Blue Dahlia

wasn’t a one-night stand or anything like that. We liked each other. He used to come in the bookstore, flirt with me. I used to flirt back. When I was alone, he was comforting. He was sweet. Anyway, one thing led to another. He’s a law student. Then he went back to school, and a few weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t know what I was going to do. How I was going to tell him. Or anybody. I put it off for a few more weeks. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
    “And when you did?”
    “I thought I should tell him face-to-face. He hadn’t been coming into the store like he used to. So I went by the college to look him up. Turned out he’d fallen in love with this girl. He was a little embarrassed to tell me, seeing as we’d been sleeping together. But it wasn’t like we’d made each other any promises, or been in love or anything. We’d just liked each other, that’s all. And when he talked about this other girl, he got all lit up. You could just see how crazy he was about her. So I didn’t tell him about the baby.”
    She hesitated, then took one of the cookies Stella had arranged on a plate. “I can’t resist sweets. After I’d thought about it, I didn’t see how telling him would do any of us any good.”
    “That was a very hard decision,” Roz told her.
    “I don’t know that it was. I don’t know what I expected him to do when I went to tell him, except I thought he had a right to know. I didn’t want to marry him or anything. I wasn’t even sure, back that far, that I was going to keep the baby.”
    She nibbled on the cookie while she rubbed a hand gently over the mound of her belly. “I guess that’s one of the reasons I went out there, to talk to him. Not just to tell him about it, but to see what he thought we should do. But sitting with him, listening to him go on about this girl—”
    She stopped, shook her head. “I needed to decide what to do about it. All telling him would’ve done was made him feel bad, or resentful or scared. Mess up his life when all he’d really tried to do was help me through a bad time.”
    “And that left you alone,” Stella pointed out.
    “If I’d told him, I still would’ve been alone. The thing is, when I decided I’d keep the baby, I thought about telling him again, and asked some people how he was doing. He was still with that girl, and they were talking about getting married, so I think I did the right thing. Still, once I started to show, there was a lot of gossip and questions, a lot of looks and whispers. And I thought, What we need is a fresh start. So I sold the house and just about everything in it. And here I am.”
    “Looking for that fresh start,” Roz concluded.
    “I’m looking for a job.” She paused, moistened her lips. “I know how to work. I also know a lot of people would step back from hiring a woman nearly six months along. Family, even distant, through-marriage sort of family, might be a little more obliging.”
    She cleared her throat when Roz said nothing. “I studied literature and business in college. I graduated with honors. I’ve got a solid employment record. I’ve got money—not a lot. My partial scholarship didn’t cover everything, and my daddy was a teacher, so he didn’t make much. But I’ve got enough to take care of myself, to pay rent, buy food, pay for this baby. I need a job, any kind of a job for now. You’ve got your business, you’ve got this house. It takes a lot of people to help run those. I’m asking for a chance to be one of them.”
    “Know anything about plants, about gardening?”
    “We put in flower beds every year. Daddy and I split the yard work. And what I don’t know, I can learn. I learn quick.”
    “Wouldn’t you rather work in a bookstore? Hayley managed an independent bookstore back home,” Roz told Stella.
    “You don’t own a bookstore,” Hayley pointed out. “I’ll work without pay for two weeks.”
    “Someone works for me, she gets paid. I’ll be hiring the seasonal help in a few weeks. In the meantime ... Stella, can you use her?”
    “Ah ...” Was she supposed to look at that young face and bulging belly and say no? “What were your responsibilities as manager?”
    “I wasn’t, like, officially the manager. But that’s what I did, when you come down to it. It was a small operation, so I did some of everything. Inventory, buying, customer relations, scheduling, sales, advertising. Just the bookstore end of it. There was a