The next morning at breakfast, Rose’s mother told her father that Amanda Simm was taking diving lessons every afternoon at the Magnolia Estates swimming pool. Then she added, “Rose ought to be doing something like that.”
Rose stared down at her raisin toast and said a little prayer in her head. Please don’t make me take diving lessons with Amanda.
Her prayer was answered when her father looked irritated, because he was trying to read the newspaper. He jabbed a finger onto the paper to mark his spot and said, “Maybe Rose doesn’t want to take diving lessons, Cora.”
Rose’s heart did a little somersault of gladness. She spread a blob of strawberry jam onto her toast and tried to be invisible.
“Rose doesn’t want to do anything,” her mother said, pouring another cup of coffee. “Except stay up there with that old man the livelong day,” she added. “She’s got no business there, and, quite frankly, neither does he. I think he sleeps more than he works.”
Then she went on and on about Charlotte Prescott and that bridal shower and those ladies who couldn’t get through the gate. After that she made a list of all the problems in Magnolia Estates that could have been avoided if Mr. Duffy had done his job. Problems with the landscape company and a Sears delivery truck and the streetlights that needed to be repaired.
Rose’s somersaulting heart began to tumble around inside her chest and then squeeze up tight. Her hands froze, one holding the knife, one holding the toast. She cut her eyes sideways and glanced at her father. Sometimes when her mother went off on a tangent like that, her father would say, “Oh, Cora, don’t be so dramatic.” Then he would wink at Rose, and she would wink back, like they shared a secret.
But this time he just kept reading the newspaper like he hadn’t heard those mean words. Then he gave Rose a kiss on the top of her head and went off to work, and Rose finished her toast with an icy-cold silence hanging in the air.
The silence was broken when Miss Jeeter came in and began gathering Mr. Tully’s breakfast dishes.
“Please don’t stack them like that,” Mrs. Tully said. “Bone china chips very easily.”
Rose watched Miss Jeeter lower her head and roll her eyes.
“And remember,” Mrs. Tully said. “That china doesn’t go in the dishwasher.”
Miss Jeeter pressed her lips into a thin, straight line. She put two of the plates back on the table so they wouldn’t be stacked and started toward the kitchen door with only one plate and a juice glass.
“For heaven’s sake, Miss Jeeter,” Mrs. Tully said. “Use a tray. There are several in the pantry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Miss Jeeter said in a way that Rose knew probably irked her mother.
Sure enough, Mrs. Tully lifted an eyebrow and shot Miss Jeeter a look that zipped and zapped clear across the dining room and made Miss Jeeter toss her hair out of her eyes, lift her chin, and walk through the swinging kitchen door so fast that Rose felt a breeze blow across the table.
Her mother set her cup down, making a little coffee slosh over the side. Rose dragged her fork through the hardened glob of cold grits on her plate. Normally, her mother would have told her to stop doing that and just eat them. But today she gathered her garden gloves and clippers from the basket by the French doors and went out to the garden to cut zinnias to put in the crystal vase in the foyer.
Rose jumped up from the table and hurried outside to look for Mavis. Today they were going to try to find the dog that Amanda had named Henry. Rose still wasn’t sure about this idea. First of all, Mr. Duffy didn’t want another dog. And second of all, she wasn’t allowed to go into those woods.
But Mavis had told her to stop worrying so much.
Mavis had said, “Trust me.”
And Rose really wanted to trust Mavis.