“Sure, Dr. LeVine.” But he’s hung up.
I sigh and hang the earpiece back on its hook. The one night I need Lydia to be her steadfast, tender-hearted self, she’s sneaking around.
“She’ll get over it,” Nick is saying to Father in the dining room. “You and Jane can’t design your whole life around Piper.”
My back stiffens. Is it too much to ask for a little sensitivity for Mother’s birthday?
Father’s voice is too low for me to make out, but I don’t care to eavesdrop. My stocking feet whisper against the hardwood floors as I stalk up two flights of stairs to my bedroom. I shut the door behind me with such force, the glass shade on my lamp rattles.
I take in my room—so full of my mother—with dry eyes. The white iron bed and pink bedding that she picked out when I was too young to know I didn’t like pink. The desk she surprised me with when I was ten and in love with writing stories. The armoire that was hers . . . until she no longer needed it.
I sit in the rocking chair that she used with all three of us children and wait for the tears to come. I know Father’s right, that Mother would have encouraged remarriage. Would have likely told me that she wasn’t using her birthday anymore, so Father and Jane might as well have it. My guess is she would have liked Jane and her fussy, girly ways, because Mother liked everyone.
But would she like this girl that I am? Bitterness over losing her has certainly festered in my heart these last five years. And in embracing the resentment, perhaps I’ve overlooked becoming a lady whom Elsie Sail would have been proud to call her daughter.
“Why, I can’t believe my eyes. Is that possibly Miss Sail walking alone?”
I turn and find Jeremiah Crane standing along the walkway of Presley’s the next afternoon. His trilby tips at an angle, his mouth is set in a smirk, and his hands are in the pockets of his trousers. The combination of which makes up a rather rakish picture.
I hesitate, and then step out of the flow of girls to join Jeremiah. “And how are you today, Mr. Crane?”
“Very well, thank you.” Jeremiah makes a show of glancing about. “Where is your Miss LeVine this afternoon? I hardly recognized you without her.”
Of course. Lydia’s red hair and lovely face have always attracted male attention. I tip my face up to the warm sunlight in hopes that Jeremiah won’t read into any disappointment that might be evident. “At home, I believe.”
Probably suffering from punishment so severe, she couldn’t have even imagined it.
“Have they come for you, Miss Sail?” Jeremiah asks teasingly.
I look to Jeremiah and find him grinning, his gaze attached to something behind me. But when I try to follow his eye line, I see nothing but vehicles and parents. My confusion must be clear because Jeremiah nods toward the street. “See those two men who just got out of the touring sedan by the streetlamp?”
“Yes.” One looks near Father’s age, and is thick, with a belly that implies he doesn’t let Prohibition tamper the amount of beer he drinks. The other is trim with olive skin and, from this distance at least, seems quite young. Maybe only three or four years older than me.
“That car they just got out of is a detective bureau vehicle.” Jeremiah leans against the railing and crosses his arms over his chest. There’s a spark of mischief in his slate-blue eyes. “Have pastries gone missing from the teacher’s lounge again, Miss Sail?”
My cheeks heat. “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”
Jeremiah releases a loud laugh. “What other response would I expect from a lawyer’s daughter?”
“Surely you Cranes have plenty to discuss at the dinner table.” I clap a hand to my hat as a gust of wind sweeps across campus. “It seems you wouldn’t have to sink to mere secondary school gossip.”
“Is it mere gossip that you slid down the stairwell banister in only your bathing costume?”
My face burns even hotter. “That . . . that’s being taken out of context.”
“Or that you stole a frog from the science teacher’s classroom?”
“Liberated is the word I would choose, but that’s never been proven.”
“Or that you have the highest marks in the school?”
Why’s he razzing me so hard? It’s not like I went out of my way to talk to him. He called out to me.
“I believe it’s time for me to be going, Mr. Crane.” I take a step backward. “Good day.”
“Wait, Miss Sail. Do you . . .” Jeremiah clutches his hat in his hands, rotating it in an absent manner. “Do you go to the movies often?”
My breath catches in my chest. Is he . . . ?
“Emma and I saw The Thief of Baghdad last night.” Jeremiah mashes his hat back onto his head. “I thought maybe you might like to see it. That maybe, if you were free this Friday evening, we could go together.”
There’s no longer mischief lighting Jeremiah’s eyes. My brain is incapable of forming an intellectual response. A date? He’s asking me on a date?