. He sold his funeral parlor to Mr. Noonan and the gravestone business to a man from Mobile and retired. Within a month, Doc Roberts diagnosed him as having cancer of the lungs. Bessie took care of him until at last he died and was buried next to her mother in the Bloodworth family plot in the Darling Cemetery on Schoolhouse Road-the cemetery that Mr. Darling had owned and where so many of his professional duties as Darling’s only undertaker had been carried out. And there she was, all by herself in the big house, faced with the challenge of supporting herself and unexpectedly, surprisingly lonely.
But not for long. As soon as word of her father’s death got around, two suitors-Mr. Hopper and Mr. Churchill, both recently widowed-appeared at her door with bouquets in their hands and hopeful grins on their faces. At first Bessie was flattered, even though she didn’t care for either of them as much as she had cared for Harold. But it wasn’t long before she began to suspect that Mr. Hopper was only looking for a place to live and Mr. Churchill chiefly wanted someone to cook and do his laundry, and if her domestic services were what they were after, she might as well open a boardinghouse and be done with it. And anyway, she needed the money, since Mr. Noonan’s payments on the funeral home note were her only income, and they didn’t amount to very much.
So she said shoo to both of her suitors, put a notice in the Darling Dispatch (“Room and board for older ladies of refinement”), and within a few weeks all of her bedrooms were full. Magnolia Manor was not a hugely profitable business-she cleared only five or six dollars a month on each of her boarders. But that was enough to pay the taxes and buy coal and electricity and food and household supplies, and her own living expenses were negligible. Lots of people, she told herself, were in much worse straits, and they had jobs.
At the present time, there were four boarders-the Magnolia Ladies, they called themselves, all of straitened means. Dorothy Rogers, the town’s part-time librarian, had lost all her money on one awful day in the stock market. Leticia Wiggens was a retired teacher who lived on a very small pension. Mrs. Sedalius had a son who was a doctor in Mobile and sent her a check once a month, although he almost never came to see her. Maxine Bechdel was slightly better off than the others. She owned two rental houses whose tenants were able to pay their rent about half the time.
Bessie managed the place with the help of Roseanne, a live-in colored lady who cooked and did the laundry. But the Magnolia Ladies did their part, too. Leticia and Maxine washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen and dining room. Mrs. Sedalius swept and dusted upstairs, and Miss Rogers swept and dusted downstairs, and of course each boarder kept her room neat. In addition, they all worked in the Manor’s flower beds and the impressive vegetable garden and tended the half-dozen hens that lived in the coop against the back fence and delivered three or four fresh-laid eggs every morning, just in time for breakfast.
And Bessie discovered, to her surprise, that managing the Magnolia Manor was decidedly preferable to managing her father’s household, and that her new life was a great deal more interesting and livelier than the old-and a great deal livelier and less stressful than life with either Mr. Hopper or Mr. Churchill would have been. Her beloved fiancé was a long-ago dream, the Magnolia Ladies were the sisters she had never had, and her family history was by now just that: history.
When Bessie got home from the Dahlias’ meeting, she went upstairs and changed into the gray cotton work dress and old shoes that she wore in the garden, then took a pair of clippers and went out to deadhead the roses. The peaches from the trees near the back fence were already in their jars in the cellar, pickled and spiced and canned, and the apples would soon be ripe. They had picked the last crop of green beans and would be digging the sweet potatoes in another few weeks, to wrap in newspaper and store in bushel baskets in the cellar. The Magnolia Ladies had a lot to show for their gardening efforts this year.
“Yoo hoo, Bessie!”
She looked up from her work to see Liz and Verna ducking through the hedge between the Manor and the Dahlias’ clubhouse. She dropped the clippers into her basket and wiped her forehead with her sleeve, pushing her hair out of her eyes. It was a muggy afternoon. The way her shoulder was hurting, there’d be rain by supper time.
“Whew,” she said. “Enough of that. Come and see my Angel Trumpet.” She left her basket where it was and led them to a corner of the garden where a tall, sturdy-looking shrub was growing against the fence. It had large, coarse green leaves and was covered with huge, pendulous blossoms, a beautiful shade of creamy peach. They were tightly furled now, ready to open at twilight. “You can’t believe the perfume,” she said. “It’s heavenly. We leave all the upstairs windows open when we go to bed, just so we can smell it.”
“Gorgeous,” Verna said, touching one of the blossoms with her finger. “Will you save us some seed?”
“Or a few cuttings,” Liz said enviously. “I have the perfect site for it.”
“Of course,” Bessie said. “Oh, and you can mention it in your ‘Garden Gate’ column, Liz. Tell folks that they can come and get some cuttings. But you might also tell them it’s poisonous. They need to be careful with it, especially if there are children around.”
“Hard to believe that something so beautiful could be harmful,” Liz said.
Bessie nodded. “My grandmother claimed she smoked it for her asthma, but it’s a pretty powerful narcotic. Now, shall we sit down?” She led them toward a trio of white-painted chairs and a little table in the shade of a weeping willow, pausing at the kitchen door to ask Roseanne to bring out a pitcher of lemonade and some glasses.
“Where is everybody?” Verna asked as they sat down. “It’s such a lovely afternoon, I figured they’d all be out here in the garden.”
“Leticia and Maxine are playing canasta on the front porch,” Bessie said. “Can’t you hear them bickering? Dorothy went to her room to read, but five will get you ten that she’s really having a nap. And Mrs. Sedalius’ son is here for a visit. He’s taken his mother for a ride in his car. First time in a year he’s been to see her.” She cocked her head at her guests. “So. What’s this family history you wanted to talk about?”
“Liz and I were curious about Miss Hamer’s niece,” Verna said. “Nona Jean Jamison. We understand that she’s moved in with her aunt, and we were… well, just wondering.” She glanced at Liz. “We know that you’re interested in family history, and that you’ve been friends with Miss Hamer for a long time.”
“So we thought you might be able to tell us something about the Hamer family history,” Liz added.
Bessie drew in a deep breath and leaned back in her chair. She knew Verna, and from the tone of her voice, thought that there was more here than simple curiosity. Verna was a suspicious person by nature, and in this case-