With that, she let go of Charly’s arm and reached into the big handbag she had slung over hers and pulled something out. It was a book-Troy could see that much-about the size of a prayer book, green leather, embossed in gold, letters he couldn’t quite make out. But he heard Charly give a little gasp of recognition as Dobrina placed the book in her hands.

“I found this,” the housekeeper said in a cracking voice, “after you went away. Maybe I shouldn’t have read it-I expect that’s somethin’ else the Lord’s gonna have to forgive me for, and you, too-but I thought…well, I thought maybe there’d be somethin’ in there to tell us where you’d gone.” She laughed soundlessly through the tears that had begun to stream down her smooth, nut brown cheeks. “Well, there was, I guess. Yes, there was somethin’, all right. But honey, California’s a mighty big place.

“I never told your father, nor Cutter, either. It wasn’t my place. That’s yours, Charlene, honey-yours to keep or to share. That’s up to you. But that boy a’ yours-he needs to know the truth. Time he knew the whole truth, child-about his daddy-” Charly gave a small, involuntary gasp “-and how it was with you all. You give that book to Cutter to read, honey. You give it to him, now. It’s time.”

She patted Charly on the arm and turned away, nodding, while Charly stared at her, her face bone white and glistening, like a marble statue in the rain.

“Miz Phelps?” The young ICU duty nurse was standing in the doorway, looking like a little girl in her lavender cotton scrubs. “Ma’am, the cardiologist would like to talk to you. Long as you’re here…”

Both women started forward at the same time. The nurse flicked a glance at Charly as she beckoned the housekeeper past her. “I meant Mrs. Phelps-sorry about that.” And to Dobrina, she said, “Ma’am, if you want to, you can just go right on in.” She gave Charly an apologetic smile and went back to her station.

She left behind her a stunned and vibrating silence. And then the air exploded from Charly’s lungs.

“Aunt Dobie? When? How long have you-?”

“Nineteen years last April,” Dobrina said with quiet dignity, standing straight as a pillar with her hands clasped loosely at her waist. She lacked only one of those tall, pointed crowns, Troy thought, and she could have been a golden statue guarding the entrance to an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. “One year to the day after you left home.” Her chin rose a fraction of an inch higher. “It was his idea. I nevah asked for it.”

He heard a peculiar creaking sound and realized it must be Charly, trying to swallow, trying to speak. And then she was moving toward the other woman, slowly and wobbling a bit, like someone just getting on her feet after being sick for a while. “I’m…glad…Aunt Dobie. I really am. I’m just…surprised. I never-I didn’t know my father…”

“No, you didn’t,” said Dobrina softly. “Nor your son, either. It’s time you did, child. Time you did.” She patted Charly’s hand once more, hesitated for just a moment, then continued on to the ICU and the husband that needed her.

“Oh, boy. Wow. I can’t believe it. Married. Oh…boy.” Charly kept it up, a breathless, whispered monologue as she and Troy hurried through the hospital corridors. “My father and Aunt Dobie. Wow.”

“Why is that so hard to believe?” Troy asked when they were outside on the concrete apron, blinking in the unexpected light of a brilliant Sunday afternoon.

She threw him a look, letting go of a little gust of laughter. “You don’t seem very surprised.”

He shrugged. “Figured she had to have a better reason for stayin’ with the man all those years than just bein’ his housekeeper. She loves him. It was right there in her face, plain to see-guess you’ve just been too preoccupied with everything else that’s been goin’ on to notice.”

“Wow,” she said in a wondering tone, staring at her feet. After a moment she shook her head, and they started across the heat-shimmery parking lot, Charly still agitated and wanting to move a lot faster than Southerners generally like to in the summertime, those with any sense. Troy took hold of her elbow to slow her down a little, and she looked up at him with confusion darkening her eyes. There was some anger there, too, sparking and flashing like bomb bursts in a night sky.

“You don’t understand,” she finally burst out. “You’d have to know my father. All he cared about was appearances-what people thought, fitting in, being accepted. That’s why he was so upset when I got pregnant. That’s why he wanted so much for me to many Colin.”

“I don’t follow you.”

She heaved an impatient little sigh and rolled her eyes. “Colin was a Stewart. In this town that was like royalty-poor as church mice, but old blood. You’re a Southerner, you should know how it is-was…can be still, some places. The Stewarts go back two hundred years, at least. They were the original founders of this town, owned most of it until the war. My father’s people, on the other hand, were carpetbaggers-founded a fortune on the misfortunes of people like the Stewarts.”

“Lord,” said Troy, “that was over a hundred years ago.”

“Yeah, but that’s the old Southern question, isn’t it? How many generations does it take before you belong?” She gave a soft, ironic laugh. “My father is a fourth-generation Alabamian, and still felt like an outsider all his life. My marrying Colin would have given the acceptance he always longed for to the next generation, at least.” She paused. “I didn’t have all this insight back then, you realize. I was just a kid, and mad at my father because it seemed to me all he cared about was how we looked to other people. I can’t imagine that he’d ever have married-”

“A black woman?”

“Well, yeah, no matter how much he may have loved her.”

“Things change,” said Troy softly. “Times change. People change.”

She gave a suspiciously moist laugh. Looking down, he discovered that there were tears dripping off the end of her nose. Something inside him did a slow and painful flip-flop, and he finally did what he’d been wanting to do, unable to do for so long. He stopped and turned her toward him and folded her into his arms. “Be happy for them,” he said huskily into her hair.

“I am. I am…I was just thinking, you know…about Cutter. I wonder if he calls her Mom.”

“You heard him-he calls her Dobie.” His voice was rusty as old nails. “That boy knows who his mama is.”

Suddenly becoming aware of something wedged between his body and hers, he raised his head and held her a little ways from him. “That book,” he said, tipping his head toward the leather-bound volume she still held, cradled with her purse against her breasts. “Dobrina said she wanted you to give it to Cutter. What is it, a Bible? Some kind of family thing?”

She looked down with a faint air of surprise, as if she’d forgotten the book was there. He heard a sharp catch in her breathing.

“It’s my diary,” she said softly.


Charly said, “I can’t imagine I was ever this young.”

She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, in a motel room that reeked of fried chicken and biscuits and mashed potatoes with gravy, Troy having decided it wasn’t the best time to be nagging somebody about their eating habits.

“Listen to this.

‘Dear Diary.


I’m not going to write very much tonight, because Welcome Back, Kotter is on, and I have to finish my homework. I just think John Travolta is so-o bitchin’, don’t you? I wonder if he’s married, and if he’s not, if he’d ever consider being interested in a skinny girl from Mourning Spring Alabama with no boobs and a great personality.’


‘Thought for the Day-’

“I was supposed to think up something profound, you understand-

‘I’m thinking of getting a padded bra.’

“Can you believe it?”

“Hard to,” said Troy, eyeing what he could see of her breasts underneath the portrait of Sylvester the cat that adorned the T-shirt she was wearing. He’d just come out of the bathroom, where he’d indulged himself in a longer than usual shower, complete with shampoo and shave, and all the other miscellaneous activities men do in private, seldom admit to, and would never, ever call primping. He’d done all that mainly to give Charly some time alone to look over that old diary of hers, in case she needed the privacy. But as a result he was feeling fresh, clean and sexy as hell, and maybe it was just the frame of mind he was in, but as far as he was concerned, neither her breasts nor any other part of her looked like it was in any need of improvement whatsoever.

“Here’s another one.

‘Today I wore my new platform shoes to school. So did Kelly Grace. I had to sneak mine past the judge and Aunt Dobie in my backpack, but it was worth it. I think they look bitchin’, especially with my new jeans. Brooke Shields, eat your heart out!”’

She rocked back and looked up at him. “God-remember that?

Platform shoes. Bell bottoms…designer jeans.”

“Sideburns,” muttered Troy, rubbing his clean-shaved jaw.

“Leisure suits,” Charly sang, laughing.

“With bell bottoms…”

“…in bulletproof polyester!”

“Afros!”

“Pooka beads! Mood rings!”

“Saturday Night Fever!”

Charly put her hand over her heart in a mock swoon. “I must have seen that movie six times, at least. John Travolta was bitchin’! Did you guys say that, too-bitchin’? The equivalent of ‘Way cool, man…totally awesome.’ you know? Like… outasight?”

“Not within earshot of my mama, I didn’t,” said Troy dryly, going to sit on the edge of the bed, close enough to touch her, but not doing so. He felt off balance and unsure of himself, like a dinner guest finding himself witness to a family crisis. How close should he come? How close would she allow him? How much right did he have to share such intimate revelations?