She's Up to No Good(24)

“Thanks.”

“Give your mother my love,” Grandma said.

“I will. It was nice to meet you, Jenna.”

“You too,” I said through a mouth that felt full of cotton.

Once the door closed, I turned back to my grandmother. “You know his family?”

She gave me that same look, as if I had just said something too bizarre to fathom. “Of course I know his family. He’s Tony’s great-nephew.”





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


July 1950


Hereford, Massachusetts


Evelyn tiptoed up the porch stairs, avoiding the third step to Bernie’s cottage, which creaked. Shutting the door silently behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief in the darkness, only to gasp at the sound of a match striking, the small flame illuminating her brother lighting a cigarette in the sitting room that opened off the front hallway.

Bernie took a drag and exhaled slowly. “You’re up late.”

“I was helping Gertie with the baby.”

“No, you weren’t.”

Exasperated, Evelyn flounced into the dark room and flopped onto the sofa across from her brother. “What do you want, Bernie?”

“So defensive,” he murmured, flipping on the lamp next to him. “It is a boy, then?”

“Look, Papa knows. It’s fine.”

“Does he know you’re out until all hours of the night with him and lying about where you’re sleeping?”

“I’m not lying about where I’m sleeping. I come home every night. I’m just lying about where I am before bed.”

“You’re only sixteen—”

“Seventeen. Almost eighteen. Vivie is sixteen.”

“Do you know how embarrassing it would be for the family if you got pregnant?” Evelyn glowered at him. “I’d hope with three older sisters, you’d know enough to stay out of trouble, but it is you we’re talking about.”

“I’m not getting into trouble!”

“If Papa knew, and you weren’t doing anything wrong, you wouldn’t be sneaking around, would you?”

“Papa does know. Mama doesn’t.”

Bernie looked at her contemplatively, processing this piece of information. He admittedly did not always see eye to eye with their father. But he had assumed it was Joseph, not Miriam, who was so adamant that the girls not date before college. Then again, everyone knew Evelyn had their father wrapped around her little finger.

Evelyn stayed completely still under her brother’s gaze, refusing to give up anything after letting that slip about their mother.

“Who is he, then? I assume Papa knows that much.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know who this boy is who takes my sister out and doesn’t come meet her family.” A realization crossed his face, and Evelyn’s stomach dropped. He had figured it out. There was no one in town Bernie didn’t know. And had Tony been Jewish, there would have been conversations between the two families. “Evelyn,” he said quietly. “What have you done?”

“I haven’t done anything! Good grief, you’re acting like I’m the Whore of Babylon out here. He’s a good boy. He’s just not Jewish.”

“Papa doesn’t know that part, clearly.”

“Yes, he does, Bernie. You can ask him yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“And how will Mama feel about it?”

“Don’t you dare.”

Bernie stroked his chin as he thought, saying nothing for long enough that Evelyn realized her life was about to become more difficult.

“Tell me who it is.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to pay him a visit.”

“You’ll do no such thing.”

“It’s that or I’ll tell Mama. Your choice.”

Evelyn glared at her eldest brother again. “What are you going to say?”

Bernie grinned. “Don’t you trust your big brother?”

“Clearly not. I might do better with Mama.”

He laughed loudly enough that Evelyn shushed him, afraid he’d wake the house. The battles between Evelyn and her mother were legendary. “Evie, you’re a child still. I’m going to make sure he is the good boy that you say he is and find out what his intentions are. Maybe scare a little sense into him.”

“He doesn’t need any sense scared into him.”

“If he thinks he can handle you, he does. And you’re impossible to scare. One of you has to be the smart one.”

She swore quietly, mostly because she knew he didn’t approve of her doing so. Saying she was impossible to scare was a compliment, after all. Then she sighed and capitulated. “Tony Delgado.” His face softened slightly in recognition. “But if you do anything to him, I swear before God and all the prophets—”

“I’m a thirty-year-old man with a family and he’s a teenager who works on the docks. You think I’d hurt him?”

She looked at her brother, who wasn’t large or physically intimidating, but he was smart. In another life, he would have been the lawyer or banker their mother had hoped for instead of owning a clothing store in town. And she was under no illusions about the fact that he could scare Tony if he chose to.