Behold, This Dreamer by Charlotte Miller

Author:Charlotte Miller [Miller, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Behold This Dreamer, NewSouth Books, Charlotte Miller, fiction, The South, romance, heartbreak
ISBN: 9781603062640
Publisher: NewSouth Inc.
Published: 2001-07-24T04:00:00+00:00

14

Phyllis Ann Bennett lounged back against the rough bark of a pine tree in the midst of the picnic grounds that morning, ignoring the stares of the old women who sat nearby on chairs pulled beneath its shade. She bit into the large apple that was the last remnants of the picnic lunch she had shared with Bullock Calhoun before she had managed to so recently, and quite intentionally, lose track of him—Bullock would never have been her first choice in a man, with his thinning red hair and his great, sweeping mustache that made him look as if he were part of another century; but he had been the only man to have asked her to the picnic, and to the dance afterward.

And she knew whose fault that was.

The wind lifted a lock of her bobbed brown hair and blew it into her eyes, and she brushed it away absently, staring out across the picnic grounds toward where J.C. Cooper stood talking to Stan Whitley, the older boy continuously fidgeting with his eyeglasses—Elise’s fiancé, or so she had been hearing. But, then again, she had always known the two of them would get together one day, in spite of all Elise’s protests to the contrary. J.C.—James Calvin—she smiled to herself, the weak fool. He was the only kind of man who would ever be interested in Elise, if he could even be called a man, the only kind of man Elise would ever be able to have—if she ever had any man at all. Elise probably thought she had her future all planned—

But, then again, Elise was so seldom right about anything these days.

Too bad—Phyllis Ann thought, smiling to herself. This was the end of Elise Whitley always getting what she wanted. Elise would not be a bride this year or any other—not if it was the last thing she ever did. The very last thing.

Phyllis Ann laughed to herself, drawing peculiar stares from the old women who sat nearby. She tossed the apple aside with only the one bite taken from it, and then started across the picnic grounds, leaving the shade of the pine tree to the old women beneath it.

The air in the basement of Town Hall was thick with tobacco smoke that night. People moved about the crowded room, laughing and talking in a hundred different conversations, often trying to shout over the loud jazz music that came from the Atlanta musicians on the raised platform that dominated one corner of the room. Young couples danced, while others flirted outrageously in odd corners, and still others slipped outside through the sets of large, double doors that opened out onto the area behind Town Hall, hoping for the privacy that the night, and the parked cars, might provide them.

Young flappers in straight, shapeless dresses that barely even touched their knees danced and carried on and strolled about the edges of the room, flirting with first this boy then that, teasing and laughing and then moving on.

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