Galveston Read Free

have a new dress made.
    What surprised me most, when the party night came and we assembled in a hall decorated with green bunting and “Welcome Home” banners, was that Damon was far bigger than I remembered, and far more handsome. He had grown a lush red beard during his time away and acquired a deep tan and blazing cheeks. He stood in one corner, telling sea stories, the crowd surrounding him engaged in awed silence followed by rollicking laughter. His voice carried across to where Charles and I stood, in another corner, Charles speaking legal chitchat with an attorney friend.
    I tried to hear the stories coming from behind, while appearing attentive to the conversation taking place in front of me, and finally I urged Charles away and made him take me to meet Damon once again.
    My heart thumped a rhythm to the screech of the fiddle sounding out a square dance tune as we walked nearer and nearer to where he stood. “This is Claire Haines,” said Charles to his brother. “I understand you two have met before.”
    â€œOh, have we?” said Damon, staring at me for a moment.
    â€œYou saved me from a mad dog once, three years back. I never got a chance to say a proper thank-you.”
    He studied me again, then his eyes lit up with recognition. “Of course, how could I forget?” he said, bowing slightly. “Do you still ride around on that magnificent horse?”
    â€œNo, my Sandy took ill and had to be put to death. I haven’t had much interest in replacing him.”
    â€œAh, that’s too bad,” he said, then looked at Charles. “So now I find this pretty little dark-haired woman on the arm of my own brother.…” His eyes drifted off.
    â€œWill you be staying long?” I asked him.
    â€œNo, Charles here can tell you I hate dust storms and dry weather. I soon get a bad case of parched lips,” he ended, looking back at me. I opened my fan in front of my breast and fluttered it slightly.
    â€œWell, we’d better be going,” said Charles, who appeared to see the evening at an end.
    â€œStay around, the party hasn’t even begun,” said Damon as he looped his arms around the waists of the two women nearest him, young sultry types, neither of whom I recognized as residents of Grady.
    â€œOh, I’m quite sure of that,” said Charles, “but I have clients to see in the morning, and they wouldn’t be too happy about paying a lawyer’s fee for a fuzzy head. Good night.”
    Oh, how Charles Becker paled beside his brother.
    I couldn’t sleep that night, nor for many nights after, thinking of Damon, and—despite Betsey’s opinion that I was crazed to dangle a man like Charles Becker from a string around the end of my finger, and my mother’s oft-expressed wish that I’d settle down before her death, for she knew she would not get over the disease that confined her to bed—how he excited me in a way Charles never could.
    Though I knew I ought to quit seeing Charles out of fairness to him and because his slight physical resemblance served only to rekindle my imagined place in Damon’s arms, I couldn’t let Charles go because if I did I’d have no way of learning about Damon’s infrequent visits … might never see him again.
    He did come home once more, at a time when my future in Grady loomed hopelessly lonesome, yet I was still unable to bring myself to take the obvious step and marry Charles. It had been about two years since my mother’s death and a little longer since I’d seen Damon for the second time. In truth I was strongly considering going away alone for a while. I had a little money—enough to get me by so I could do some thinking—and maybe I could find another place to live, meet new people who didn’t know my twenty-sixth birthday would soon be coming and wouldn’t care if they did know. Oh, the small-town tongue-trilling of Grady was getting