“You text him a lot apparently. Are you sure you’re not interested?”
My grandmother winked at me. “Maybe. A little competition is good for you.”
I shook my head.
I had picked the largest of the three upstairs bedrooms, which my grandmother said had held a double bed and two twins at the peak of the cottage, when everyone used to descend on the shore for the summers. Now, it was outfitted with a queen bed, an antique dresser, and a small matching desk. I turned on the water in the recently remodeled bathroom （no sign of the clanking pipes my mother described from her childhood trips） and stripped out of my sweaty clothes.
Stepping over the edge of the tub, I stood under the shower’s stream, then pressed my forehead against the cool tile wall.
I should be interested in Joe. I knew that. A fling on vacation would be perfect. Not only could I snap some cute social media posts to make it look like I was moving on but it might actually help me do just that.
But the idea of sleeping with someone new—I shuddered.
What’s wrong with me? I wondered. My mother had suggested antidepressants a month ago. But I wasn’t depressed. I was . . . stuck. I knew she was right, and I should sign the settlement agreement. I wouldn’t move on until I was legally free. But I wasn’t ready yet. I had never truly failed before. And I wasn’t quite ready to concede defeat, even though I didn’t want to be with Brad anymore either.
With a sigh, I pulled my face off the wall and began shampooing my hair. If I took too long, my grandmother was likely to take the car on her own. I should hide the keys, I thought as I washed the lather out. Not that it would matter—she would have no qualms about going through my bag to find them. I needed to hurry up and get back downstairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
July 1950
Hereford, Massachusetts
The houses were smaller than the grand Victorian Evelyn grew up in, on a side street she had walked past many times but never ventured down, clustered together with a small alley behind them. Children ran wild through the neighborhood, yelling to one another in a mishmash of English and Portuguese and dashing across the road, half-clothed in the summer evening. On front porches, men sat in undershirts while women in mended dresses brought them their next bottle of beer. It was less than half a mile from her parents’ house yet a world apart from the starched collars and saddle shoes of her childhood. Joseph and Miriam would sit on the porch on a hot summer night, rocking quietly in wicker chairs, but they dressed for the town to see them. Which, in their location, they did.
No one was sitting on the porch at the house that Tony stopped his car in front of, and the children who ran across the lawn did so on their way to other houses. But it looked tidy, with freshly painted shutters, a porch free of the debris of kids, and well-cared-for flowers lining the small beds bordering the porch. A pear tree grew next to the house, showing the beginnings of the young fruit it would eventually bear, and Evelyn smiled, remembering her climb through the blossoms of her family’s own to find Tony.
“Ready?” he asked, offering her his hand.
“Are you?”
He shook his head, handing her the flowers for his mother. “Come on, then.”
A young girl pulled the door open excitedly before they were even up the steps. “They’re here,” she called over her shoulder, then looked up, gawking at Evelyn. “You’re so pretty!” She turned to her older brother. “Tonio, she’s a movie star!”
Tony made a gesture that Evelyn caught out of the corner of her eye, and the little girl’s face fell. Evelyn knelt to her level. “It’s just the lipstick,” she whispered, winking. She cupped a hand under the little girl’s chin. “And you’re one to talk! That Natalie Wood better watch her back.” The girl turned pink and squirmed happily. “Now, are you Carolina, or Francisca?”
“Carolina.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Carolina. I’m Evelyn.”
“Miss Bergman,” Tony said.
“Evelyn,” she corrected. “Don’t you start all that formal stuff now.” She stood back up and looked at him playfully. “Tonio.”
“Lina, go tell M?e that we’re here.”
“I already know,” a voice from the hall said. “Lina, let them in, filha.”
Carolina moved aside, and Tony pressed a hand to the small of Evelyn’s back to guide her inside.
Before Evelyn could even offer a handshake, or the flowers, she found herself being kissed on both cheeks by Tony’s mother, who then pulled back and grasped her by her elbows to look at her. Evelyn, unused to such effusive greetings, hid her surprise. “Prazer em conhecê-lo,” she said, mimicking Tony’s earlier inflection perfectly. He raised an eyebrow. She had been messing with him at the mispronunciation.