Don't Forget to Write: A Novel(47)

I blinked rapidly. “Excuse me?”

“We were friends, yes. And I suppose I loved him. But it wasn’t passion and fireworks—it was a shidduch.”

“A what?”

“‘A what?’” Ada mimicked. “A match.”

I stared at her. “Your parents hired a matchmaker for you?”

She shook her head. “No. It was informal. Our parents agreed on it and told us we were getting married. I was happy, as things went. They could have picked someone far worse for me. Plenty of my friends wound up with much older widowers who could provide for them.”

She plucked at the blanket on the back of the sofa. “When Abner died—well, I told my parents I wanted more time. And that more time kept growing until suddenly I was an old maid. And according to my father, too ornery to make a good wife.”

I made a sour face at the idea of her father saying that. Although it was something my father would say as well.

“Wrinkles,” Ada said, tapping my forehead. “He didn’t mean it like that. He was fine with my choice as long as I was happy. And he helped me train to be a nurse. I cried far more when he died than when Abner did, I’ll tell you that much. Papa was—Papa was born out of time, I think. He would have been down South fighting for civil rights if he were alive now.” She looked at me. “He’d have loved you.”

I knew almost nothing about my great-grandparents, but there was something comforting in knowing he would have approved of me. Especially now.

“You said you’d been in love though—if not with Abner, then with who?”

“That’s enough for today.” She opened her book to end the conversation.

I shook my head, picking up my own book, pretending to read while actually studying her, spinning a tale about her tragic past in my head. “Are you going to read that book or not?” she asked. I never understood how she could know what I was doing without looking at me, but she always did.

Sticking my tongue out at her, I flipped the book facedown on the sofa and stood, stretching out the crick in my back from sitting for so long, then shuffled down the hall to the bathroom.

When I wiped, a streak of blood came away on the toilet paper.

I put my head in my hands, my elbows on my legs, near tears in relief.

Before I went to get a sanitary pad, I returned to the living room. Ada looked up anxiously as I approached—the first sign I had seen that she was actually worried. I shook my head, smiling widely. “We’re in the clear.”

Ada sank back against the couch cushions, closing her eyes. “Thank goodness for small favors,” she said. Then she looked at me. “Do you feel better?”

“Much.”

“Good,” she said, rising. “But you’re out of the business now.”

“What?”

“You broke the rules. And I don’t tolerate that. Don’t worry. There are plenty of other ways I’ll put you to work. But you’re out.”

She strode past me to the kitchen, humming softly, and I stared after her.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


When Ada’s clients returned on Tuesday, I was banished from the living room. “I can at least show them in,” I argued.

“You can stay out of sight is what you can do,” Ada replied. “I don’t care if that means upstairs or out of the house entirely, but I meant what I said: you’re out.”

I skulked upstairs and sat at my dressing table-turned-writing-desk, huffing loudly and staring out the window. There was no way to return to what I had been writing. I couldn’t quite throw it away though either. Instead, I shoved the pages onto the shelf at the back of the closet and put a new sheet of paper in the typewriter.

But I could feel the old story behind me. Almost like it was calling my name.

It was too close to real life—I could see that now.

Sighing, I leaned my head in my hand, elbow on the table, thinking with disgust how readily Freddy would have thrown that poor girl off if he could live off my family’s money instead of his family’s. He might have been able to doom that child to the stigma of growing up fatherless, but I couldn’t do that. And the assumption that I would marry him because of this, with no consideration of my repeatedly saying I didn’t want to get married. And that my parents would support us—he had never even met them. Did he expect my father to support his child with another woman too? Literally everything was about what he wanted. His choices. His decisions. Where was I? Did I matter at all? Or was I just a means to an end? Would he have even come to talk to me that afternoon if my family didn’t have money?

And Shirley’s delight in the idea of me also being pregnant by her brother was nauseating as well. I would never understand how anyone could enjoy the misfortune of others. Even if she wouldn’t be a constant reminder of my mistake, that wasn’t the kind of person I wanted in my life.

But who was I to write anything when I was such a poor judge of character?

I pushed back my seat, opting to go for a walk to clear my head.

I would have preferred the beach. Freddy was unlikely to still be working—he had a new life to build as a soon-to-be father and husband. But the chance of running into him was too much. And if he repeated his entreaty in any way, I just might vomit on him.

Instead, I went north toward the jetty. It was wide, jutting out between Townsends Inlet and the sea, dotted with a handful of sport fishers and crabbers.