But when the Alabama 167th came home from France in 1919, Reggie hadn’t come home with them. It took a long time to get over the death of her dream. Lizzy (who by that time was older and somewhat braver) thought of moving to Mobile or Birmingham to find work and get away from her mother, which would have been the right thing to do. But she had already taken a secretarial job at Moseley & Moseley Law Office, where she found herself developing an extraordinary crush on Mr. Benton Moseley. He was just out of law school, handsome and bright, newly in practice with his father, a widely respected lawyer and former state senator. Mr. Benton Moseley had always been a complete gentleman, of course, although Lizzy (who by this time was reading a great many dime-novel romances in which beautiful and worthy but penniless young women met and married handsome, worthy, and wealthy young gentlemen) found herself conjuring up endless fantasies about him.
When the senior Mr. Moseley died, the junior Mr. Moseley continued the practice, and Lizzy (who had finally put Reggie’s diamond in a box in her dresser drawer) had gone to work every day happily cocooned in her romantic dreams. She continued to live at home, but her mother had somehow faded into the background-still bothersome, of course, but more like an annoying barking dog that lived in a house a block away, rather than on the other side of the fence. Lizzy, so fully focused on Mr. Moseley that she felt his presence shining on her like a warm spring sun, lived for the hours she spent at work. It had been rather like living in a dream that was so intense and so magically real that it usurped all other realities. It hadn’t mattered that the object of her adulation didn’t return her feelings-or even appear to notice them.
In fact, Lizzy had gone on glorying in her unrequited love even after Mr. Moseley had courted and married a blond debutante from a wealthy Birmingham family, built a big fancy house out near the country club, and fathered two girls. Then had come his election to the state legislature, and Lizzy had dutifully carried on, keeping the practice going while he followed his father’s footsteps to the capitol in Montgomery.
That was probably what brought her to her senses. With Mr. Moseley away for weeks at a time, Lizzy woke up from her dream and began to realize what an utter fool she was making of herself. She toted her dime-novel romances out to the backyard and burned them. She took the treasured snapshot of Mr. Moseley out of the secret place in her billfold and added it to the fire. Then she went back to writing in her journal-but she kept it with her, in her handbag, so that her mother could not find and read it.
Mrs. Lacy, of course, never suspected any of this. She had decided that her daughter (her heart broken by the death of her young fiancé) would be a lifelong spinster, quite naturally preferring to live with her mother for the rest of her life. And Lizzy, who had been putting away money out of every paycheck against the increasingly remote possibility that something would happen to change her circumstances, found herself beginning to share her mother’s unassailable belief that the two of them would go on living together, forever and ever, world without end, amen.
And then something unexpectedly wonderful had happened.
Old Mr. Flagg died. He had lived across the street from the Lacys for nearly four decades, in a small frame bungalow with a postage-stamp parlor, a kitchen, two little upstairs bedrooms, a front porch with a swing, and a screened-in back porch. Mr. Flagg had been a gardener who lavished his time and attention on his large yard, where he grew sunflowers and a fig tree and pink roses on the trellis and a perennial border. There was also a small vegetable garden-just large enough for one person-only a step away from the back porch. Lizzy was suddenly seized by the idea that she had to have this house, and she had taken her improbable scheme to Mr. Moseley, who was in charge of settling the old man’s estate.
But Mr. Moseley didn’t think it was improbable at all. With his help, Lizzy secretly bought the house, commissioned the necessary repairs-including a bathroom, electricity, gas, and water-and furnished it. She didn’t say a single word to her mother, who was in great suspense about the secret identity of the new across-the-street neighbor, until the work was done and her new home was ready to move into. The announcement had sent Mrs. Lacy into hysterics, of course, but Lizzy, for the first time in her life, had held her ground.
And even though her own house was not quite far enough away to qualify as an “escape” from her mother, it had made all the difference. For the first time ever, Lizzy held the key to her own life. She could step into her own place, close the door behind her, and be perfectly at home. She still felt a warm affection for Mr. Moseley, but the torch she had carried for so long was quite extinguished and there had been another man in her life-Grady Alexander-for more than a year. Lizzy wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about Grady, who always seemed to want something from her, and she knew (uncomfortably) that she would have to make a decision about their relationship before very long. But for the moment, she felt she could handle the situation. She hoped things would stay that way.
And now, as she turned up the path that led from the street to her front porch and saw Daffodil, her orange tabby, sitting on the porch railing waiting for her, Lizzy felt once again the pleasure of coming home to a house that was completely, entirely, and remarkably hers.
Except that her mother had a key.
This was a new situation-it had just happened the week before-and Lizzy was still quietly fuming about it. Mrs. Lacy had apparently lifted Lizzy’s spare key from its hook by the back door and taken it to Musgrove’s Hardware, where she said that her daughter wanted her to have a copy. Lizzy knew about this bald-faced lie, because Mr. Musgrove had happened to mention it to her when she stopped in to get a new rubber plug for her bathtub. She hadn’t yet decided whether to tell her mother to hand over the copied key or have Mr. Musgrove install new locks on the front and back doors. Either way, there was going to be a battle.
But Lizzy always tried to see things from both sides of the question and give the other person the benefit of the doubt. On balance, she felt that her mother probably wouldn’t use the key very often, and she was determined not to let it disturb the pleasure she felt each time she put her very own key in the lock of her very own door and turned it.
“Come on, Daffy,” she said, as the cat rubbed against her ankles, purring an enthusiastic welcome. “Let’s get you some milk.”
Stepping inside, Lizzy took a deep breath of the faint lemony fragrance she used to polish the furniture and savored the quiet that fell on her like a shawl every time she came in. On the left, a flight of stairs led up to two small bedrooms. On the right, a wide doorway opened into a little parlor, which she had furnished with a very nice Mission-style leather cushioned sofa, a chair she had reupholstered in dark brown corduroy, and a Tiffany-style lamp with a stained-glass shade. She had paid seven dollars and fifty cents for that lamp-far too much, she knew, but she had fallen in love with its amber-colored light, which gleamed richly against the refinished pine floors. Behind the parlor was the kitchen with a tiny dining nook, just big enough for two, looking out on the garden. At the end of the hall was a large storage room, part of which she had converted into a bathroom with a claw-footed tub, tiny sink, pull-chain toilet, and newly tiled floor. (Mr. Flagg had used the privy behind the garage.) It was the most perfect house in the world, she felt, and-after all the quarrelsome years she had lived with her mother-a perfectly private place, almost like a sanctuary.