She's Up to No Good(62)

Evelyn felt something tighten in her chest every time he brought the subject up. There had never been a situation where she couldn’t manage her father. But this—this was different. She was confident she could gain forgiveness. But a blessing would never come. It was somehow the one subject she couldn’t make Tony budge on either—and she had tried every trick in her arsenal, including attempting to extract a promise to elope during an exceptionally compromising moment. Even that failed.

Her only hope was that when Joseph rejected him, he would change his mind rather than lose her. But if he didn’t . . . The thought was too much to bear. Evelyn feared nothing except that the two men she loved most would be incapable of meeting in the middle for the sake of her—the woman they both loved most. No, it was better to keep to the status quo for as long as she could get away with it.

Finally the weather turned hot, and Miriam brought Evelyn and Vivie to the cottages to clean and outfit the beds with linens, the bathrooms with towels, and the kitchens with food.

Vivie slipped something into Evelyn’s hand when Miriam climbed the stairs with an armful of towels. “Yours, I presume?” she asked archly. Evelyn looked down at her palm. It was a cigarette butt.

“I should have done a sweep before Mama got here.”

“We’ll blame Sam if there’s anything else.”

Evelyn smiled. “Like that wet mop he’s marrying would ever do anything as interesting as meeting him here alone. Honestly, what does he see in her?” Their wedding was set for the end of the summer. Evelyn fantasized about bringing Tony as her fiancé to the wedding. It was just a dream, and she knew it. But if she could get him to elope— Vivie was shaking her head. “She’s not that bad.”

“I had lunch with her in Boston. She doesn’t have a single opinion of her own.”

“Sam likes to be the exciting one, I guess.”

“He’d still be the exciting one even if he married someone with a little gumption.”

“She’s a good girl,” Miriam said from behind them. Both girls jumped. “You could take a lesson from that,” she said to Evelyn, whose toes curled in her shoes but her face stayed steady. Miriam didn’t know anything, Evelyn decided, studying her mother. She was just fishing to see if she got a reaction that she could learn something from.

“I’m as good as gold,” Evelyn said. “Honestly, Mama, you always suspect me of being so much worse than I am.”

“I’ve known you since before you were born,” Miriam said tiredly. “I know exactly who you are.”

Even though Miriam couldn’t know about Tony, a chill went through Evelyn as she looked into her mother’s eyes, which somehow missed nothing. And she realized that even if by some miracle Joseph was won over, the more formidable obstacle might be standing in front of her now.





Bernie’s family moved into his cottage, Helen and her brood into the other along with Miriam and Margaret. Gertie came every weekend with her children in tow. Sam took up residence in Bernie’s house, and Evelyn and Vivie once again crowded in wherever there was a bed for them at night.

But unlike the previous summer, finding time to see Tony was difficult. As one of the newest officers, he frequently worked night shifts. But with everyone together during the day, Evelyn’s absence was noticeable the one time she snuck off—she blamed it on cramps and needing to lie down, but there were only so many days a month she could use that excuse.

Each day, the entire clan gathered for the beach together—an ordeal with seven children under nine years old. Mornings were an assembly line of first breakfast, then preparing stacks of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, which were stuffed back into the bags that the loaves of bread came in for lunches, filling canteens of water, packing the towels and blankets that had spent the night airing on the railings of the cottage porches, dressing the children in their bathing suits, and waddling down to the beach, loaded up with chairs and blankets and toys, like a line of baby ducklings.

Joseph spent more and more time at the cottage as well, leaving the store in the care of his two clerks to enjoy the hard-earned fruits of his labor with his ever-expanding family.

Evelyn’s time with Tony was then limited to the mercy of his nights off—and even then, the beach was no longer safe. Sam had taken to bringing Louise out for bonfires, which her older siblings frequently joined them around once the children were in bed. Now, when she snuck down the road to his waiting car, they had to find other places to go.

“Evelyn,” Tony said. They had driven out to the woods off the Ipswich Road and were sitting on a boulder together with a lantern. If the woods were haunted, the spirits didn’t bother them.

She sighed heavily at the tone of his voice. He didn’t need to say it. “I know.”

“This week?”

For a long moment she said nothing. Then, quietly, “If he says no, they won’t let me see you. What then?”

He wrapped his arms around her. “We wait. And he’ll see how unhappy you are. And then we try again. He likes me.”

“He likes you. But that doesn’t mean he wants you as his son-in-law. He’s still got one foot in the old country.”

“And one foot here. Remember that.”

She nodded, then leaned against him.