I should return it, she thought, touching the thin gold band. She pulled it from its hiding spot and held it next to the ring that now rested on her left hand. The two rings couldn’t be more different and yet— She put Tony’s ring back in the book, shut it firmly, and replaced it on the shelf.
Negotiations began in earnest the next day.
When Evelyn came down to breakfast, Joseph was already deep in conversation with his future son-in-law, solemnly expressing how important it was that Evelyn finish college.
“—toward a house later, as long as she has a degree.” Evelyn stood at the doorway a moment, trying to figure out what she was walking in on.
“Sir, she’ll complete school no matter what. You don’t need—”
“What are we talking about?” she asked loudly, causing both men to jump. “If it’s me, shouldn’t I be present?” They looked mildly shamed, but Fred stood and pulled out a chair for her. She crossed her arms, not moving.
“Don’t look like that,” he said. “I was just explaining to your father that you and I already planned for you to finish school. Whether we get married first or not.”
Her brows went up. “Do I get a say in when that is?”
“After you finish college,” Joseph said.
Evelyn cocked her head at him, and he lowered his eyes, refusing to meet her gaze. She stayed where she was for a full minute before taking her place at the table, trying to hide the smile that threatened to give her away. In marrying Fred, she would win her freedom as well.
Between Miriam’s friends, who received telephone calls, and the party lines that meant everyone knew everyone else’s business better than their own, news traveled quickly. Evelyn and Fred were congratulated by everyone they walked past on the street, causing Fred to jokingly call Evelyn the mayor.
“Hardly,” she said. “Considering the town was ready to tie me to a mast and set me out toward Norman’s Woe when I crashed Papa’s car into that movie theater.”
“Toward what?”
Evelyn felt the slightest twinge of discontent. Anyone from the north shore would have gotten the reference to the Longfellow poem “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” as the rock that the fictional ship crashed into was in Gloucester. But it wasn’t Fred’s fault that the only famous rock he knew was Plymouth. She shook her head. “Nothing.”
Fred left a few days later after making plans to bring his parents to meet hers in two weeks. He would then move into his new temporary apartment in Boston—he’d find them a bigger place when they got married. If they stayed in Boston, that was. And then come out to the cottages to be with her as many weekends as he could. Sleeping arrangements would be tight to accommodate another guest who couldn’t bunk with any of the unmarried girls, but Helen and her husband had just moved to Buffalo and would only be back for a week all summer, to Miriam and Joseph’s disappointment.
And Evelyn and Vivie accompanied their mother to open the cottages, as they did every year in June.
It was Miriam who found the mouse—she screamed so loudly from the other cottage that they thought she was being attacked. They both dropped what they were doing and ran out the door, down the cottage steps, across the small yard, and up the steps of the other cottage, panting by the time they found their mother standing in the kitchen, a frying pan raised above her head.
The two girls exchanged a look.
“Mama?”
“A mouse,” she explained. “It ran right in front of me.”
“Are you planning to cook it?” Miriam looked at Evelyn blankly, and Evelyn gestured to the frying pan.
“Don’t be rude. We’ll need traps. Where there’s one, there are more.”
“I’ll go,” Evelyn said. She had driven the three of them, and the keys were still in her skirt pocket.
Miriam nodded, letting Vivie lead her to the sofa and pull the sheet off for her to sit.
Evelyn went down the stairs to the car. Truth be told, she didn’t want to be there until it was filled with people. The memories of the previous summer still stung like the salt of the ocean in a wound. She could have gone to the small grocery store across from the beach, but driving back to town and getting traps at her father’s store would buy her more time, even if it meant more work for her sister and mother.
She hummed along with the radio, tapping her nails on the wheel as she drove, frequently admiring the gemstone on her left hand.
The spots in front of Joseph’s store were all taken, so she parked a block and a half away and walked down the street.