“Me too. Usually I work for my father, but business dropped off some and we had a falling out.” Abe clammed up. “If I don’t want to get canned my first week, I should let you go inside.”
Betty didn’t want to go inside. She wanted to know more about his skyscrapers, his family’s business, his rift with his father.
“Maybe we can talk again soon?” Abe asked. “Real soon?”
She skipped up the steps but turned around and nodded. It was as if he’d read her mind.
Betty fell backward onto her bed and smiled at the ceiling. She couldn’t help it. Had there ever been a more beautiful ceiling? White and smooth like her favorite frosting, by lamplight it glowed a muted amber, as if cast by a thousand familiar sunsets.
There were zero sunsets to count until she could see Abe Barsky again.
Betty rolled to her stomach and rested her chin on fisted palms, kicking her legs like she was swimming a mile. Her smile stretched until her cheeks ached with the tall handsome reality of Abe Barsky. She closed her eyes and imagined his blue ones staring at her, but not as if she were watching from above, as happened with some of her daydreams, but as if she were inside herself looking at him again, at the very moment their eyes met, before either of them had glanced away. She could still smell his aftershave.
He was the one.
Not just a summer beau or a passing fancy. He was her bashert, her intended, sent by God and a summer job.
It had happened this way for her grandparents. Their families owned neighboring farms in the Fruit Belt, so they’d met in grade school. Zaide said he never looked at another girl. That’s when Nannie would always roll her eyes, but when she was sixteen—finished with school and taking in sewing to help her family—she married him.
Heck, it had happened this way for her parents too. Joe Stern met Tillie Feldman the one summer her parents came to South Haven from Chicago. They hadn’t even stayed at Stern’s, but the two met at the arcade, wrote letters for a year, and then eloped.
Maybe true love ran in her family.
Betty scrambled to her feet and grasped the bedpost with one hand, stretching out her arms. It was too late to call Georgia. She walked to her desk, opened the top middle drawer, and retrieved a piece of monogrammed stationery and her favorite pen so she could write to her Barnard roommate, an Italian girl from New Jersey named Patricia San Giacomo. Betty thought she must be worldly and exotic, and she couldn’t wait to meet her.
Someone knocked on the door and opened it. Betty laid her hands by her sides and tapped her legs. What would she write to Patricia when her thoughts were overwhelmed by Abe?
Nannie poked in her head. “Did you have a nice time tonight?” There was no accusatory hint in her voice, but she hadn’t said “with Marv,” so Betty didn’t have to lie.
“Yes, I did.”
“Good. See you in the morning, honey.” Nannie turned and pulled the door behind her.
“Wait,” Betty said. Omitting was the same as lying. And someone might have seen them. “Marv walked Eleanor home, so Abe Barsky walked me home.”
That was the truth, or it was enough of the truth.
Nannie stepped fully inside the bedroom. “It doesn’t seem like Marv to leave you when he asked you to go for a walk with him.”
“I said I didn’t mind. Eleanor had much farther to walk than I did.”
“I imagine you didn’t mind. Marv is a nice boy but Abe’s very handsome.”
“Nannie!” Betty’s cheeks grew even warmer. She contained a smile and hoped her grandmother couldn’t hear her heart pounding or see it forcing its way out of her chest. She wished she could tell Nannie how her whole body had turned hot and cold when she’d looked into Abe’s eyes—how she knew there were things they would say to each other that no one else would understand. That there was so much more to him than that handsome face, just like Nannie had always said there was so much more to her than a pretty one.
“Don’t forget you leave in September,” Nannie whispered.
“But would it be all right if . . . ?”
“If you went on a date? Yes. A date. As long as it doesn’t interfere with work or preparing for the pageant, you have my permission. We want you to have a nice summer, but it’s not the time for something serious, Betty. Don’t go getting carried away.”
“I promise.” She skittered to the door and hugged Nannie hard and fast before she changed her mind. Betty closed the door, then placed the paper and pen back into the desk drawer. She’d keep her reveries to herself a little longer.
Chapter 6
BOOP
Boop focused on the present—Doris and Georgia staring toward the lighthouse, yelps from roughhousing teens on the beach, a rumble in her stomach, Hannah resting her chin in her hand and gazing at Boop as if she was waiting for more bits of the past.
Some bits were not for sharing. “You have a lot to think about,” Boop said. “You should go home and talk to Clark.”
“I will,” Hannah said. “But not yet. I need to figure things out on my own. I’m so sorry I made you remember things you wanted left in the past.”
“I’m a tough cookie. Don’t you worry about me,” Boop said.
Hannah kissed Boop and walked inside.
“Girls?” Boop said.
Georgia and Doris turned around.
“Enough about yesterday. Tomorrow afternoon is square dancing. Get ready to do-si-do.”
“I’m not sure I have the right clothes,” Georgia said.
“Oh, you don’t need anything fancy,” Doris said. “It’ll be fun.”
Georgia rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
“You were brave to tell Hannah about the situation with Marvin,” Doris said.
“It didn’t feel brave,” Boop said. “It felt
