I took a deep breath and grabbed his outstretched hand. “Okay.”
“One. Two.” I took another deep breath. “Three.” We ran the six steps, and suddenly we were flying, my legs still running in the air. I heard a noise that I didn’t recognize as my own scream until we plunged into the ice-cold darkness of the water. I don’t remember swimming, but my body knew what to do and propelled me upward until my head burst out, and I sputtered as I treaded water in the relative still of the cove we had jumped into.
“Joe?” I looked around in a panic. “Joe!”
He surfaced—I had only been alone for a second or two at most, but that was the most terrifying part. He smiled and let out a victorious, wordless yell.
I was shivering but smiling. “Did I just do that?”
“You did!”
“That was—I think I want to do it again.”
He laughed. “If we do it again today, you’re going to be late for your grandma.” I swam closer to him, and he suddenly looked embarrassed. “Um. You might want to . . . adjust.”
I glanced down. My bikini top had ridden up when I hit the water, and nothing was covered. The thrill evaporating, I quickly pulled it down as well as I could while trying to stay afloat, also now aware that the bottom of my suit had wedged itself into a position where not much was covered there either.
“Think I’ll wear a one-piece if we try again.”
“I won’t object either way.” I laughed. I should have still been embarrassed, but I couldn’t be after that jump. “Come on. The beach is over there.” He started swimming toward the shore. I followed, pausing to look up at the impossibly high ledge I had just conquered.
I learned to fly today, I thought giddily, swimming after Joe. My teeth were chattering from the chill of the New England water, and I couldn’t have cared less. I had been in suspended animation for six months. No—longer than that. Much, much longer. But now? I was alive now. And I wondered if reviving me was the mysterious business my grandmother had in Hereford all along.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
June 1951
Hereford, Massachusetts
If Evelyn thought she’d find sympathy in her brothers and sisters beyond Vivie, there was none. Not once Joseph and Miriam put their collective foot down to forbid Evelyn to see Tony. Joseph hadn’t spoken to her in the week since the proposal, and Miriam had only to scold her. But her siblings and their children were suddenly attached to her like glue. If she picked up the phone, her nieces and nephews appeared, making such a racket that she couldn’t hear a word, and they were completely unfazed by her cajoling, offers of bribes, and eventual threats.
Joseph’s car keys sat in a basket at the front door when he was in residence. But now they, along with Sam’s and Bernie’s, lived in the men’s pockets and were hidden in their bedrooms at night. Her pleas to her brothers fell on entirely deaf ears.
If she left for a walk, Helen, Margaret, or Sam accompanied her—usually after a furiously whispered conversation with Miriam, but they did it nonetheless. And when they wouldn’t leave her alone about her “mistake,” Evelyn turned on her heel and went back to the cottage, locking herself in a bedroom, where she paced the floor until long after the rest of the house had gone to bed, locking even Vivie out.
There was no word from Tony.
Not that he ever contacted her when she was home with her family. Whenever she called him before, it was always under the guise of talking to a friend from school, while she spoke in coded conversation. They arranged their next meeting at the previous one.
The only evening she successfully evaded everyone and made it to the end of the street, praying his car would be parked there waiting for her, it wasn’t. And just as she was debating begging the Inn to let her make a call, she heard Bernie say her name.
“Be a good girl, and come back now, Evie.” His tone was sympathetic as he put an arm around her shoulder.
Evelyn shook out of his grip. “I thought you were on my side!”
Bernie looked at her levelly. “I’m on your side. Which is why I told you last year that Papa would never let you marry him. And I told Tony the same thing. Why you two couldn’t have been smart about this and tried to meet more suitable people, I will never understand.”
“And that’s why you married Doris? Because she was ‘suitable’？”
“It’s why I went out with her in the first place. Because I wasn’t looking to just have some fun. I wanted to get married and have kids.”