The Improper Life of Bezillia Grove by Susan Gregg Gilmore Read Free Book Online Page A

, although I wasn’t really sure what that meant. I just hoped it had nothing to do with his chickens.
    At the very end of June, Mother announced at dinner that she and Mrs. Hunt would be traveling to New York to buy some imported table linens for the Iris Ball. She would be gone for four or five days, and Adelaide and I were to behave. Then she turned and looked at my father, and with the stern and serious tone a parent would use to caution a child before crossing the street, she warned him that she would be spending an afternoon at Tiffany. Mrs. Hunt had already scheduled a private appointment with the store’s manager.
    When Mother left, she hugged me good-bye. Even now, when I close my eyes, I can still feel her arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders. She looked so beautiful, dressed in a coral silk suit and her hair tucked neatly under a matching pillbox-shaped hat. A large diamond brooch in the shape of a G was attached to her lapel. Father had given it to her that morning at breakfast, pinned to her napkin. They had even exchanged a brief kiss.
    As the Cadillac headed down the driveway, Mother looked back at her daughters and waved a final good-bye. I ran behind the car as it made its way to the road. Mother watched me from the rear window. She smiled so sweetly. Surely she was going to miss me. Then the car turned to the right, and my mother was suddenly out of sight.
    Adelaide kicked up some dirt with her new white tennis shoes and then turned and walked back to the house. Before she got into the car, Mother had warned Adelaide not to get this pair of shoes dirty. Of course, when Maizelle saw them, she snorted something about a mother buying a child anything white to wear must be a mother who never has done a load of laundry. Then she shook her head and walked down the stairs to the basement carrying a basket full of our dirty clothes.
    Adelaide wasted no time in telling me that her babies needed a good bath and a long nap. I warned her not to get water on the bathroom floor again, because I, like Maizelle, was not cleaning up another mess today, and then I stretched out on the chaise lounge and opened my book. My eyes were already heavy, and I found myself staring at the same words over and over again.
Nancy Drew began peeling off her garden gloves as she ran up the porch steps and into the hall to answer the ringing…
Nancy Drew began peeling off her garden gloves as she ran up the porch steps and into the hall to answer the ringing …
    Somewhere I could hear the sound of a car pulling up the drive, the tires crunching over the gravel as they rolled forward, the noise forcing its way through my sleep. Drowsy and confused, I dropped my book on the floor and started looking for my mother. But it was only Nathaniel this time, perched behind the wheel of his old blue pickup truck, with his worn brown hat pulled low on his forehead. I squinted my eyes a little tighter and sat up a little straighter, trying to wake myself. It was Nathaniel all right, but somebody else was sitting next to him, somebody I had never seen before.
    He looked about my age, maybe a year or two older. He had chocolate brown skin and deep, dark eyes. He was wearing a pair of worn-out blue jeans that rested low on his waist and made his legs look slender and long. He was almost as tall as Nathaniel, but he didn’t really look like him, at least until he smiled. And it was a smile I had known since I was a baby.
    “Miss Bezellia. Hey, I saw you up there behind that book. Hope that sister of yours hasn’t gone and drowned a baby doll or two by now. I can hear the water running in the upstairs tub from here.” Nathaniel laughed, pointing to the open window on the second floor. “Come on down here and meet my son before we need to start building Adelaide an ark of her own.”
    Nathaniel had three girls and a boy. He’d told me so. He talked about them every now and then, always with a brightness in his eyes. But for some reason, I’d never