I hear the line on the other end click.

A FEW NIGHTS LATER, after a riveting afternoon answering Miss Myrna letters, Stuart and I sit in the relaxing room. I’m glad to see him and to eradicate, for a while, the deadly silence of the house. We sit quietly, watching television. A Tareyton ad comes on, the one where the girl smoking the cigarette has a black eye—Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!

Stuart and I have been seeing each other once a week now. We went to a movie after Christmas and once to dinner in town, but usually he comes out to the house because I don’t want to leave Mother. He is hesitant around me, kind of respectfully shy. There is a patience in his eyes that replaces my own panic that I felt with him before. We don’t talk about anything serious. He tells me stories about the summer, during college, he spent working on the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. The showers were saltwater. The ocean was crystal clear blue to the bottom. The other men were doing this brutal work to feed their families while Stuart, a rich kid with rich parents, had college to go back to. It was the first time, he said, he’d really had to work hard.

“I’m glad I drilled on the rig back then. I couldn’t go off and do it now,” he’d said, like it was ages ago and not five years back. He seems older than I remember.

“Why couldn’t you do it now?” I asked, because I am looking for a future for myself. I like to hear about the possibilities of others.

He furrowed his brow at me.“Because I couldn’t leave you.”

I tucked this away, afraid to admit how good it was to hear it.

The commercial is over and we watch the news report. There is a skirmish in Vietnam. The reporter seems to thinks it’ll be solved without much fuss.

“Listen,” Stuart says after a while of silence between us. “I didn’t want to bring this up before but . . . I know what people are saying in town. About you. And I don’t care. I just want you to know that.”

My first thought isthe book. He’s heard something. My entire body goes tense. “What did you hear?”

“You know. About that trick you played on Hilly.”

I relax some, but not completely. I’ve never talked to anyone about this except Hilly herself. I wonder if Hilly ever called him like she’d threatened.

“And I could see how people would take it, think you’re some kind of crazy liberal, involved in all that mess.”

I study my hands, still wary of what he might have heard, and a little irritated too.“How do you know,” I ask, “what I’m involved in?”

“Because I know you, Skeeter,” he says softly. “You’re too smart to get mixed up in anything like that. And I told them, too.”

I nod, try to smile. Despite what he thinks he“knows” about me, I can’t help but appreciate that someone out there cares enough to stand up for me.

“We don’t have to talk about this again,” he says. “I just wanted you to know. That’s all.”

ON SATURDAY EVENING, I say good night to Mother. I have a long coat on so she can’t see my outfit. I keep the lights off so she can’t comment on my hair. Very little has changed with her health. She doesn’t seem to be getting any worse—the vomiting is still at bay—but her skin is grayish white. Her hair has started to fall out. I hold her hands, brush her cheek.

“Daddy, you’ll call the restaurant if you need me?”

“I will, Skeeter. Go have some fun.”

I get in Stuart’s car and he takes me to the Robert E. Lee for dinner. The room is gaudy with gowns, red roses, silver service clinking. There is excitement in the air, the feeling that things are almost back to normal since President Kennedy died; 1964 is a fresh, new year. The glances our way are abundant.

“You look . . . different,” Stuart says. I can tell he’s been holding in this comment all night, and he seems more confused than impressed. “That dress, it’s so . . . short.”