Frederica Virginia Gentry

Frederica Virginia Gentry, known in childhood as Picky and later as Ricky, is both Pete’s early caretaker and Dan Davis’s most trusted confidante. Her significance lies in the continuity of a childhood bond: Dan entrusts her with his cat and, when he fears he may lose control of his company, arranges for her to receive his Hired Girl, Inc. shares. She remains a point of trust across the distance between childhood and adulthood, and across Dan’s plans for sleep and survival.

Identity and Background

Ricky is the daughter of Miles Gentry’s late wife. After Miles was recalled to duty, he lived off post with a family in Albuquerque so that his stepdaughter would have a home. Dan’s account calls her “Little Picky,” a childhood name he says they used instead of Frederica. As a young girl, she became part of Dan’s household orbit through Pete: while Dan was away, she looked after the cat, and she accompanied Miles on the seventy-two-hour period when the Six Weeks War began.

Dan remembers Ricky as a child with whom he shared responsibility for Pete. Their relationship included a make-believe promise that he would marry her when she grew up and that they would both take care of the cat. Dan thought of this as a game, and believed that its appeal to Ricky might have been the prospect of full custody of Pete. Yet he could not know how seriously she understood the arrangement. The uncertainty matters to his recollection: he recognizes that the promise was not necessarily as casual to her as it was to him.

Childhood Bond with Dan and Pete

Dan describes Ricky as quiet and dignified, unlike the noisy or physically demonstrative children he disliked. She liked Pete and treated him properly, a practical measure of character that Dan valued. He also says he did not talk down to her and took her Brownie activities seriously, in part because he remembered resenting condescension when he was a child. Their friendship was therefore made of ordinary, repeated forms of regard: taking her interests seriously and sharing the care of the cat.

The childhood marriage game faded for Dan after his mother and sister were killed in the bombing. He says he did not make a conscious decision to stop; he simply no longer felt like joking and never resumed it. Ricky was seven at the time. By the time Belle joined Dan and Miles’s household, Ricky was ten, or possibly eleven by the time Dan and Belle became engaged. Dan noticed that Ricky hated Belle, though she expressed it chiefly by reluctance to speak to her. Belle read this as shyness, and Dan thought Miles did too. Ricky’s reserve concealed a force of feeling that the adults around her did not all recognize.

Trust and the Stock Arrangement

Later, after Dan has been hurt by a woman he had trusted, he distinguishes Ricky from that experience. He has known her for half her life and considers her honest; Pete, too, seems to approve of her. When Dan escapes a traffic jam in Sepulveda Tunnel, he stops at a drugstore and buys stationery and envelopes to write to her. He addresses her as “Dear Rikki-tikki-tavi,” reviving the intimacy of her childhood nickname as he asks her to keep an inner envelope secret between them.

The letter marks a decisive change in Dan’s intentions. Thinking through the possibility that he might die before the envelope reached her, he realizes he has decided against cold sleep: rather than run away, he will stay and fight. The stock certificate inside gives him the right to inspect the company’s books and affairs, and he sees it as his strongest means of resisting another attempt to exclude him. Ricky is not merely a recipient of a keepsake; his confidence in her helps him secure the document that can preserve his ability to act.

On December 3, 1970, in Los Angeles, Dan writes a separate assignment transferring his Hired Girl, Inc. shares to the Bank of America in trust for Frederica Virginia Gentry, to be reassigned to her on her twenty-first birthday. He makes the assignment for one dollar and other valuable considerations and includes the legal descriptions and serial numbers of the shares. The arrangement is designed to ensure that Ricky receives the stock if anything happens to him, while preventing Miles and Belle from taking it from her. Dan avoids using the assignment form printed on the back of the certificate, so that if he survives and later asks Ricky to return the envelope, he can simply tear up the separate paper rather than involve a minor in reversing a formal assignment.

Pete, Separation, and Significance

When Dan is being taken to the Consolidated Sanctuary at Sawtelle, he has been made sleepy and is told he will wake upon arrival. He asks where Pete is and remembers that the cat was meant to sleep with him. Belle tells him that he sent Pete to stay with Ricky and that she will care for him. Dan accepts the explanation with relief: he believes Ricky loves Pete and will look after him while he sleeps. Even in his confused state, the memory of the cat’s safety with Ricky gives him reassurance.

Ricky’s role is defined by care and trust rather than by formal power. As a child she looks after Pete; later Dan places both the cat and a substantial financial safeguard in her keeping. The stock assignment turns their childhood association into a concrete provision for her future, while Dan’s confidence in her contrasts with his fear that Miles and Belle might seize control. Her presence links affection to practical action: she is the person Dan trusts to protect what he cannot carry with him into sleep.