“But you must have preferences,” he said. “It is to be the happiest day of your life.” His smile increased. “And night.”
Betty nearly shot off the sofa, but she didn’t. Instead, she changed the subject, “How long have you been building houses?”
“My entire life.” He sighed slightly. “But I’d never ran the company before, and when I inherited it, I—I, well, it was harder than I thought. I owe your father a great deal for helping me.”
That didn’t sound like her father. He never helped anyone. “Helping you how?”
“By partnering with me. I can design homes and oversee their building, but I wasn’t very good at negotiating costs of supplies and labor. Your father has helped with that a great deal.”
She could imagine that her father had. He believed he should get everything for as close to free as possible. Another thought entered her mind. “Is that why you’ve agreed to marry me, James? It was part of the negotiations, the partnership between you and my father?”
His face turned beet red. “I—I do want to marry you, B-Betty. I—I think you’re very pretty, and I think you’ll make a wonderful wife.”
He was being forced into this as much as she was. Father was the only one getting what he truly wanted. A partner who he could fully control. Just like he did her and her sisters. She was about to ask more, but Father appeared and told James it was time he left.
She almost felt bad for James at how he jumped to obey Father.
As she made her way upstairs, she wondered about that, and what it meant. Marrying James wouldn’t release her from her father’s rules. It would mean that she and her husband were both under his hand.
Jane knocked on her door shortly after she’d entered her room. Betty frowned as Jane walked in and shut the door. She was wearing a shimmering bronze dress and matching hat.
Betty shook her head. “We can’t go out. You heard what Henry said.”
“Yes, I did, and I saw the light out the window,” Jane said as she walked to the closet and opened the door.
“What light? What window?”
“The bathroom window.” She opened the closet door and then the lid of the cedar chest.
The chest was actually a hope chest. Instead of holding flapper attire, it was supposed to hold all the things she’d need for when she got married. They each had received a trunk upon graduation from high school, and gifts for their birthdays and holidays to put inside them ever since. Those gifts, sheets, dishes, and other household items were under her bed so her flapper attire was readily available.
More thoughts of weddings, of marriage, made Betty’s head hurt.
Jane held up a green dress with several layers of long fringe.
Betty shook her head. “What light?”
Jane dropped the dress and held up a black one.
Betty shook her head again and repeated, “What light?”
Jane dropped the black dress and picked the green one up again. “The one Henry is holding.” She carried the dress to the bed. “He’s standing out by the tree in the backyard.” Walking back to the closet, she added, “Waiting for us.”
Betty’s heart lurched. “He’s what?”
“Waiting for us,” Jane said, and knelt down, digging in the chest for the mate to the black shoe she held in one hand. “Now, hurry up—he’s been out there for half an hour already.”
Betty pulled off her dress. “Why do we have to change clothes?”
“Because Henry decided that we have to keep the same schedule as before. If we don’t, Elkin might think we are onto him.” Jane tossed the shoe toward her and then dug out a long string of black pearls. “I for one agree with him.”
“When did he tell you that?” Betty pulled the green dress over her head.
“While you were sitting on the sofa with the worm.” Jane dropped the pearls over Betty’s head.
Betty considered saying James wasn’t a worm and that he was being forced into this marriage just like she was, as she twisted her hair up and applied a quick brush of lipstick to her lips and mascara to her eyes, but knew Jane would argue the point.
Jane handed her a black hat that hosted an ostrich feather, and Betty stepped into her black shoes on her way to the door.
It had all happened so fast, that as her feet touched the ground, Betty had to hold on to the trellis to keep from swooning.
“Come on,” Jane whispered.
“Give me a moment,” Betty said. “I’m dizzy.”
“Again?”
Betty shook her head. “From getting dressed so fast.”
“Patsy said that happened last night,” Jane said. “That you almost fainted dead away.”
Betty pushed off the trellis. “Because I’d just heard Henry had been shanghaied!”
“Well, come on,” Jane hissed. “Before he gets shanghaied again waiting on you!”
Her light-headedness dissolved the moment she saw Henry at the tree, in one way. It increased in another because somehow, sneaking away tonight, with him at her side was more exciting than it had ever been. Everything was more exciting with him. The exact opposite of how things would be with James.
They took the tunnel to the Rooster’s Nest and as they walked, Betty thought how this was the first time she and her sisters would actually acknowledge they even knew one another while visiting a speakeasy. Other than the few slight warnings she’d had to give Jane or Patsy over the past several months, when it had appeared as if one or the other was about to go against one of the rules they’d put down, they’d rarely spoken to each other inside a tavern.
Jane was giddy at sneaking through the storage room, despite the number of warnings Betty gave her.
As soon as they, one by one, stepped out from behind the curtain, Jane nodded toward a table near the bar. “There they are.” With a giggle, she added,
