“Who’s not letting them be?”
Ada craned her neck to look up at the sky. “This’ll blow through quickly. You should be fine to go home this afternoon. Though you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”
“Does that go for me as well?” I asked.
She pointed a finger at me. “Don’t get your hopes up.” The rain began to fall in earnest as the two women went inside. “I sent Frannie home so she wouldn’t get caught in all this—we’ll have to muddle through lunch ourselves.”
“We’ve done as much before,” Lillian said.
The windows were open so we could still hear them as they continued into the house. “Yes, but we have company.”
“He may be family soon enough by the looks of them out there.”
“We can hear you,” I called through the open window.
“Don’t yell room to room,” Ada replied.
I laughed, but Dan folded down the corner of his page and shut his book. “What’s wrong?” I asked, looking up at him.
“Absolutely nothing. I just want to soak in the moment.”
“Quite literally if the wind changes.”
He shook his head. “Shush. You’re ruining the mood.”
I placed my book facedown on my chest. “Will you come back next weekend?”
His face spread in a smile. “I would love to.”
Marking the page and closing the book, I sat up, nestling into the crook of his arm as we silently watched the rain fall together.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Dan went home for the week. He was clerking at a newspaper, trying to get a break in photojournalism, though his father still believed it was a lark and that he was going to rabbinical school in the fall. I had no idea what I would be doing in three weeks when Labor Day came around. I hadn’t officially received word from my parents about whether I would be welcomed back into the fold, but with each passing day, I hoped more and more that they would allow me to stay where I was.
I broached the subject once more with Ada, who mumbled something about wayward girls, but I paid her no mind, especially when Lillian winked at me. Ada might have been the figurehead of our little family, but what Lillian wanted went.
And it was a family now. I felt more at home with them than I had in the first twenty years of my life. Yes, the pattern and routine would change again once we returned to the duplex in Oxford Circle. But there would always be next summer at the shore. And the summer after that. And I was certain I would settle into my own place in Philadelphia as well. Maybe I would even enroll in some writing classes, though I wasn’t worried about earning a degree. Daddy had only sent me to college to find a husband after all. And as much as I enjoyed school, it was the freedom I loved. I had found that here, and much more of it.
August was a little faster paced for matchmaking at the shore than June and July had been, largely because more young men joined their families for their two weeks of vacation. A couple of handsome ones came through our door, frog-marched by determined mothers. A few weeks earlier, I might have found a reason to pop into the living room. But now I was content to mind my own business as I sorted through the photographs of Ada’s life. I had a system and moved much quicker, watching as first her father, then her mother disappeared.
When I reached the bottom of the box from the late 1910s, my hand brushed a piece of fabric. That was a first, so I peered inside and pulled out something wrapped in a handkerchief, tied with a red ribbon.
I held the parcel in my hand for a moment. I wanted to open the ribbon. But something about it felt too personal. And the handkerchief was monogrammed with the initials JWS. It wasn’t Ada’s.
Instead, I set it aside, staring at it as if I could will it to tell me what was inside without violating Ada’s trust. But the parcel said nothing, and I found myself waiting until Ada had finished with her clients for the day.
When the last mother and daughter had left, I knocked at the door to the living room. Ada was at the desk in the corner, Lillian across from her as they looked over notes from the day, Ada wearing the reading spectacles that she never let anyone other than Frannie and us see her in. They both looked up at my knock.
“Yes?” Ada asked.
I was suddenly shy. Whatever was in that parcel—I’m not sure how I knew it was personal, but I did. And I was even a little apprehensive about bringing it up in front of Lillian, though I was sure there were no secrets between them. But curiosity and I suppose a sense of duty propelled me toward them.
“I found . . . this,” I said, holding the wrapped parcel out.
“What is it?” Lillian asked.
“I don’t know. I thought—I don’t know. I didn’t feel comfortable opening it.”
“Whyever not?” Ada asked.
“It felt . . .” I trailed off. “It just felt like I should ask you before I did.”
Ada’s lips twitched into a half smile. “How unlike you. Do you feel well? Lillian, see if she has a fever.”
“I’m fine,” I said, swatting Lillian’s hand away from my forehead. “I just—is it love letters?”
“No,” Ada said. “Those are in the Philadelphia house.”
I briefly wondered how much a love letter from Ernest Hemingway would sell for. It would set me up for life, I assumed.
“No,” she continued. “You may open that.”
“Is that—？” Lillian began.
“Let her see,” Ada said. “It’ll answer her questions about my wartime activities.”
“Hemingway?” I asked, pulling the ribbon. “These aren’t his initials.”
“No,” Ada said. “They’re not.”
With the ribbon untied, I unfolded the handkerchief to find a stack of black-and-white photographs. My shoulders sank slightly in disappointment. But as I looked at the top one, I saw that the woman was Ada. She was in France, Notre Dame looming behind her, but she wasn’t looking at the camera. Instead, she was looking at a man in uniform, her face positively glowing. I traced the line of her body. Her hand was clasped in his, but as I followed his arm up to his face, hidden slightly by his army hat, I stopped, looking back up at Ada in confusion.
She shook her head. “And you think I’m old-fashioned,” she said.
The man’s complexion left no doubt about his race.
I flipped it over. Ada’s handwriting on the back read “John and I, Paris, November 1918.”
“Who is John?”
“Does he look at all familiar?”
I turned the picture back over, holding it closer to my face, but no. I shook my head.
“He should. You’re acquainted with his grandson after all.”
I thought for a moment. “Thomas?” I squeaked. Ada nodded. “I don’t understand.” Ada chuckled as I tried to work it out. “You and Thomas’s grandfather—” I flipped quickly through the rest of the stack of photographs. The third one down was them kissing under the Eiffel Tower. “I—” Nineteen eighteen. I quickly did the math. She would have been thirty-three. And if Thomas was in medical school—“Is—are you his grandmother?”
“Of course not,” Ada said, taking the photographs from me and thumbing through them. “We couldn’t have married. I thought at the time—especially if we stayed in Europe. But he was right, of course. It wasn’t even legal in a lot of states. It was in Pennsylvania, but he had family down south. If we’d ever gone to see them . . .” She shook her head. “I loved that man to pieces. But he understood what I didn’t. I couldn’t. I hadn’t lived it.” She touched his face in the photograph in front of her.