My shoulders drooped.
“What’s this?” she asked impatiently.
“I—Freddy took me there. When we first—”
“When you first started sneaking out at night?”
I stared at her.
“I told you the day you arrived—I miss nothing.”
“Couldn’t you have warned me?” I said.
“I did.”
“No, I mean, said, ‘I know what you’re doing, here’s why it’s a bad idea.’”
“Would it have stopped you?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, but the word got stuck in my throat.
“That’s why,” she said. “We all have to make our own mistakes and learn some things the hard way.”
I studied her profile, wondering what mistakes she had ever made. If I asked, she would either say that it was an impertinent question or that she was the exception to the rule. But she wouldn’t have said it in the first place if that were the case.
“But get dressed and put some makeup on. You haven’t done Atlantic City the right way yet because you haven’t done it with me.”
Half an hour later, I left my bedroom in a baby blue sundress, paired with my highest heels and the lipstick Ada actually allowed me to wear. I pursed my lips at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Ada was right—the haircut suited me.
Her bedroom door was open. “I’m ready when you are,” I called in, taking care not to cross the threshold.
“Not yet you’re not,” Ada replied. “Come on in.”
I hesitated briefly, wondering if she was going to let me wear her lipstick, then entered.
Ada was dressed to the nines in a beaded dress cut similarly to mine. A white mink stole was draped over her arms, held up at the elbows, and a long strand of pearls hung around her neck, gigantic matching earrings dangling from her lobes.
“Hmmm,” she said, circling me.
“This is the best I have,” I told her. “And I won’t fit in your dresses.” I was curvier than Ada, and anything that fit her was likely not going over my hips or bust.
“No,” she agreed. “You won’t. But accessories are more forgiving.”
My eyes darted toward her vanity. “Don’t you even think about that lipstick,” she warned. Instead, she looked me over, then went to her closet, emerging with another white stole. “This one is older,” she said. “I don’t know why I kept it. But it’s yours now.”
It was in absolutely perfect condition. Perhaps a trifle wider than the one she was wearing, but otherwise identical. “Mine?”
“Was that not clear?”
I raised my eyebrows but thanked her. Mama would be pea green with envy. She had exactly one mink coat, which Daddy claimed was enough for anyone.
But Ada wasn’t done. She was riffling through a jewelry box on her dresser. “This is not yours,” she said. “But for tonight—well, you can pretend.”
She came around behind me and fastened a necklace on me. I looked in the mirror. It was a large diamond. “Is this real?”
“Do you really think I’d wear paste?”
My eyes were as round as the stone dangling from the chain on my neck as Ada studied me. “You’ll need earrings too.” She returned to the jewelry box and came back with a pair of teardrop diamonds that she handed me to slip into my ears. She made one more trip to the jewelry box and returned with a sapphire ring, which she held in her closed palm a minute before offering it to me. “This was my mother’s engagement ring,” she said.
I studied the oval sapphire surrounded by small diamonds on a gold band. “It’s beautiful.”
Ada nodded approvingly. “Center diamonds weren’t in vogue yet. That came later.”
But contrary to what Marilyn Monroe would say, this was the ring I would choose, if actually given a say, for my own. It drew the eye more than a solitaire, and the colored stone was unique—I didn’t want something that some nebulous man in my future picked from a velvet tray of nearly identical rings in a jeweler’s shop. I wanted something with character—like me.
“Oh, Ada—”
“Don’t get all sentimental on me now,” she said. “And like I said, it’s all loaners.”
“Except the stole?”
“Ask me that again and I’m taking it back.”
I wanted to hug her, but I was worried that would result in her taking back these gorgeous jewels before I had a chance to wear them.
“Can I wear the red lipstick?”
She pointed to the door. “Get out. I’ll be down in a minute.”
When she came down, she was wearing the Guerlain, of course. I didn’t say a word.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
We pulled into town with the top down, our hair protected in scarves, and Ada drove to a parking lot. There were valets, but she refused. For a moment, I thought the valet would argue, but a supervisor came over and greeted her by name, telling her to go ahead.
“Thank you, Teddy,” she said.
“Mrs. Miller isn’t with you?” he asked, peering at me.
Ada shook her head. “Her mother died. She’ll be joining us in another week or so. I’ll be dining with my niece tonight.”
“My condolences,” Teddy said, bowing his head. “Would you like me to let Hackney’s know you’ll need a table?”
“Yes, darling, thank you so much.”
“Anything for you, Miss Heller.”
Ada pulled away, directed by the first valet to a parking spot. “Is Lillian married?” I asked.
She looked over at me as if that were a bizarre question. “Why would you ask that?”
“He called her Mrs.”
“She was,” Ada said. “A long time ago now.”
“Do you two come here a lot?”
“Once a year,” she said, removing the scarf from her head and fluffing her hair in the mirror. I did the same to mine. “I suppose it may be twice this year if she’s up to it when she finally arrives. Poor dear. She’s having such a hard summer. A little fun is just what she needs.” Ada opened her door and stepped out. “Are you coming?”
I scrambled to follow her, but she was already halfway up the steps to the boardwalk by the time I caught her. It had been much later when Freddy and I arrived, and the boardwalk was now dominated by families, many of which had younger children in carriages or riding on their fathers’ shoulders, all in their finery. Couples, young and old, strolled arm in arm. Women wore cocktail attire, and more than a handful of men wore tuxedoes despite the heat.
A little boy, about ten or eleven years old, narrowly avoided colliding into us. “Bruce!” his mother scolded. “Wait for your sister!”
He grinned up at us impishly with a pronounced underbite before he ran back to her.
“It’s too hot for a stole,” I complained to Ada.
“That’s the trick, darling,” Ada said. “To look like you’re chilly enough to need it.”
I looked at her from the corner of my eye. “Since when do you care what people think? Why not just be comfortable?”
She suppressed a laugh. “I don’t, honestly. But everything here is an illusion. And if we don’t put on a show, why would anyone else?”