Free Slow Dollar by Margaret Maron Page A

petunias that bloomed by the front steps, and as I drove past the third time, an old white woman came out and poured water on them from her dishpan.
    Everything for the land, nothing for the woman who helped tend it. Probably nothing for the daughter, either. I could understand why Carol had shrugged off the reins and tore loose. It all happened before I was born, but I knew the rough outlines.
    Andrew, nine brothers up from me and going through his own wild teen years, had gotten a Widdington girl pregnant.
    Or so she claimed.
    Andrew swore he wasn’t the only one having sex with her at the time, but her father had literally pointed a shotgun at him and asked him what he meant to do about the situation. There had been a hasty drive to Dillon, South Carolina, where underage kids could get married without a waiting period or blood test, and he’d moved into this shabby old house with her parents, prepared to “do the right thing,” even though he roiled with anger at getting trapped. That’s when he started drinking heavily.
    The arrangement lasted till two or three months after Olivia was born, when Carol told them all to go to hell and she’d lead the way. That was the last time anyone in my family ever saw her again. Daddy let it be known around the Hatcher neighborhood that he’d be mighty grateful if anybody heard tell of a girlchild being there, but it was five years before someone sent him word.
    The summer she was dying of cancer, Mother told me all sorts of things she thought I ought to know, things she trusted me to keep to myself till the knowledge was needed.
    Olivia was one of those things.
    “Your father was set to run right over there as soon as he heard,” she had said, “but he and the Hatchers had already had so many hard words between them by then that I said I’d go for both of us and I’d take you as my shield. Rodney Hatcher’s a foul-mouthed old man, but I suspected he’d behave in front of a little girl like you. Lucky for both of us, he wasn’t even home that day. As soon as I saw the child, though, I knew she was Andrew’s. I should have just gathered her up and brought her home with me then and there, but I was waiting for the right time to speak to Andrew. That was barely a month or so after he married Lois, remember?”
    Well, certainly I still remembered Lois. Andrew’s second marriage only lasted about two years longer than his first one, but the wedding itself had been a big splashy circus. That may have been the first time I was pressed into service as a flower girl. After a while, all the weddings ran together, so there must have been something special about Andrew’s.
    “You were so cute,” Mother said nostalgically.
    As if there’s ever been a three-year-old flower girl who wasn’t.
    “What happened when you told him?” I’d asked.
    “He still claimed Olivia wasn’t his daughter, but he went with me to see her. When we got there, though, the child was gone. Carol had taken her again.” Her eyes had glistened with tears then. “I’ll never stop blaming myself that I didn’t do something quicker. If she ever comes back, you make sure she’s part of this family if she wants to be, you hear?”
    “I hear.”
    “Promise?”
    I promised.
              
    “Should I call you Olivia or Tally?” I asked her now.
    “Tallahassee’s my legal name, okay? They called me Tally when I joined my first carnival in Tallahassee and I made it official when I married Arnold Ames the day I turned twenty-one.”
    “And Carol—?”
    “Dead.”
    She took a long swallow of her tea. “And my father’s married for a third time with some hell-raisers of his own.
    I wasn’t as surprised as she seemed to think I’d be. “You’ve kept tabs on the family?”
    She nodded. “Every time we come through Colleton County, I stop at the library and the courthouse. I’m real good at searching legal documents.”
    For the last few minutes, she’d been fiddling with a pack of