“Is this safe?” I asked.
“Perfectly so.”
But I remembered my mother telling me about Sonora Carver, who lost her sight in a diving accident. So when the bathing suit–clad girl climbed to the top of the tower, I felt a flutter of anxiety in my stomach. And when the horse began barreling his way up the ramp to the tower, I clutched Freddy’s arm in sheer terror, holding my breath as the girl jumped onto the horse and the two of them flew together through the air, seeming to hang there for an impossible moment, before plunging into the tank of water below, emerging to the sound of such thunderous applause, shouts, and stomping of feet that I wondered if the pier would tumble into the ocean.
“You all right there?” Freddy asked me.
“Perfectly so. Why?”
“If you hold my arm much tighter, I’m afraid you’ll wrench it off.”
I laughed a little and released him. “I’ve never seen anything quite like that.”
He put an arm around me, pulling me to him comfortingly with a squeeze. Then he took my hand and led me out to get an ice cream cone to soothe my nerves.
We ended the evening dancing in the Marine Ballroom as a band played. Had it been the afternoon, I wouldn’t have dared, as Ed Hurst broadcast his “Summertime on the Pier” dance show live there every Saturday and Sunday. But this late at night, we were safe from cameras, other than the roving boardwalk photographers. Not that I thought Ada would watch anything so frivolous, nor did she turn on the television before dark, but I was enjoying whatever this was with Freddy and didn’t want to see it come crashing down.
By the time we returned to the car, it was after one. “Sure you want to go back?” Freddy asked.
“Wherever else would we go?”
“Why, anywhere we want. We could just drive south and live in Florida. Or west to California. We could stop at the Grand Canyon on the way. I’ve always wanted to see that.”
“We can’t just run away.”
“We can do anything if we’re together.”
Suddenly he was kissing me, my back pressed up against the car. And for a moment, I believed him, that anything was possible. What if we did just keep driving? Start fresh someplace where parents and aunts didn’t dictate our futures?
As we drove back through the moonlight, I leaned against Freddy, my shoes off and legs up, feet hanging out the open window. My posture was drowsy, but I was awake with the possibilities of what life could be like if we just escaped.
But we eventually reached Avalon, and Freddy parked his car on the main road again to avoid detection. “I’ll help you get back upstairs,” he said quietly.
“I can do it.”
“What kind of a gentleman would I be if I weren’t there to catch you if you fell?”
I shot him a flirtatious look. “Or try to catch a glimpse of what’s under my dress, you mean?”
“If so, I’d have brought a flashlight,” he said, winking. He held a finger to his lips. “Let’s get you to bed safe and sound.”
He kissed me one more time on the path up to Ada’s house. “I had a wonderful time tonight,” I said.
“We’ll have to do it again.”
The reality was that it would be close to impossible to fool Ada a second time. But I nodded, thinking as I climbed up the railing and onto the roof that I probably could have flown up to my window instead.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ada’s version of “sleep as late as you want” apparently extended until nine, at which point she entered the room, opened the curtains, and pulled the covers off me.
“Ten more minutes,” I moaned, burying my face in my pillow.
“How long can one person sleep? You’re missing a gorgeous day!”
“Every day is a gorgeous day here.”
“And when you’re my age, you’ll learn not to take that for granted.”
The reason I was so tired returned to the forefront of my mind and I smiled, happy my face was buried in my pillow so Ada couldn’t see it. Instead, I feigned grumpiness and rolled over, stretching my arms above my head with a yawn.
“There. Are you feeling better this morning?”
“Better?” I asked, then I remembered she thought I was getting sick the night before. “Yes, much.”
She peered at me sharply. “You don’t look well rested.”
My eyes flicked to the nightstand, looking for an excuse, where I found one. She had given me her copy of Hawaii when she finished it. “I stayed up too late reading.”
Ada shook her head. “Youth is wasted on the young. Get dressed.”
I was going to have to read that book fast and it was a behemoth. It better be good, I thought, hoping desperately that she wouldn’t quiz me on it over breakfast.
She was in the living room, note cards spread out on the coffee table in front of her, when I came downstairs for breakfast. “What are those?”
“Never you mind,” she said, gesturing for me to leave her alone.
Never one to be deterred by a hand wave, I walked around behind the sofa to get a look. “This is your matchmaking system? You pair them up on cards?” She glared at me. I shrugged innocently back. “You shouldn’t make that face. It’ll cause wrinkles.”
Ada glared for another moment, then threw her head back in laughter. When she stopped, she patted the seat next to her. “Come on. That earned you a peek into how I do this.”
I was mildly curious. I really wanted a cup of coffee, but I wasn’t going to turn down the first real offer of trust she had given me.
“I grade everyone I meet on their values and interests. One through ten. How large a family they want. How religious they are. How close they seem to their own families. Social class—that one can sometimes be negotiable, but often not in this business. Physical attractiveness. Do they read for fun? Do they enjoy the outdoors? How educated are they? How traditional or modern are they? Sense of humor. These are the main attributes that contribute to a happy marriage.”
I looked over the cards, wondering how she got some of that information from the interviews we had conducted together. “But you don’t ask all those questions.”
“When you’ve done this long enough, you don’t have to. Remember Stella? The one with the horrible mother and who liked Doris Day and Rock Hudson?” I nodded. “If she were a reader, she would have mentioned a book, not a movie, when she said she didn’t have a television. And her choice of a movie tells me she likes to laugh and is more modern than her mother.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Formally? Forty years. Informally? Much longer than that.”
Forty years ago she would have been thirty-five. “What did you do before that?”
“I was a nurse. Then the Great War broke out, and I went to Europe. My father died while I was overseas. He only had daughters and the rest were married, so I inherited the bulk of his estate. I used some of it to start my business and invested the rest.”
“Didn’t the stock market crash wipe you out?”
She shook her head. “I told you. Land is always a good investment.”
I looked at her in awe. I had never known a businesswoman before. I had known secretaries and nurses and teachers. But not someone who fully managed her own finances for a lifetime without the help of a man. Without a father or husband, credit would be largely out of her reach. But she had built an empire that survived the worst economic crisis of our country through her own shrewdness—something that most of the men had lacked. “Was it hard?”