“These were your favorite when you were little,” my grandmother said as she opened hers. “I hope you still like them.”
I felt tears prickling at my eyes, and I tried to blink them away. The combination of the memory and the realization that not only did Grandma remember, but she made the effort to pack my childhood favorite was too much for me. I glanced in the rearview mirror, wishing I could see my grandfather back there, his newspaper folded to the crossword, the blue ballpoint pen in his hand.
Grandma reached into her purse and handed me a tissue. “If you’re going to cry while you eat, I should definitely drive.”
I laughed, and the moment passed. I took a bite, savoring the taste, so simple and yet so distinctive.
“What happened next?” I asked. “Did your parents stay mad at you?”
She smiled at the memory. “Papa could never stay mad at me. He didn’t even make it a day. And the thought of me going to bed hungry? No. He caved by the end of supper.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
April 1950
Hereford, Massachusetts
“Supper!” Miriam bellowed upstairs. Evelyn had her nose in her battered copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a half-eaten sandwich on its paper wrapping next to her on the bed. Was it a kid’s book? Yes. But it was comfort food nonetheless. Evelyn hadn’t grown up poor, but she felt a kinship with Francie as her mother’s distinctly unfavorite child.
She looked up briefly at her mother’s voice. When that woman yelled, they could probably hear her all the way down at the docks. But she took a defiant bite of her sandwich and flicked the page. Miriam wouldn’t call again, and that was fine. She was set until morning.
It was a little hard to focus on the book when she had one ear cocked toward the heating grate though. And it sounded like an awkwardly silent meal.
Maybe I should go down, she thought, not wanting Vivie to suffer. There was only one person whose feelings Evelyn put ahead of her own and that was her baby sister. The sound of cutlery clinking against plates traveled up through the grate, but no one spoke.
She tossed the book aside with a sigh and crossed her arms. This was all part of her mother’s plan though. Treat Vivie like garbage until she smoked Evelyn out of her room. It frequently worked.
Not this time. She flopped onto her stomach toward the foot of the brass-posted double bed that had once been shared by her two eldest sisters. Vivie did this to herself. She could tough it out one night to help the ruse along.
It was going to be a long, dull night, though, without any company. She played idly with her hair, finding another stray pear blossom and smiling to herself as she thought of Tony and the first time she saw him. It hadn’t been quite as sudden as she led her sister and Ruthie to believe.
She had been in Joseph’s store two months earlier when she heard a commotion. Peeking around a shelf, she saw a young man dragging a boy to the counter by the ear, the boy yelling in protest.
The older one shoved the younger toward the counter, where Joseph stood, watching warily with crossed arms. “Give it to him,” the young man said gruffly. “Now.”
The boy looked up in defiance, saw the expression on his brother’s face, and then pulled something out of his pocket and placed it on the counter. The older one prodded him sharply in the back. “I’m sorry,” the boy mumbled.
“For?” Another jab.
“I took this.”
“Stole.”
“I stole this.”
“And?”
“I won’t do it again.”
The older one put a bill on the counter. “I want to pay for what my brother took. You can’t sell it now.”
Thievery was fairly common among the children in town, and while Joseph was gruff if he caught them blatantly, he also was too kind to make a fuss if a child took a piece of candy. The Depression may have ended with the war, but it wasn’t a wealthy town. And there was no softer touch with children than Evelyn’s father.
She watched a small struggle play across his face. The young man was right. He couldn’t sell the candy cigarettes in their current state. Taking them back meant throwing them away, which was a waste. But they had been returned.
Finally, he took the box of candy, leaving the dollar where it sat. “I won’t take your money. He brought it back.”
The young man started to protest, but Joseph silenced him. “Put it toward his education instead. The boy learned a lesson today. Let him learn another in the future.”
The boy squirmed out of his brother’s grip and skipped away, happy to be free of trouble, and the two men stared at each other for a moment before the younger took the bill back and placed it in his pocket. They nodded at each other, a sign of mutual understanding, before the young man turned to walk away and Evelyn saw his face.