“What kind of home?”
“Are you going to make me say it?”
Marvin moved next to her. “Nah,” he said. He draped his arm around her. It was the closest he’d gotten to her since the night of the bonfire. Some girls might think he was trying to take advantage, knowing that she wasn’t innocent, but Betty felt compassion, not a come-on. She scooted closer, and Marvin held on to her a little tighter. She didn’t ask him to stop.
“Please don’t think less of me,” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s Barsky who’s the louse. Do you want me to take him out? I know someone . . .”
Betty gasped. “No!”
“Good,” Marvin said. “I was half-kidding. Anyway, I’m more of a lover than a fighter.”
“That’s what I was hoping.”
Abe wasn’t coming back. Whatever happened to him, wherever he was, Betty didn’t figure into his plan.
It was time for a new plan, one where there was no train, no horrid home for wayward mothers, no Tillie.
“I made a list,” Betty said. She handed Marvin the paper. “Read it out loud.”
Marvin swallowed. “‘Why I should marry Betty Stern.’” He lowered the paper, his hands trembling. “What does this mean?”
Betty looked at Marvin and counted to three inside her head. “It means I want to marry you. If you’ll raise this baby as your own. I’ll be a good wife; you know I will. I need you, Marvin. They’re going to take this baby away from me. You can stop that from happening. I’ll never mention Abe, I promise, or anything about this summer. We can pretend we were planning this all along, just making sure by seeing other people. I know your father wants you married. We both win.”
“You don’t love me,” Marvin said.
Betty couldn’t lie. “I will learn to love you.”
Marvin kissed Betty with an enthusiasm she then imagined had been building all summer. She placed her arms around his neck and forced herself to kiss him back.
Nannie pulled Betty out of the cardroom, where she and Marvin were talking to his mother. “You cannot marry Marv Peck.” Nannie scowled.
“I can’t please you, it seems. Well, I’m eighteen, and he’s a nice Jewish boy. I can do what I want.” Betty lowered her voice to a hush. “And he is going to raise this baby as his own. Problem solved.”
Nannie was silent. Betty had stunned her speechless.
“Your parents are going to be very disappointed,” she said at last.
“That will make three of us then.”
Coming to this agreement with Marvin had emboldened Betty. She was going to be a married woman, a mother. She’d have a family of her own whom she would never betray.
“I never thought you could be taken advantage of so easily,” Nannie said. “First Abe, and well—you know.” Nannie waved her index finger in circles. “Now Marv and marriage!”
“No one has taken advantage of me, Nannie.” Her grandmother’s doubtful stare dared Betty to continue. “It was one hundred percent my idea to get married, not Marvin’s.”
“Don’t be naive, Betty. He’s already in love with you.” Nannie’s sharpness surprised her. “It’s what he’s wanted all along. Otherwise he’d never go along with this.”
Betty supposed she had already known. “I thought you would be happy.”
“I would have been happy if you were a nice girl going off to college and then fell in love with a nice Jewish boy.”
Now Nannie cared about love? Betty wasn’t having it. “Don’t worry about us, Nannie. You don’t have to do a thing. We’ll elope and then go to Skokie.”
College and a New York City career as a fashion editor seemed like they had been part of a dream, and now Betty had woken up.
“You’ll do no such thing.” Nannie started back to the cardroom. “I suppose I’ll get used to the idea. We wanted so much more for you, Betty.”
Where was the grandmother that had defended Betty’s rights and bolstered her confidence? She missed that Nannie. Maybe more than she missed Abe.
“Nannie, for the record, Abe didn’t take advantage of me either.”
Chapter 26
BOOP
Filled rooms filled Boop. When Natalie and Piper moved into their bedrooms upstairs, and a bed and dresser transformed the downstairs TV room into recovery central for Georgia, the house hummed with conversation, footsteps, laughter. It sounded like a home.
While Boop’s nuclear families had always numbered three, in the off-season often her grandparents’ cousins and friends visited for weekends and holidays. During the summer, her house may have been emptier, but her life had been jam-packed—like now.
Boop thought of Hannah. No news meant that she and Clark were talking—that they were communicating.
Things were falling into place.
Now Boop just had to get through the pageant.
The next day, Natalie rehearsed her welcome speech and reviewed the schedule. Georgia planned her day with Charlotte and Poppy (the Lighthouse girls, Boop called them) so they could sit together in the auditorium. Maureen was still a patient; they’d promised to show her pictures.
The last time the house was abuzz with this much Miss South Haven chatter, Boop boasted a twenty-four-inch waist and walked from room to room with a book on her head. The sights and sounds set Boop’s heart alight, especially Piper, who was pleasant and polite and not just for a teenager. Boop knew she was happy to stay in South Haven, and to have her own room. Boop had given her a key, though she never locked the door. She hoped the gesture conveyed that this was Piper’s home now.
She and Georgia set the table for a Delightful Buddha dinner.
Boop leaned against the kitchen counter. She was blessed. When was the last time the house had thumped with the heartbeat present during her childhood? She closed her eyes and leaned back, as if doing so would allow her to record not only the voices, but the humanity, and to safeguard it all for later.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Natalie asked as she poured water into tumblers.
Boop opened her eyes. “That depends,” she said. “I don’t have to say
