“Me? Thirty-four.”
“Thirty, then. He was at Helen’s funeral.”
“Helen?”
“My sister. We said hello to each other then.”
“Why did my age tell you when that was?”
“Because we brought you with us, your mother and me. That’s when you went to Hereford.”
I looked at her, confused. “But Mom said—”
“It was a long time ago. There were a lot of people there with unfinished business. I had this grand idea that we’d go, and it would be like it was when your mother and aunt were kids. And it wasn’t.”
“What—？”
“What time is it?”
I wanted to know what she was talking about. I foggily remembered her in someone’s face, the two of them not quite shouting, but arguing loudly. I didn’t know why I could suddenly see that from the words Helen’s funeral, but I could, and I knew the two were connected.
But no one had ever successfully pulled a story out of her that she wasn’t ready to tell. And it was obvious I would get nowhere, so I sighed and told her. “A little before four.”
“Good. We have time to go through town first.”
“We’re not staying in town?”
“No.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
June 1950
Hereford, Massachusetts
Joseph came out of the war years a wealthy man. After growing up with little in Russia, he found it to be no hardship to live frugally during his early years in America. He had no investments, other than the store, so the stock market crash affected him only in the sense that people spent less money. But he ran the only dry goods store in town, kept his prices low, and helped people where he could, meaning when they had money, they spent it with him.
And because he was one of the few people in town in a position to invest, people came to him with opportunities. Which meant by the time the war came and the stock market rebounded with the costs of industry, Joseph found himself exceptionally comfortable, even with two children in college, and five more in the wings.
In 1946, he splurged on three things: a Ford Super DeLuxe to replace his seventeen-year-old Ford Model A, a washing machine, and two cottages on the northern edge of the peninsula that Hereford rested on. While the town of Hereford perched above a harbor that was known as one of the oldest fishing ports in the country, the coastline was rocky and the air stagnant and thick in summer, some five miles from the cool breezes of the beach. The Bergman house sat on a hill on Main Street, but it caught little fresh air off the port, and the unmistakable smell of fish began filling the town in late June, lasting through September most years. Miriam, uncomfortably hot in her girdle and starched dresses, seldom complained, though the children did frequently. But Joseph watched her wipe a bead of sweat off her forehead during a June heat wave as she placed his breakfast on the table, the day barely begun. After he finished eating, he climbed into his new car and drove the five winding miles past the swampy marshlands, which flooded in high tides and hurricanes, to the coast.
Hereford Beach was unincorporated but had a small seasonal community. There was an inn, which had a few rooms to rent, along with a restaurant, at one end of the beach, and a small general store. At the other end of the beach, on the bluffs overlooking the ocean, sat a group of imposing mansions. These were summer homes, owned by Boston’s elite, who avoided the crowds of Cape Cod, choosing instead to summer in seclusion. They drove their fancy cars into town occasionally to take in a movie or buy some staples, but more often they sent their household staffs for necessities instead.
Joseph looked disdainfully at the gaudy estates, going instead toward the Inn, following the small dirt road that wound its way inland behind it. Up the hill stood a manor house that had been old when Joseph was born fifty-one years earlier. Closer to the beach were two matching clapboard structures, each with a wraparound porch. They had once been a guesthouse and an overseer’s dwelling, now repurposed into beach cottages.
He parked the car and stood in front of the first cottage, inspecting it, then climbed the six steps of the front porch and turned around. A refreshing breeze caught his hair, and, peering through the trees, which provided a thick, cool shade, he could just make out the sun glittering on the ocean.
Rapping on the doors of the cottages produced no answer, so Joseph made his way to the manor house, where a much older woman answered the door.
An hour later, Joseph returned home and announced to Miriam that her days of sweltering in town were done. He had bought her a beach cottage to summer in.