“Isn’t that Frannie’s job?” I asked. It wasn’t like I did any of the cooking.
“Frannie deserves days off just like everyone else,” Ada snapped. “It won’t kill you to pick up some produce.”
Yes, Frannie deserved a day off, I grumbled to myself as I walked the half mile to the store. But so did I. Okay, I had the afternoons, and Freddy had come to find me on the beach both days. Of course, even on the days we didn’t have clients, Ada had errands or other jobs for me to do. I would have liked a morning to sleep in and do what I wanted instead of catering to her.
But that was my penance, I supposed. Had I any idea that Daniel would have been so much trouble—well, who was I kidding? I probably would have done exactly what I did regardless. But maybe I would have stayed away from that stained glass. I had no regrets about anything except getting caught.
I soon found myself in the produce aisle, utterly confounded by the melons. Ada said to make sure they were ripe, but short of cutting one open, I had no idea how one would go about doing that. And I feared they would frown upon me cutting them all open and sampling them.
“Marilyn?”
I turned around to see Shirley. “My goodness, you’re here to save me, aren’t you?” I threw my arms around her neck.
Shirley laughed. “What do you need saving from?”
“These blasted melons. Ada said to make sure I got a ripe one, and there’s no way to tell with the rind on. You create a distraction, and I’m going to try to crack one open like a coconut.”
She looked at me like I had grown a second head. “Or I could show you the trick. Might be easier than smashing them.”
“I suppose that’d do.”
“Here,” she said, pressing a thumb to the indentation on the top. “You press the belly button and then smell it. If it smells like you want to eat it, it’s a good one.” She held it out to me to smell, and the aroma was heavenly.
“Thank you. There’s no greater joy than thwarting that woman, and she clearly expected me to fail. What do you know about peaches?”
Shirley shook her head. “Haven’t you ever bought fruit before?”
I remembered Ada’s disparaging comment about Shirley’s family. Grace did most of our shopping even though Mama insisted on cooking. I had accompanied my mother a few times as a child when she went, but after I destroyed an entire tower of canned goods by plucking some from the bottom, she began leaving me home—a tradition that continued to this day.
It was amazing they hadn’t sent me away sooner.
“Far too much of a troublemaker for that, I’m afraid.”
Shirley linked her arm through mine. “Come on. We’ll have Ada thinking there’s nothing you can’t do in no time.”
After we had fulfilled both of our shopping lists, Shirley asked if I wanted to grab a cup of coffee at the diner across the street. I did, but Ada expected me back.
“Dinner, then? My family would be happy to have you—Ada too, of course.”
I didn’t think Ada would say yes, but I told her I would ask. Shirley rattled off her phone number, telling me to just let her know. We walked back together as far as 21st Street, when Shirley turned to go to her family’s shore house.
Ada sighed when I asked her. She took a bite of a peach. “You picked well,” she said.
“Shirley helped me.”
She waved a hand at me. “You go. Send my regards but say I already had plans.”
“Do you? Have plans?”
She leveled a gaze at me. “Believe me, when my plans become your business, you’ll be the first to know.”
I wondered again about the mysterious caller. The two phones in this house seemed to be on the same line, but when she had gone to her bedroom to take a call the night we arrived, I hadn’t been able to eavesdrop without being caught. Her tone again sounded more like she was talking to a lover than a friend. Was he here, whoever he was? Did she have a date?
But that, too, would be considered not my business.
So I shrugged and called Shirley to tell her it would just be me for dinner.
Wearing a new eyelet sundress that we had purchased at Gimbels, I twirled to show Ada before I left. “It suits you,” she said. “But you really should be sitting under an umbrella. All that sun you’re getting . . .”
“Yes, yes, will cause wrinkles. So will everything else I do.”
She threw up her hands. “Far be it from me to stop you if you want to look like a raisin when you’re thirty.”
“What a lovely image,” I said, refusing to let her get my goat tonight. Instead, I leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, surprising her. “Enjoy your plans—whatever they may be.”
“And you yours,” she said with a knowing smirk. “Just remember the rules, please.”
I didn’t know what that meant because I wasn’t bringing Shirley here. But I shrugged and headed out the door to walk the three blocks to Shirley’s house.
Traversing those blocks in heels, however, was slightly more complicated than I expected. The houses all had the same white stones for a lawn that Ada’s did, but not everyone had a gardener as fastidious, so there were many opportunities to turn an ankle on errant stones. I chuckled, mentally thanking Ada for all the practice she had given me at dodging rocks in my path, and arrived at the house unscathed.
The house rose before me, and I saw what Ada meant about the family trying too hard. Ada’s house was designed to look like a classic beach cottage, if a large one. Shirley’s family’s summer home was a stone behemoth, designed to show off wealth. It lacked the airy windows that provided such welcome breezes and constant sunlight and was built for effect more than comfort. It would have looked at home across from the White House, not here among the clapboard and shake-sided cottages, with its columns and porticos.
I hoped they had fans. I didn’t want to sweat my makeup off before dinner was served.
I climbed the steps and rapped smartly on the oversized oak door, expecting Shirley to throw it open （or a butler, if they were really trying to impress）。
But when the door opened, Freddy stood there, dressed in a dinner jacket. “Well, hello there.”
I leaned back to look at the house number. “I must have the wrong house, but hello to you as well.”
“Right house,” Shirley said breathlessly, elbowing Freddy out of the way. “Don’t mind him. He’d flirt with a corpse if it had lipstick on.”
“My sister exaggerates,” Freddy said, leaning against the doorpost.
“Your sister? This just got more interesting.”
Shirley looked from me to him. “Oh no.” She turned to Freddy, hands on her hips. “Can’t I have one friend whose heart you don’t break?”
“First of all you have Julia—”
“Only because you said Julia looked like a potato with hair!”
Freddy turned to me. “She does. Very unfortunate girl—I don’t think even your aunt could save her.” He looked back at his sister. “And second, the only heart being broken here is mine. She’s refused to go out with me multiple times now.”
Shirley threw an arm around my shoulders. “I knew I liked you. Come on, Mama and Papa want to meet you. We have cocktails in the living room before dinner.”