“Buddy, you better take good care o’ Dellie while you’re over there in Shreveport--"

“I will, Mother.”

“I know you will, Buddy, but I hafta tell ya anyway. I just don’t know what I’d do if somethin’ ever happened to her.”

“I won’t let nothin’ happen to her, Mother. I’ll guard her with my life.”

“You best, Buddy Cavanaugh, ‘r there’ll be hell to pay.”

Buddy laughed as he slammed the Chevy door. “There ain’t nothin’ in the world like the wrath of a Rosalind woman,” he said.

“You got that right,” Mother said, and she waved high in the air as Buddy guided the car back down the pine-lined lane onto the narrow road that led out to the highway.

“You’re well loved,” Matthew said, and Adele knew he was speaking to her.

A chill shuddered through her, and she cranked the window closed.

“How do I look, Buddy?” she asked. She couldn’t remember the last time she dressed herself up to go anywhere. Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t been outside the Baskin city limits in at least two years. The last time she ventured beyond Franklin Parish, she’d gone to Monroe to pick up some costly lace Mother had ordered from a lace-maker over in Texas. Back then, Helen traveled with her wherever she went, but Adele could not recall anything about the trip to Monroe.

“You’re the prettiest thing in Baskin,” Buddy smiled.

“Just Baskin?” Adele said.

“Course not, Dellie. Baskin and Roe and Shreveport...all o’ North Louisiana.”

“South Louisiana, too?” she asked.

Matthew leaned forward from the backseat. “Buddy, you obviously hadn’t seen many women in your lifetime.”

“As if you have,” Buddy quipped.

“I have,” Matthew said evenly. “And your sister....”

He paused for a long time. The sound of gravel flying under the wheels drew out the moment like a band of black taffy, and tall cattails beat by with the seconds.

Adele’s lips burned, and her breath grew thin. Her heart racked her body as it thundered in her chest, and she would’ve given anything at that moment to turn to see Matthew’s face.

She didn’t need to see his face, however, to know he was staring right through her. She felt the weight of his gaze like the heavy hand of twenty-four years’ worth of loneliness, and she admitted to herself she loved this man.

“She’s Hellenic,” Matthew said too softly for Buddy to hear. But Adele heard him, and for many years since that evening, his two words would serve as a radiant point of reference.

#

The Harbor Pearl was alive that night. Stylish black Fords crowded the parking lot, and groups of fashionable gentlemen and young ladies made their way to the bulb-lit entrance of the dance hall.

Excitement and fear suddenly clutched Adele, and she took a moment to view reflection in the Chevy window before she joined Buddy and Matthew at the front of the car.

She wore her hair long, though that was contrary to the high style. Other women cropped their locks even with their chin, or rolled their short coifs into wooly-tight caps of curls that did not fall below their earlobes.

Adele’s cherrywood hair hung past her shoulderblades in thick waves. Mother had taken the time to help her wrap lock after lock around hot iron rollers. When they first let her hair down, large spirals of red cascaded down her back, but that didn’t last long. The sheer weight of her hair pulled the curls all but out, and at the window in Shreveport, what was left of the style was gentle rivulets of auburn.

Her hair was not stylish as hair went in Shreveport, but Adele was not the least bit disappointed. Matthew said she was “Hellenic,” and so that must mean something much more lovely than beautiful.

She’d chosen a rust-colored Georgette dress Mother had made. She tightened the bow of the brown satin sash around her waist, and she smoothed the butterfly-wing sleeves and collar. Again, she wore the dove-gray heels Mother had given her, and again, she stepped carefully over the gravel and grass as she made her way to where Buddy and Matthew waited.

A doorman in a charcoal pinstriped suit stood at the entrance and nodded the patrons past. When Adele moved in close behind Buddy at the door, the doorman glanced over the men, then at her, his eyes lingering for a moment before he flashed a silver tooth and stepped back to allow them in.

They stepped into the hall, and for Adele, it was as if they stepped into another world. Brassy music crashed and collided on the stage, and the gold shine of instruments cast an instant spell. Enormous chandelier hung from the ceiling like spider-spun clusters of glass web, and the light beamed and fragmented through the prisms and onto the glittering gems on the throats of the ladies, and on the snowflake sequins encasing their thin bodies.

Adele had not a gem or a sequin anywhere, but she felt no more out-of-place, for there were thick drapes of velvet shrouding the outer halls, a heavy carpet of blood-red encircling the dance floor, and lips all around of the deepest ruby. Adele felt perfectly synchronized, lush, rust, and sublime.

A waiter appeared with a tray filled with champagne glasses. “Drink for the lady,” he asked.

Buddy became animated. “Thank you, sir. And for me and my man here, too.” He retrieved a glass and put it into Adele’s delicate hand. “You should have no problem putting this away, dear,” he grinned.

Adele touched the glass to her lips, but Matthew lightly touched her wrist. “A toast,” he said. “What shall it be?” Buddy asked.

“To the South!” Matthew shouted, raising his glass high into the air.

“Hear, hear!” Buddy and Adele laughed heartily and drank to the South.

“To whiskey on Mother’s porch!” Buddy cried, and they drank to whiskey on Mother’s porch.

Adele lowered her head and thought for a moment, turning the glass on its stem in her fingertips. “To my dear, dear brother, for coming back to me in the bloom of Spring.”

They humbly raised their glasses, beaming. “Hear, hear,” they said with pride and conviction. And they all drank to Buddy’s return.