six or seven when he started calling her that. He used to love to tease his June bug.”
“I think they might have always loved each other,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “And if Curt is still worried about a word on a calendar, there’s hope.”
Mrs. Hargrove smiled. It was time to plant her pansies. She’d wait until the seeds were sprouted to ask Doris June to come help her. She didn’t want her daughter to fret about this trip for any longer than necessary, and fret she would, especially when she realized that the pansies were being grown on land Curt was now leasing.
In the meantime, there were things to do.
It wouldn’t hurt for Doris June to do some shopping before she came. Of course, she’d never go shopping for herself if her mother suggested it. No, Mrs. Hargrove decided, the only thing to do was to ask Doris June to go shopping for something for her mother.
Doris June would love that. She had never liked the gingham housedresses that Mrs. Hargrove usually wore. Of course, the housedresses were perfectly fine. They were easy to wash and most of them had a zipper in the front so Mrs. Hargrove didn’t need to fumble with buttons when her arthritis was acting up.
Besides, in Mrs. Hargrove’s opinion, Doris June had no right to complain about the fashion of others, not when all she ever seemed to wear were business suits. It was a frustration to a mother when she had a daughter as beautiful as Doris June, who seemed determined to hide that fact from everyone.
To begin with, Doris June had good bones and good posture. She stood tall and confident. Her hair was a honey-blond and she didn’t make the mistake of bleaching it lighter, hoping it would become that Hollywood blond that actresses seemed to favor. Doris June’s skin was clear and her blue eyes looked straight ahead at life. She didn’t wear much makeup, but she didn’t need to.
Doris June was a classically featured woman. Sometimes, though, Mrs. Hargrove worried that her daughter didn’t look as young as she should. Before all of that elopement business, Doris June had looked like every other teenage girl. She’d bounced. She’d chattered. She’d even worn some kind of bright blue fingernail polish at the time. But after the elopement—well, Doris June just didn’t seem the same. She stiffened up.
She walked instead of bouncing. She was patient and long-suffering. Mrs. Hargrove couldn’t help but notice that her daughter had started to dress like an old lady. Not that she wore housedresses like Mrs. Hargrove did. She would never do that. But Doris June stopped wearing anything that seemed youthful. She still had all the looks she needed to grab the attention of any man she wanted. It’s just that, once she had their attention, they were more likely to think of her as a good neighbor or a good employer than a romantic partner.
Mrs. Hargrove decided it was too late to worry about the bouncing. At forty-two, Doris June would have outgrown that by now anyway. But Mrs. Hargrove figured she could do something about the suits Doris June always wore. She had suits in black, gray, and navy, and she wore them with white blouses. She always looked crisp, but even Mrs. Hargrove knew clothes like that encouraged a man to think of a tax audit rather than a candlelight dinner.
Mrs. Hargrove felt too guilty to ever talk to Doris June about the kind of clothes she wore, but a mother noticed certain things even if she didn’t know what to do about them. Maybe she could do something now, though, if she had Doris June go shopping for her. If she wanted to get Doris June to buy some new clothes for herself, she had to get her into different stores than the ones where she usually shopped, so she wouldn’t ask her to buy more gingham dresses. No, she’d ask Doris June to get her a spring dress or two that had some style.
While she was there, Doris June might even pick up some high heels for herself. It wouldn’t hurt to remind Curt that Doris June had nice legs.
Yes, Mrs. Hargrove thought, this just might work.
Chapter Two
Doris June Hargrove looked up from the contracts she had in front of her. She managed the advertising traffic in the main television station in Anchorage and she often had ad contracts on her desk. Usually, she knew exactly what contracts were in front of her, but ever since the telephone call from her mother two hours ago she hadn’t been able to concentrate.
She had suspected for months that something was wrong with her mother. After Christmas, her mother had sounded depressed in their twice-weekly telephone calls and then, in the last couple of months, her mother had sounded too cheerful. Doris June asked her mother if the doctor had given her any new prescriptions and her mother had said no, so Doris June decided her mother must have just had cabin fever and was growing happier as spring started to take hold in Dry Creek.
Doris June hadn’t spent a winter in Dry Creek for years, but she remembered the bitter cold well enough to understand how her mother’s mood might improve as everything started to thaw. Even Anchorage tended to be milder than southern Montana in some winters.
Of course, the winter wouldn’t explain everything. Her mother still wasn’t eating right. These days, if Doris June asked her mother what she’d had for lunch, her mother would say she had a can of soup; and she wouldn’t even know what kind of soup it was. That wasn’t like her mother.
Doris June wished she had a penny for every time her mother had told her that there was too much salt and too little nutrition in canned soup and that it didn’t take much time or trouble to make a pot of vegetable soup so there was no excuse for just opening a can.
It was the endless cans of soup that made Doris June start to worry that her mother was sick. But then, in this latest call, her mother had asked Doris June to go shopping before she flew home. She had already bought a ticket for May tenth at her mother’s request so she didn’t see any problem in picking up a few things for her mother.
Doris June had shopped for her mother before and knew just where to find the housedresses that her mother liked. She even knew the colors her mother liked; they never varied. Nothing about her mother’s wardrobe varied. But this time her mother didn’t want a gingham house dress; she wanted a frilly, spring dress.
“In cotton?” Doris June had asked, bewildered.
“No, cotton’s too plain.”
Cotton’s too plain, Doris June had wondered if she’d heard right. Her mother swore by cotton. It’s all she ever wanted to wear except for an old wool suit that she brought out for weddings and funerals. She’d never asked for anything else.
“I’m thinking of some of that floaty material you see people wearing in magazines these days,” her mother continued.
“You mean like chiffon?”
“Yeah, something like that,” her mother said. “Something that swishes and swirls when you turn. In some pretty colors. Maybe rose or violet.”
“You mean like the stuff they use when they make prom dresses?”
“Yeah, that would work.”
“It doesn’t sound very durable,” Doris June said. And what had happened to navy gingham housedresses with zippers?
“Well, goodness, we don’t always need to be practical. A woman needs a pretty dress or two. And buy something for yourself while you’re at it—something that isn’t a suit. Something that floats.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to come home before the tenth?” Doris June asked after a moment. Her mother had already asked her to come and help with the traditional Mother’s Day pansies in church. Doris June didn’t understand why her mother needed help with a few plants, but if her mother asked for help, Doris June would drop everything to go. She had a plane reservation to leave next Tuesday, but she could change her plans.
“Oh, don’t come early.” Her mother sounded alarmed. “We won’t be ready for you.”
“We?”
“Well, Charley’s going to help me start the baskets. I won’t need your help until the tenth.”
Doris