Fancy Pants (22 page)
Dallie lifted his head and his voice was bitter. "What I remember is
how we'd go out at night and leave him alone with all those
twelve-year-old baby-sitters. Or drag him along when we couldn't find
anybody to stay with him— prop that little plastic seat of his up in
the corner of some booth in a bar and feed him potato chips, or put
Seven-Up in his bottle if he started to cry. Christ . . ."
Holly Grace shrugged and let go of his arm. "We weren't even nineteen
when Danny was born. Not
much more than kids ourselves. We did the best
we knew how."
"Yeah? Well, it wasn't fucking good enough!"
She ignored his outburst. She had done a better job of coming to terms
with Danny's death than Dallie had, although she still had to look away
when she caught a glimpse of a mother picking up a little towheaded
boy. Halloween was the hardest for Dallie because that was the day
Danny had died, but Danny's birthday was hardest for her. She gazed at
the dark, leafy shapes of the pecan trees and remembered how it had
been that day.
Although it had been exam week at A&M and Dallie had a paper to
write, he was out hustling some cotton farmers on the golf course so
they could buy a crib. When her water had broken, she had been afraid
to go to the hospital by herself so she'd driven to the course in an
old Ford Fairlane she'd borrowed from the engineering student who lived
next door to them. Although she had folded a bath towel to sit on,
she'd still soaked through onto the seat.
The greenskeeper had gone after Dallie and returned with him in less
than ten minutes. When Dallie had seen her leaning against the side of
the Fairlane, wet patches staining her old denim jumper, he had vaulted
out of the electric cart and run over to her. "Shoot, Holly Grace,"
he'd said, "I just drove the green on number eight—landed not three
inches from the cup. Couldn't you have waited a while longer?" Then
he'd laughed and picked her up, wet jumper and all, and held her
against his chest until a contraction made her cry out. "
Thinking about it now, she felt a lump growing in her throat. "Danny
was such a beautiful baby," she whispered to Dallie. "Remember how
scared we were when we brought him home from the hospital?"
His reply was low and tight. "People need a license to keep a dog, but
they let you take a baby out of a hospital without asking a single
question."
She jumped up from the step. "Dammit, Dallie! I want to mourn our baby
boy. I want to mourn him with you tonight, not listen to you turn
everything bitter."
He slumped forward for a moment, his head dropping. "You shouldn't have
come. You know how I get this time of year."
She let the palm of her hand come to rest on the top of his head like a
baptism. "Let Danny go this year."
"Could you let him go if you were the one who'd killed him?"
"I knew about the cistern cover, too."
"And you told me to fix it." He stood up slowly, wandering over to the
porch railing. "You told me twice that the hinge was broken and that
the neighborhood boys kept pulling it off so they could throw stones
down inside. You weren't the one who stayed home with Danny that
afternoon. You weren't the one who was supposed to be watching him."
"Dallie, you were studying. It's not like you were passed out drunk on
the floor when he slipped outside."
She shut her eyes. She didn't want to think about this part—about her
little two-year-old baby boy toddling across the yard to that cistern,
looking down into it with his boundless curiosity. Losing his balance.
Falling forward. She didn't want to imagine that little body struggling
for life in that dank water, crying out. What had her baby thought
about at the end, when all he could see was a circle of light far above
him? Had he thought about her, his mother, who wasn't there to pull him
safely into her arms, or had he thought about his daddy, who kissed him
and roughhoused with him and held him so tight that he wouid squeal?
What had he thought about at that last moment when his small lungs had
filled with water?
Blinking against the sting of tears, she went over to Dallie and
circled his waist from behind. Then she rested her forehead against the
back of his shoulder. "God gives us life as a gift," she said. "We
don't
have any right to add our own conditions."
He began to shudder, and she held on to him as best she could.
stood next to the porch. The night was quiet, and she had heard every
word. She felt sick . . . even worse than when she'd run from the
Roustabout. Her own pain now seemed frivolous compared to theirs. She
hadn't known Dallie at all. She had never seen anything more than the
laughing, wisecracking Texan who refused to take life seriously. He'd
hidden a wife from her . . . the death of his son. As she looked at the
two grief-stricken figures standing on the porch, the intimacy between
them seemed as solid as the old house itself—an intimacy brought about
by living together, by sharing happiness and tragedy. She realized then
that she and Dallie had shared nothing except their bodies, and that
love had depths to it she hadn't even imagined.
Francesca watched as Dallie and Holly Grace disappeared into the house.
For a fraction of a moment,
the very best part of her hoped they would
find some comfort with each other.
about the matter, she would never come here again. As a pickup truck
sped past her in the right lane going at least eighty, she decided that
some people were not meant to venture beyond predictable city traffic
jams and the comforting scent of exhaust being belched out by crawling
yellow cabs. She was a city girl; the open road made her nervous. Or
maybe it wasn't the highway at all. Maybe it was Gerry huddled next to
her in the passenger seat of her rental Cadillac, scowling through the
windshield like an ill-tempered toddler.
When she had returned to her apartment the night before to pack a
suitcase, Gerry had announced that
he was going to Texas with her.
"I've got to get out of this place before I go crazy," he had
exclaimed, thrusting one hand through his hair. "I'm going to Mexico
for a while—live underground. I'll fly to Texas with you tonight—the
cops at the airport won't be looking for a couple traveling
together—and then I'll make
arrangements to cross the border. I've got some friends in Del Rio.
They'll help me. It'll be good
in Mexico. We'll get our movement
reorganized."
She had told him he couldn't go with her, but he refused to listen.
Since she couldn't physically restrain him, she had found herself
boarding the Delta flight to San Antonio with Gerry at her side,
holding her arm.
She stretched in the driver's seat, inadvertently pressing down on the
gas pedal so that the car accelerated slightly. Next to her, Gerry
plunged his hands deep into the pockets of a pair of gray flannel
slacks he'd procured from somewhere. The outfit was supposed to make
him look like a respectable businessman but fell somewhat short of the
mark since he had refused to cut his hair. "Relax," she said. "Nobody's
paid any attention to you since we got here."
"The cops'll never let me get away this easy," he said, glancing
nervously over his shoulder for the hundredth time since they had
pulled out of the hotel garage in San Antonio. "They're playing with
me. They'll let me get. so close to the Mexican border that I can smell
it, and then they'll close in on me. Frigging pigs."
The sixties paranoia. She'd almost forgotten about it. When Gerry had
learned about the FBI wiretaps, he'd believed that every shadow hid a
cop, that every new recruit was an informer, that the mighty J. Edgar
Hoover himself was personally searching for evidence of subversive
activity in the Kotex the women in the anti-war movement tossed into
the garbage. Although at the time there had been reason
for caution, in
the end the fear had been more exhausting than the reality. "Are you
sure the police even care?" Naomi said. "Nobody looked at you twice
when you got on the plane."
He glared at her and she knew that she had insulted him by belittling
his importance as a fugitive—Macho Gerry, the John Wayne of the
radicals. "If I'd been by myself," he said, "they'd have noticed fast
enough."
Naomi wondered. For all Gerry's insistence that the police were out to
get him, they certainly didn't
seem to be looking very hard. It made
her feel strangely sad. She remembered the days when the police had
cared a great deal about the
activities of her brother.
The Cadillac topped a grade, and she saw a sign announcing the city
limits of Wynette. A spurt of excitement went through her. After all
this time, she would finally see her Sassy Girl. She hoped she hadn't
made a mistake by not calling ahead, but she felt instinctively that
this first connection needed to
be made in person. Besides, photographs
sometimes lied. She had to see this girl face to face.
Gerry looked at the digital clock on the dashboard. "It's not even nine
o'clock yet. She's probably still in bed. I don't see why we had to
leave so early."
She didn't bother answering. Nothing ever had any importance to Gerry
except his own mission to save the world single-handedly. She pulled
into a service station and asked for directions. Gerry hunched down in
the seat, hiding himself behind an open road map in case the
pimply-faced kid standing by the gas pumps was really a crack
government agent out to catch Public Enemy Number One.
As she pulled the car back out onto the street, she said, "Gerry,
you're thirty-two years old. Aren't you getting tired of living like
this?"
"I'm not going to sell out, Naomi."
"If you ask me, running off to Mexico comes closer to selling out than
staying around and trying to work inside the system."
"Just shut up about it, will you?"
Was it only her imagination or did Gerry sound less sure of himself?
"You'd be a wonderful lawyer," she pressed on. "Courageous and
incorruptible. Like a medieval knight fighting for justice."
"I'll think about it, okay?" he snapped. "I'll think about it after I
get to Mexico. Remember that you promised to get me over closer to Del
Rio before nightfall."
"God, Gerry, can't you think about anything but yourself?"
He looked at her with disgust. "The world's getting ready to blow
itself up, and all you care about is selling perfume."
She refused to get into another shouting match with him, and they rode
in silence the rest of the way to the house. As Naomi
pulled up in the Cadillac, Gerry glanced nervously over his shoulder
toward the street. When he saw nothing suspicious, he relaxed enough to
lean forward and study the house. "Hey, I like this place." He gestured
toward the painted jackrabbits. "It gives out great vibes."
Naomi gathered up her purse and briefcase. Just as she was getting
ready to open the car door, Gerry caught her arm. "This is important to
you, isn't it, sis?"
"I know you don't understand, Gerry, but I love what I do."
He nodded slowly and then smiled at her. "Good luck, kid."
think where she was, and then she realized that—like an animal going
into a cave to die alone—she had crawled into the back seat of the
Riviera and fallen asleep. Memories of the night before washed over
her, bringing a fresh wave of pain. She straightened and moaned softly
as the muscles in various parts of her body protested her change in
position. The cat, who was curled up on the floor beneath her, lifted
his misshapen head and meowed.
Then she saw the Cadillac.
She caught her breath. For as long as she could remember, big,
expensive cars had always brought wonderful things into her
life—expensive men, fashionable places, glittering parties. An
illogical surge of hope swept through her. Maybe one of her friends had
tracked her down and come to take her back to her old life. She brushed
her hair from her face with a dirty, shaking hand, let herself out of
the car, and walked cautiously around to the front of the house. She
couldn't face Dallie this morning, and she especially couldn't face
Holly Grace. As she crept up the front steps, she told herself not to
get her hopes up, that the car might have brought a magazine writer to
interview Dallie, or even an insurance salesman—but every muscle in her
body felt tense with expectation. She heard an unfamiliar woman's voice
through the open door and stepped to one side so she could listen
unobserved.
". . . have been looking everywhere for her," the woman was saying. "I
was finally able to track her
down through inquiries about Mr.
Beaudine."
"Imagine going to all that trouble just for a magazine advertisement,"
Miss Sybil replied.
"Oh, no," the woman's voice protested. "This is much more important.
Blakemore, Stern, and Rodenbaugh is one of the most important
advertising agencies in Manhattan. We're planning a major campaign to
launch a new perfume, and we need an extraordinarily beautiful woman as
our Sassy Girl. She'll be on television, billboards. She'll make public
appearances all over the country. We plan to make her one of the most
familiar faces in America. Everyone will know about the Sassy Girl."
Francesca felt as if she had just been given back her life. The Sassy
Girl! They were looking for her! A surge of joy pulsed through her
veins like adrenaline as she absorbed the astonishing realization that
she would now be able to walk away from Dallie with her head held high.
This fairy godmother from Manhattan was about to give her back her
self-respect.
"But I'm afraid I don't have any idea where she is," Miss Sybil said.
"I'm sorry to have to disappoint you after you've driven so far, but if
you'll give me your business card, I'll pass it on to Dallas. He'll see
that she gets it."
"No!" Francesca grabbed the screen door handle and pulled it open,
illogically afraid the woman would vanish before she could get to her.
As she rushed inside, she saw a thin, dark-haired woman in a navy
business suit standing next to Miss Sybil. "No!" Francesca exclaimed.
"I'm here! I'm right—"
"What's going on?" a throaty voice drawled. "Hey, how ya doin', Miss
Sybil? I didn't get a chance to
say hi last night. You got any coffee
made?"
Francesca froze in the doorway as Holly Grace Beaudine came down the
stairs, long bare legs stretching out from beneath oise of Dallie's
pale blue dress shirts. She yawned, and Francesca's altruistic feelings
toward her from the night before vanished. Even bare of makeup and with
sleep-tousled hair, she looked extraordinary.
Francesca cleared her throat and stepped into the living room, making
everyone aware of her presence.
The woman in the gray suit audibly gasped. "My God! Those photographs
didn't do you justice." She walked forward, smiling broadly. "Let me be
the first to offer my congratulations to our beautiful new Sassy Girl."
And then she held out her hand to Holly Grace Beaudine.
how we'd go out at night and leave him alone with all those
twelve-year-old baby-sitters. Or drag him along when we couldn't find
anybody to stay with him— prop that little plastic seat of his up in
the corner of some booth in a bar and feed him potato chips, or put
Seven-Up in his bottle if he started to cry. Christ . . ."
Holly Grace shrugged and let go of his arm. "We weren't even nineteen
when Danny was born. Not
much more than kids ourselves. We did the best
we knew how."
"Yeah? Well, it wasn't fucking good enough!"
She ignored his outburst. She had done a better job of coming to terms
with Danny's death than Dallie had, although she still had to look away
when she caught a glimpse of a mother picking up a little towheaded
boy. Halloween was the hardest for Dallie because that was the day
Danny had died, but Danny's birthday was hardest for her. She gazed at
the dark, leafy shapes of the pecan trees and remembered how it had
been that day.
Although it had been exam week at A&M and Dallie had a paper to
write, he was out hustling some cotton farmers on the golf course so
they could buy a crib. When her water had broken, she had been afraid
to go to the hospital by herself so she'd driven to the course in an
old Ford Fairlane she'd borrowed from the engineering student who lived
next door to them. Although she had folded a bath towel to sit on,
she'd still soaked through onto the seat.
The greenskeeper had gone after Dallie and returned with him in less
than ten minutes. When Dallie had seen her leaning against the side of
the Fairlane, wet patches staining her old denim jumper, he had vaulted
out of the electric cart and run over to her. "Shoot, Holly Grace,"
he'd said, "I just drove the green on number eight—landed not three
inches from the cup. Couldn't you have waited a while longer?" Then
he'd laughed and picked her up, wet jumper and all, and held her
against his chest until a contraction made her cry out. "
Thinking about it now, she felt a lump growing in her throat. "Danny
was such a beautiful baby," she whispered to Dallie. "Remember how
scared we were when we brought him home from the hospital?"
His reply was low and tight. "People need a license to keep a dog, but
they let you take a baby out of a hospital without asking a single
question."
She jumped up from the step. "Dammit, Dallie! I want to mourn our baby
boy. I want to mourn him with you tonight, not listen to you turn
everything bitter."
He slumped forward for a moment, his head dropping. "You shouldn't have
come. You know how I get this time of year."
She let the palm of her hand come to rest on the top of his head like a
baptism. "Let Danny go this year."
"Could you let him go if you were the one who'd killed him?"
"I knew about the cistern cover, too."
"And you told me to fix it." He stood up slowly, wandering over to the
porch railing. "You told me twice that the hinge was broken and that
the neighborhood boys kept pulling it off so they could throw stones
down inside. You weren't the one who stayed home with Danny that
afternoon. You weren't the one who was supposed to be watching him."
"Dallie, you were studying. It's not like you were passed out drunk on
the floor when he slipped outside."
She shut her eyes. She didn't want to think about this part—about her
little two-year-old baby boy toddling across the yard to that cistern,
looking down into it with his boundless curiosity. Losing his balance.
Falling forward. She didn't want to imagine that little body struggling
for life in that dank water, crying out. What had her baby thought
about at the end, when all he could see was a circle of light far above
him? Had he thought about her, his mother, who wasn't there to pull him
safely into her arms, or had he thought about his daddy, who kissed him
and roughhoused with him and held him so tight that he wouid squeal?
What had he thought about at that last moment when his small lungs had
filled with water?
Blinking against the sting of tears, she went over to Dallie and
circled his waist from behind. Then she rested her forehead against the
back of his shoulder. "God gives us life as a gift," she said. "We
don't
have any right to add our own conditions."
He began to shudder, and she held on to him as best she could.
* * *
Francesca watched them from the darkness beneath the pecan tree thatstood next to the porch. The night was quiet, and she had heard every
word. She felt sick . . . even worse than when she'd run from the
Roustabout. Her own pain now seemed frivolous compared to theirs. She
hadn't known Dallie at all. She had never seen anything more than the
laughing, wisecracking Texan who refused to take life seriously. He'd
hidden a wife from her . . . the death of his son. As she looked at the
two grief-stricken figures standing on the porch, the intimacy between
them seemed as solid as the old house itself—an intimacy brought about
by living together, by sharing happiness and tragedy. She realized then
that she and Dallie had shared nothing except their bodies, and that
love had depths to it she hadn't even imagined.
Francesca watched as Dallie and Holly Grace disappeared into the house.
For a fraction of a moment,
the very best part of her hoped they would
find some comfort with each other.
* * *
Naomi had never been to Texas before, and if she had anything to sayabout the matter, she would never come here again. As a pickup truck
sped past her in the right lane going at least eighty, she decided that
some people were not meant to venture beyond predictable city traffic
jams and the comforting scent of exhaust being belched out by crawling
yellow cabs. She was a city girl; the open road made her nervous. Or
maybe it wasn't the highway at all. Maybe it was Gerry huddled next to
her in the passenger seat of her rental Cadillac, scowling through the
windshield like an ill-tempered toddler.
When she had returned to her apartment the night before to pack a
suitcase, Gerry had announced that
he was going to Texas with her.
"I've got to get out of this place before I go crazy," he had
exclaimed, thrusting one hand through his hair. "I'm going to Mexico
for a while—live underground. I'll fly to Texas with you tonight—the
cops at the airport won't be looking for a couple traveling
together—and then I'll make
arrangements to cross the border. I've got some friends in Del Rio.
They'll help me. It'll be good
in Mexico. We'll get our movement
reorganized."
She had told him he couldn't go with her, but he refused to listen.
Since she couldn't physically restrain him, she had found herself
boarding the Delta flight to San Antonio with Gerry at her side,
holding her arm.
She stretched in the driver's seat, inadvertently pressing down on the
gas pedal so that the car accelerated slightly. Next to her, Gerry
plunged his hands deep into the pockets of a pair of gray flannel
slacks he'd procured from somewhere. The outfit was supposed to make
him look like a respectable businessman but fell somewhat short of the
mark since he had refused to cut his hair. "Relax," she said. "Nobody's
paid any attention to you since we got here."
"The cops'll never let me get away this easy," he said, glancing
nervously over his shoulder for the hundredth time since they had
pulled out of the hotel garage in San Antonio. "They're playing with
me. They'll let me get. so close to the Mexican border that I can smell
it, and then they'll close in on me. Frigging pigs."
The sixties paranoia. She'd almost forgotten about it. When Gerry had
learned about the FBI wiretaps, he'd believed that every shadow hid a
cop, that every new recruit was an informer, that the mighty J. Edgar
Hoover himself was personally searching for evidence of subversive
activity in the Kotex the women in the anti-war movement tossed into
the garbage. Although at the time there had been reason
for caution, in
the end the fear had been more exhausting than the reality. "Are you
sure the police even care?" Naomi said. "Nobody looked at you twice
when you got on the plane."
He glared at her and she knew that she had insulted him by belittling
his importance as a fugitive—Macho Gerry, the John Wayne of the
radicals. "If I'd been by myself," he said, "they'd have noticed fast
enough."
Naomi wondered. For all Gerry's insistence that the police were out to
get him, they certainly didn't
seem to be looking very hard. It made
her feel strangely sad. She remembered the days when the police had
cared a great deal about the
activities of her brother.
The Cadillac topped a grade, and she saw a sign announcing the city
limits of Wynette. A spurt of excitement went through her. After all
this time, she would finally see her Sassy Girl. She hoped she hadn't
made a mistake by not calling ahead, but she felt instinctively that
this first connection needed to
be made in person. Besides, photographs
sometimes lied. She had to see this girl face to face.
Gerry looked at the digital clock on the dashboard. "It's not even nine
o'clock yet. She's probably still in bed. I don't see why we had to
leave so early."
She didn't bother answering. Nothing ever had any importance to Gerry
except his own mission to save the world single-handedly. She pulled
into a service station and asked for directions. Gerry hunched down in
the seat, hiding himself behind an open road map in case the
pimply-faced kid standing by the gas pumps was really a crack
government agent out to catch Public Enemy Number One.
As she pulled the car back out onto the street, she said, "Gerry,
you're thirty-two years old. Aren't you getting tired of living like
this?"
"I'm not going to sell out, Naomi."
"If you ask me, running off to Mexico comes closer to selling out than
staying around and trying to work inside the system."
"Just shut up about it, will you?"
Was it only her imagination or did Gerry sound less sure of himself?
"You'd be a wonderful lawyer," she pressed on. "Courageous and
incorruptible. Like a medieval knight fighting for justice."
"I'll think about it, okay?" he snapped. "I'll think about it after I
get to Mexico. Remember that you promised to get me over closer to Del
Rio before nightfall."
"God, Gerry, can't you think about anything but yourself?"
He looked at her with disgust. "The world's getting ready to blow
itself up, and all you care about is selling perfume."
She refused to get into another shouting match with him, and they rode
in silence the rest of the way to the house. As Naomi
pulled up in the Cadillac, Gerry glanced nervously over his shoulder
toward the street. When he saw nothing suspicious, he relaxed enough to
lean forward and study the house. "Hey, I like this place." He gestured
toward the painted jackrabbits. "It gives out great vibes."
Naomi gathered up her purse and briefcase. Just as she was getting
ready to open the car door, Gerry caught her arm. "This is important to
you, isn't it, sis?"
"I know you don't understand, Gerry, but I love what I do."
He nodded slowly and then smiled at her. "Good luck, kid."
* * *
The sound of a car door slamming woke Francesca. At first she couldn'tthink where she was, and then she realized that—like an animal going
into a cave to die alone—she had crawled into the back seat of the
Riviera and fallen asleep. Memories of the night before washed over
her, bringing a fresh wave of pain. She straightened and moaned softly
as the muscles in various parts of her body protested her change in
position. The cat, who was curled up on the floor beneath her, lifted
his misshapen head and meowed.
Then she saw the Cadillac.
She caught her breath. For as long as she could remember, big,
expensive cars had always brought wonderful things into her
life—expensive men, fashionable places, glittering parties. An
illogical surge of hope swept through her. Maybe one of her friends had
tracked her down and come to take her back to her old life. She brushed
her hair from her face with a dirty, shaking hand, let herself out of
the car, and walked cautiously around to the front of the house. She
couldn't face Dallie this morning, and she especially couldn't face
Holly Grace. As she crept up the front steps, she told herself not to
get her hopes up, that the car might have brought a magazine writer to
interview Dallie, or even an insurance salesman—but every muscle in her
body felt tense with expectation. She heard an unfamiliar woman's voice
through the open door and stepped to one side so she could listen
unobserved.
". . . have been looking everywhere for her," the woman was saying. "I
was finally able to track her
down through inquiries about Mr.
Beaudine."
"Imagine going to all that trouble just for a magazine advertisement,"
Miss Sybil replied.
"Oh, no," the woman's voice protested. "This is much more important.
Blakemore, Stern, and Rodenbaugh is one of the most important
advertising agencies in Manhattan. We're planning a major campaign to
launch a new perfume, and we need an extraordinarily beautiful woman as
our Sassy Girl. She'll be on television, billboards. She'll make public
appearances all over the country. We plan to make her one of the most
familiar faces in America. Everyone will know about the Sassy Girl."
Francesca felt as if she had just been given back her life. The Sassy
Girl! They were looking for her! A surge of joy pulsed through her
veins like adrenaline as she absorbed the astonishing realization that
she would now be able to walk away from Dallie with her head held high.
This fairy godmother from Manhattan was about to give her back her
self-respect.
"But I'm afraid I don't have any idea where she is," Miss Sybil said.
"I'm sorry to have to disappoint you after you've driven so far, but if
you'll give me your business card, I'll pass it on to Dallas. He'll see
that she gets it."
"No!" Francesca grabbed the screen door handle and pulled it open,
illogically afraid the woman would vanish before she could get to her.
As she rushed inside, she saw a thin, dark-haired woman in a navy
business suit standing next to Miss Sybil. "No!" Francesca exclaimed.
"I'm here! I'm right—"
"What's going on?" a throaty voice drawled. "Hey, how ya doin', Miss
Sybil? I didn't get a chance to
say hi last night. You got any coffee
made?"
Francesca froze in the doorway as Holly Grace Beaudine came down the
stairs, long bare legs stretching out from beneath oise of Dallie's
pale blue dress shirts. She yawned, and Francesca's altruistic feelings
toward her from the night before vanished. Even bare of makeup and with
sleep-tousled hair, she looked extraordinary.
Francesca cleared her throat and stepped into the living room, making
everyone aware of her presence.
The woman in the gray suit audibly gasped. "My God! Those photographs
didn't do you justice." She walked forward, smiling broadly. "Let me be
the first to offer my congratulations to our beautiful new Sassy Girl."
And then she held out her hand to Holly Grace Beaudine.
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