Rose sat on a stool next to Mr. Duffy’s desk and listened to him tell her and Mavis about the kerfuffle yesterday.
That was the word he used.
Kerfuffle.
He told them how Doreen Chapman had marched into the gatehouse and accused him of allowing riffraff into Magnolia Estates. Apparently, the riffraff had been two men in a truck with GREEN THUMB LANDSCAPING on the side.
Green Thumb Landscaping was not authorized to come into Magnolia Estates.
Then the two men had gone door to door to see if anyone needed a landscaper.
Doreen Chapman had said the men looked like reprobates.
“What in the name of Bessie McGee is a reprobate?” Mr. Duffy asked Rose and Mavis. “They looked about as country as a turnip green to me. Just two old country boys trying to make a living.”
Mr. Duffy took a box of saltine crackers out of his desk drawer and offered some to Rose and Mavis.
“Then what happened?” Rose asked.
“Aw, she went on and on about this, that, and the other.”
Rose wondered what this, that, and the other was, but she didn’t ask. She didn’t want to hear about anything else Mr. Duffy may have done wrong to make Doreen Chapman so mad. It seemed like things were getting worse every day.
Just that morning, Rose’s mother had told her father that Mr. Duffy had brought a rickety old fan into the gatehouse, and it had blown a fuse and left burn marks on the wall.
“Now he’s going to go and burn the place down,” her mother had snapped. “Besides, Gerald Berkley said that if Mr. Duffy would remember to call about the broken air conditioner out there, they wouldn’t have needed the fan in the first place.”
Rose glanced over at the burn marks on the wall of the gatehouse and frowned.
Mavis made a little stack of saltine crackers on her lap and said, “Doreen Chapman sounds mean.”
“Ha!” Mr. Duffy slapped his knee. “Meaner than a wet panther.”
Mavis laughed, but Rose didn’t.
She hoped Mavis didn’t want to go back into the woods to look for Henry again. Why was Mavis so stubborn? She was also pretty bossy. Rose was happy to have a best friend, but she wished Mavis wasn’t quite so bossy.
Rose’s thoughts were interrupted when Mr. Duffy peered out the gatehouse window and said, “Looks like we’re in for some rain.”
Sure enough, the sky had turned dark, and there was a low rumble of thunder in the distance.
“Hoo boy!” Mr. Duffy said. “This one’s gonna be a gully washer.”
Suddenly the rain started, sending waves of steam drifting up from the hot asphalt streets of Magnolia Estates.
So Rose had lucked out. She and Mavis couldn’t go back to the woods because it was raining. Instead, they ran to Rose’s house and hightailed it up the stairs with Miss Jeeter hollering, “What’re y’all doing in here with those muddy shoes? Who do you think has to clean these floors?”
Once inside Rose’s room, Mavis collapsed on the bed, laughing.
But Rose didn’t laugh. She pointed to the muddy footprints on her fluffy pink rug and said, “My mama’s gonna kill me.”
Mavis sat up. “It’s only dirt,” she said. “Dirt comes off, you know.”
Then Mavis hurried up the hall and came back with a towel. A thick yellow towel monogrammed with the letter T.
She wiped at the rug with the towel, and, much to Rose’s relief, the mud came off. Now she only had to worry about the dirty towel.
“Don’t be such a worrywart,” Mavis said.
Rose frowned down at the dirty towel in her lap. Why was she such a worrywart? Why couldn’t she be more like Mavis? Mavis didn’t care one little bit if her mama yelled at her.
Then, wouldn’t you know it, the door opened, and Mrs. Tully looked horrified when she saw the girls in their rain-soaked clothes.
“Mavis, you need to leave,” she said. “And Rose, please change your clothes. Mrs. Simm invited us to lunch.”
Mavis hopped off the bed and said, “See ya.” Then she disappeared through the bedroom door with Mrs. Tully’s disapproving looks zapping down the hallway after her.
“Will Amanda be there?” Rose asked.
“I assume so, since her mother asked me to bring you.”
And so the good luck that Rose had had when the rain came had run out. She was having lunch with Amanda Simm.