Chapter Two
Two
Joseph
June 1940
I cut through the field to Tommy and Evelyn’s house, the fresh cedar shingles glimmering in the pink dewy morning. Their yard was once dotted with trees that littered their leaves and shed their needles, pinecones sticky with sap. But now the route is exposed, the trees ripped from their roots by a hurricane. In the winter, this meadow, like a bridge between us, becomes snow covered and treacherous. Our boots leave slushy footprints or slip-slide, cracking through its icy surface. In the fall it turns gold, the grass dry and crunching beneath my feet. Spring is muddy when the snow first melts, everything limp and disheveled, a mess of crisscrossed tracks. Then, days like this, the slow rise, the budding, the drying out and soaking up, the showers ending in birdsong. The wildflowers grow inexplicably, steadfast, and the entire field bursts purple.
I am almost to their house when Evelyn flies out the front door, slamming it behind her.
Tommy appears seconds later, calling after her, “Ev, stop! You can’t scream at Ma and run off like that.”
“What’s she going to do, send me away?” Evelyn sneers, whirling back at her brother.
“What’s going on?” I jog to catch up, and Tommy slows his pace to let me. Evelyn storms ahead of us toward Bernard Beach.
“Don’t you think you’re proving her point? She already thinks you’re out of control.”
“I’ll show her out of control.”
“And ungrateful.”
“For what?” Evelyn laughs, incredulous. “Spending the next two years learning how to curtsy? I don’t want her life. Alone in the house waiting for Dad to come home from work, the same thing every day?” She takes off at a run once more, hollering behind her, “I’d rather die!”
“What’s she yelling about?” I ask.
“Ma’s shipping Ev off to Boston, to live with Aunt Maelynn.”
“Wait, what?” I halt midstride as Tommy barrels ahead.
“At the end of the summer. I know. We’re as shocked as you.” He waves me on, trying to get me up to speed on this strange turn of events.
“I’m so confused. Maelynn? ”
“That’s the one.”
As far as I know, Mrs. Saunders and her sister haven’t spoken in decades, and none of us has ever met her. Maelynn ran away when she was seventeen, but the details are murky and contested, a bit of small-town lore. She’s known to be wild, a flight risk. It doesn’t add up.
“Why would your mom want Evelyn to live with her?”
“She thinks Ev needs a bit of help in the acting-like-a-lady department, and apparently Maelynn is a teacher at some fancy boarding school for girls, Mrs. Mayweather’s something or other. Apparently you have to know someone to get in.”
We approach Evelyn at Bernard Beach like a caged animal, no sudden movements, and sit beside her in the sand. She doesn’t acknowledge us, simmering in anger.
Tommy tosses a thin rock, flicks his wrist as it sails over the water, skipping once, twice, three times. “Ev, you’re looking at it all wrong. This is your chance to get away from Stonybrook, to live in a real city, to meet new people. An adventure. I’d give anything for that.”
“Well, then, you take my spot,” she mumbles, her hair hanging in her face. This is an Evelyn I haven’t seen before, her cheeks lightly freckled by the sun are usually stretched in a grin, but now they’re ashen, tense.
“A school full of girls? Sign me up!” Tommy elbows me, smirking.
Sitting beside them, I am struck by how alike they are. In a few weeks they’ll turn fifteen and seventeen, their birthdays only two days apart, but that is not why they are often mistaken for twins. They share a confidence I never possessed, a sureness of who they are in their bones that I envied, a charisma that gets them, and me by association, equally into and out of trouble. How entwined in each other’s lives they have always been, siblings and best friends, something I never knew growing up in my house alone. Alone, but never lonely, because they slid me in like a card missing from their deck.
Together we raced to the shore, down the dirt path that sometimes flooded on full-moon nights. Tommy leading the pack, our feet toughened by the end of each summer by the piercing rocks and blistering sand. We swam out to Captain’s Rock, a submerged land mass jutting out of the water that warned sailors to steer clear, and felt for the bundles of mussels clinging to its slippery sides like bunches of grapes on a vine. We plucked enough to fill a pail and swam in, heaved ourselves soaking wet onto the wooden dock and lay exhausted, drying under the midday sun. We cracked the shells with our bare heels to reveal the mucous flesh within, white or bright orange, before clamping a clothespin tied to string and sitting side by side, three lines dangling between our swinging legs, waiting for the slight tug of a crab. I don’t have a memory of our first meeting, and maybe that’s because there wasn’t one, our families’ houses side by side for generations. There never was a before Tommy and Evelyn, not really. I try to imagine the next two years without her, but I can only see the imprint in the sand between us where she belongs.
“Those girls are going to be awful.” She drags a stick in sloppy circles between her knees.
“I’m sure they won’t be,” I say.
“And if they are awful, but very pretty, bring ’em home for me, alright?” Tommy says.
She punches him in the shoulder, but she’s smiling.
After a summer together, she is gone, not to be back until the next one. Tommy and I spend the year as we always do, our time divided between school, trading updates on the war and helping my parents restore the inn, damaged in the Hurricane of ’38.
The storm hit two years ago now, but the memory is crisp, a branding leaving a scar. That September day started hot and sticky, not unlike the rest that summer. I was fifteen. Tommy, Evelyn and I swam in the swelling surf after school; my mother unclipped linens from the line as it began to rain. Then it came, an angry, living thing. We rode it out in our attic with petrified guests, clinging to heavy trunks and each other, our shutters battened down against the gale-force winds and hammering rain. The water rose, burst through doors and windows, felling hundred-year-old maples, snapping power lines and sending furniture floating through the streets.
We emerged wet and shaken, trudging through floodwaters and mud, bracing for the fallout. The posts of the wooden dock splintered like toothpicks, the beachfront summer cottages were knocked inland off their stilts or reduced to piles of debris. Tommy and Evelyn found me near an overturned porcelain tub and we stood together in silence. My mother fell to her knees in the dark churned earth, gripped the exposed roots of a pine ripped from our yard, and sobbed. My father at her side, held tight to her heaving shoulders.
The Saunderses’ place was back to its normal grandeur within months of the hurricane. Mr. Saunders paid some of his workers to cut out the moldy plaster walls, rip out the carpets and rebuild while he went to the office. The only sign of damage was the wide-open yard that had once been covered with mature trees.
At my house, the storm is still a recent enemy; my dad distracted at dinner as he stares at our bare rooms and rough-hewn walls. With Tommy’s insistence, Mr. Saunders got my father a job working on the line at his factory, the Groton Ship and Engine Company. My mother took up shifts at the Red Cross, distributing supplies while Roosevelt’s WPA cleared our streets. A temporary thing, my dad said, so we could save up money for the repairs needed to reopen the Oyster Shell. But two years later, he hastens to the garage as soon as his plate is clear, working past nightfall to construct furniture out of scrap wood. My mother paces and tidies the inn that is no longer an inn, peering with worried eyes through the window at my father, silhouetted by a bare bulb hanging low above him. Sometimes I discover them in an embrace, when she has determined it is late enough and steps into the dewy grass to fetch him for bed, wrapping her arms around his soft middle until he relents.
Although our activities haven’t changed, Stonybrook has felt strange these months without Evelyn, and I walk around with a knot in my stomach like I’m forgetting something but can’t remember what. I keep expecting her to turn up, pressing her nose against the windows, or biking behind us on the path from school. I knew Tommy would have a hard time without her, but it surprises me how much I’ve felt her absence.
“You remember when we were kids and Evelyn chased the Campbell twins with that giant spider crab?” I stop, my paintbrush suspended over new window trim. As I say it, something in me twinges, a notch out of place. I can’t get her out of my mind. Evelyn, who wore overalls Tommy had outgrown, who tossed her head back, open-mouthed, when she laughed, who kneeled in brackish mud digging for razor clams with her bare hands.
Tommy chuckles. “Let’s hope for everyone’s sake there’s a shortage of spider crabs up in Boston.”
“You think they’ll send her home early? Kick her out for bad behavior, or something?” I ask, trying to sound casual.
“Are you kidding? I’ll be surprised if she ever comes back.”
“What do you mean?”
“Stonybrook’s boring. If I got sent to Boston, I’d never come home.”
“What are you talking about? She loves Stonybrook.”
Tommy wipes his arm against his forehead, leaving a white steak of paint behind. “She loved Stonybrook. She hadn’t been anywhere. You really want to live here the rest of your life?”
The question has never occurred to me. I peer around at the Oyster Shell, built by my great-grandparents in the 1800s, the mold-spattered walls and rotted boards will eventually be restored enough to reopen. I’ll take it over one day, raise my family here like my parents, and their parents. Four generations of Myerses along the Long Island Sound, my kids someday will make it five. Five generations running on the same sand, learning to swim in the same waves. There is no other place so deeply rooted in my soul, no other place I could so truly belong, the only place that calls me home.
“Stonybrook’s enough for me.”
I can’t help but notice her as she steps off the train, a beacon among the gray smog of men in suit jackets and hats. It isn’t until she is almost on us that I realize who she is. Even Tommy is caught off guard. He was craning to see, scanning New London’s bustling Union Station for a familiar face seconds before she threw her arms around his neck. We were expecting Evelyn. But this girl—this woman—who floats toward us, carrying her leather suitcase and smiling at passengers as she navigates the crowd, she is a stranger.
Her dress hugs tight to the curves of her body, and it’s the color of the wild violets that grow in the field between our houses. Her hair is parted to one side and pinned in a way that emphasizes her eyes. They are flecked with green, something I never noticed before. Her body looks so slender, so feminine, instead of just small. She even has a heel on her shined shoes, although in every memory I see her barefoot. A train sounds its horn in the distance, and the early summer heat becomes stifling. My chest tightens, my mouth dry.
Tommy holds her by her shoulders, at an arm’s length. “Where is my sister?” He spins her and makes a show of peering behind her back. “What have they done with Evelyn?”
Tommy always strikes me as taller than he is, his animated gestures and hearty voice proclaim a room empty until he is in it, but now with her heels on, they are almost the same height. Evelyn giggles, and even that has a warming effect. She turns to me and hugs my waist. She smells like a flower I can’t name.
“It’s so good to see you, you have no idea.” She beams, grabbing each of our arms. She raises her eyebrows, the way she always does before one of her stories. “You can’t imagine the year I’ve had.”
Tommy nods. “Well, Ev, whatever they did worked. Ma may actually faint.”
Evelyn tips her head back in laughter. Warmth like sunshine spreads through my chest, her fingers hot against my skin. She glances at me, and then at her shoes, dropping her grip. “Don’t be fooled. I thought about coming home all haggard but I don’t actually want her to explode. Plus, Aunt Maelynn stuck her neck out for me quite a bit, and I don’t need Mom to pile on. Let’s say I wasn’t a total hit with the headmistress.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Tommy says.
“What is Maelynn like?” I ask. “She live up to the stories?”
“Yes, you have to meet her. She’s incredible. She is the only one who actually teaches anything interesting. Gosh, we read Faulkner, Woolf, the Bront? sisters—” She registers our blank looks. “Okay, you have no clue what I’m talking about, but trust me. She’s brilliant. The girls all adore her. It’s hard to believe she’s Mom’s sister.”
Tommy tilts his head, ready to gloss over things between Evelyn and their mother, as usual. “She’s not so bad, Ev.”
She shoots him a look. “Easy for you to say. You’re her golden, angel child.” As tough as their mom is on Evelyn, she becomes malleable and girlish when her son turns his attention her way, a chink in her otherwise steel facade.
“Well, that’s because I’m a golden angel.” He winks.
Evelyn shakes her head, threading her arms through both of ours, and with exaggerated politeness says, “Well, would you two fine gentlemen escort a lady home?”
Tommy tips an invisible cap then picks up her suitcase. I laugh, and it sounds higher pitched than normal, flooding me with embarrassment. My senses are heightened, taking in the softness of the insides of her forearms. Evelyn straightens her shoulders and sticks her chin out, making a show of smiling at everyone who passes by.
In the nights that follow I dream of her, always in the violet dress, or walking in a field of wildflowers, or naked, sticking blossoms through her hair. I can’t remember a day when Evelyn and I were alone, but now that’s all I want. I need to see how much she has changed. See if there is a place in her life where I still fit. It surprises me how little I know her now, even after all these years we’ve spent growing together along the same sea.
Although, truth be told, I am grateful for the time apart. I’m not sure how Tommy will take my new feelings; I flush thinking about the dreams. He is my best friend, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a brother. How can I expect him to accept this shift, this need to make his little sister laugh, this desire to hold her hand?
I can’t casually ask Evelyn on a date, whistling at her on the street the way Tommy does the girls in town. Those girls laugh because they know he’s a flirt, and still they fall for him. Tommy brings me along to keep the other girl company, the friend of the one he has his eye on. Sometimes those girls lean in, and we kiss, but my heart is still when their lips meet mine.
I’m not even sure what to think. It’s Evelyn . Evelyn, who used to wrestle with us on the sandbar, challenge us to spitting contests, and ate fistfuls of wild blackberries without caring when the juice dribbled down her chin. Evelyn, who used to tackle me and demand piggyback rides, who laughed at Tommy’s jokes until she got the hiccups. Evelyn, who now rolls her shoulders back, accentuating her curves under the fabric of her dress. Evelyn, whose sweet scent lures me like a spell, whose touch buckles me at the knees. Evelyn, who is home for the summer before she is back to school once again.
Today is Tommy’s day off, and they both swing by the inn on their way to the beach, insisting I skip out for a few hours.
Tommy tosses a striped towel at me. “For old times’ sake, before Evelyn goes and becomes more of a lady on us.”
I grin. “We wouldn’t want that.” It makes Evelyn laugh and my smile widens, sheepish.
She wears a yellow cotton dress over her bathing costume and leads us down Sandstone Lane to Bernard Beach. I imagine the moment when she will undo the buttons, slip it over her shoulders. I’m grateful for the privacy of my thoughts, still surprising to me, although not unwelcome. Her sunglasses hide her eyes and I wonder about their changing color, needing to know the exact shade of blue or green.
The sand is cool under my feet this late morning, but won’t be for long, the sun beating on my neck. Evelyn tosses her sunglasses onto a blanket and dashes toward the water, nearing high tide. She sheds her dress as she goes; it flies behind her before landing crumpled in the sand. She splashes her feet in the foam, yelps from the cold as she wades in and propels herself through a gentle wave. Tommy and I drop our towels and slip off our shirts before running in after her. I dive under, the rush of icy water against my skin, pounding on my ears, everything muted, and flowing over me. I break the surface; the air rushes back toward me, the sound clear and sharp. Evelyn floats on her back, her pink toes stick out of the water, her breasts rise, buoyant, face pale and shimmering like the inside of a clamshell. When the waves dip, I glimpse a white strip of her stomach, a sliver of the moon, before it submerges again. Tommy is off, tanned arms from working in the shipyard rise up and out of the waves as he swims away from us. I could stand, but I tread water to keep warm beside Evelyn, watch the water pool and drain off her stomach as she bobs in the subtle current.
“It’s good to have you back.” My voice is quiet, and her ears are partially underwater. She doesn’t reply and I think she hasn’t heard me. Then she sighs, not out of frustration or exhaustion but a happy sound, a breath so contented she couldn’t hold it in her body any longer.
After a moment she says, “It’s good to be back.” She opens her eyes, watching the endless clouds drift above us. Her skin ripples from the cold, the water in June not warmed yet for the season, not yet refreshingly cool like July, certainly not the bathwater of August. A strip of filmy copper seaweed drifts by her thigh and is sent back the way it came.
Before I can stop myself, I say, “I’ve missed you.” Right after I speak, I panic. It’s too forward; we don’t talk to each other this way. Maybe she hasn’t changed after all. Maybe she has changed too much. Maybe I shouldn’t say anything, leave her to float with the clouds, light and free.
She lifts herself to tread water beside me. “Well, now, Joseph...” She smiles and tilts her head to one side, a Tommy sort of expression that tightens my stomach with guilt. “Don’t tell me that because I’ve come home looking like a lady, all of a sudden you’re going to act like a gentleman.”
“I mean...” I squint, glad for the brightness of the sun, another reason my face might flush. “Tommy and I, we’ve missed having you around.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She raises her eyebrows. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were falling in love with me.”
She pauses, holding my gaze, her eyes bluer today, I see now, and I open my mouth, but no words come out. She laughs, breaking my guilty stare.
“I’m teasing! Loosen up!” she says, before plunging underwater. Tommy is approaching, coming in with strong, even strides.
He stands when he reaches us. “That’ll wake you up, huh?” He shakes his head, hard, to flush water out of his ears. “Ready to go in?”
“Uh-uh, no way, it feels incredible. I’m never getting out.” She kicks her feet like a mermaid, alternately flexing and pointing her toes. “If I were at school I’d be sitting inside learning about which fork belongs with which course, and how best to greet my husband after a long day of work.”
“You? With a husband?” Tommy splashes her. “Please tell me they don’t actually teach you that stuff.”
“Oh, I promise you they do.” Evelyn reaches up and twists her wet hair into a knot at the nape of her neck.
“Well, did you like any of it? Was any of it useful?” I ask, trying to sound casual. One ringlet falls loose from the bun and I resist the urge to reach for it.
“My weekends with Maelynn, those I’ll miss this summer. We went everywhere, Fenway and the MFA, that’s the art museum, and oh! Sometimes she’d pick a random number and we would ride the trolley that many stops and explore where we ended up. She’s fearless.”
“Sounds way better than here if you ask me,” Tommy says.
“Hey, here isn’t so bad,” I say.
“Unfortunately, most of the time at school was pretty painful. Etiquette and sewing and proper dress and ugh, I’m boring myself even thinking about it. The only saving grace was I got to play piano a lot. Maelynn got me private lessons. That was really lovely.”
I’ve only heard her play a few times, the music finding me while I sat on their stoop waiting for Tommy those nights it was too late for Evelyn to come out with us. I almost never entered; Mrs. Saunders rarely welcomed our chaos around their expensive mirrors and stiff furniture, but sometimes when the door was left ajar, I would glimpse Evelyn aglow in yellow lamplight. It was practically the only time her mother tolerated her in the house, fingers dancing on the keys, the jet-black piano humming beneath her. In those moments, she seemed like a stranger, combed hair damp from the shower, elegant and focused, her talent unmistakable. Even to someone like me, who only listened to records when my father put them on; a burly man who loved to dance close with my mother while our living room buzzed with swaying guests, and after, when they were all alone.
“ Lovely? Oh, Ev, what have they done to you?” Tommy covers his face, shaking his head.
“Listen, yes. Most of it was dumb and I hated it. But...” She trails off, smiling. “People...they treat me differently when I act the way they taught me. When I dress and do my hair. I’m still me but, I don’t know...never mind.”
“You’re saying you like the way the boys in town are looking at you now, huh? You really are a chip off the old block.” Tommy splashes her again. My stomach drops, thinking of other guys in town seeing her, noticing her.
She splashes back, hard, spraying both of us. “No—well, maybe—but when you act a certain way people treat you a certain way. That’s all. It’s nice.” She stands, cupping water and letting it rush between her fingers.
Tommy clucks his tongue. “Well, you’re really growing up, Ev. So wise, and worldly. I’m proud, truly. I guess this means now you can’t...oh I don’t know...race us to Captain’s Rock or anything. Wouldn’t want to ruin your new image...” He lifts his eyebrows.
She raises hers in return, eyes wide. “Is that a challenge?”
“I wouldn’t dream of challenging a lady—”
Tommy can’t finish his sentence before Evelyn dives away, starting the race. I plunge in, her legs shining in and out of the water ahead of me. Tommy is last, caught laughing as he joins us sloppily. Tommy is a decent swimmer, but my limbs are longer, and I am faster. I propel forward, kicking my legs, pumping my arms, the splashes of Evelyn beside me. We are in sync now, swimming together and apart. The water is electrified between us, and we meet the slick, algae-covered stone at the same time, my hand reaches for it and finds hers instead. We surface, and she slips away from me, wipes the dripping hair out of her eyes, breath rushed, her lips tinged purple from the cold.
Tommy’s words rush in, churning my stomach. You’re saying you like the way the boys in town are looking at you now, huh? My thoughts follow without permission. Evelyn, who is home for the summer before she is gone.
Water covers our shoulders and undulates between us, the taste of salt on my lips. My heart thuds, skin blazing and numb at once. My eyes search hers; they are deep and open pools, earnest, waiting.
I reach for her hand, again, and this time, she doesn’t pull away.
The next week, I bring Evelyn flowers, a fistful of wild violets from the meadow between our houses, purple petals lined in gold and white. I knock, self-conscious now that I am standing on her stoop, of the puny bouquet, of how she will receive it, but her smile as she opens the door steadies me. I hand it to her, an offering, an explanation, a hope. “That dress you wore, when you came home, you looked so beautiful...and it reminded me of these...and I thought you’d like to have them.”
After that, I picked violets and hid them for her to discover later, our secret code, these make me think of you , something to make her smile, to think of me too. I liked to imagine her finding them everywhere she turned: in a jar on her front steps, in her pockets, pressed between pages of her favorite books.
The weeks passed with stolen gazes and discreet affection. Her arm brushing mine, my knee pressed against hers beneath a table, our fingers laced in the dark while my body pulsed in disbelief, she wants this too . Unsure of how Tommy would react, we were nervous to bring our secret to light, to name it, even to each other, to make it real, to let it be taken away.
Summer was just beginning, but it always kicks into full swing around Tommy’s and Evelyn’s birthdays, right after The Fourth of July. This year to celebrate sixteen and eighteen, Mrs. Saunders makes an exception and allows me over for dinner, a pork roast with potatoes soft enough to mash with a fork, and a buttery lemon cake.
As he lights the candles, Tommy clucks his tongue. “Even on my birthday you try to steal the limelight.”
Evelyn gives him a playful shove. “Oh please, I’m the best birthday present you ever got.” He grins at her, and they blow them out together.
Afterward, we head to Bernard Beach to watch the sun go down, leftover fireworks from yesterday’s Fourth of July display popping past the jetty, illuminating the darkening sky with bursts of red and gold. The night cools and Evelyn wraps her arms around her chest, and I have to stop myself from pulling her close, wishing I had a coat to offer, but even that gesture would set off her brother’s alarm bells.
Tommy stands, leaving a wrinkled imprint between Evelyn and me on the blanket, and slips his father’s silver flask from his back pocket.
“Let’s liven this party up, huh?” He takes a long swig, shudders and passes it to Evelyn.
She puts it up to her nose and recoils. “It smells foul.”
“Don’t smell it. Drink it. Here, Joseph.” He grabs the whiskey and hands it to me, and I take a short sip.
Tommy lights the cigarette hanging between his lips. “Come on, Ev, you’re sweet sixteen! Don’t tell me a lady can’t drink.”
She shuffles her feet, burying then freeing her ankles in the cool sand. “You really have to let this lady thing go. I’m the same.”
“Oh, but you’re not the same,” he mocks, grabbing the flask from me, a roman candle illuminates his boyish features as they turn to stone. “Is she, Joe?”
Evelyn tenses beside me.
“She seems like Evelyn to me.” I shrug but my voice wavers, my eyes cast down at my knees.
Tommy takes another long swig, then a drag on his cigarette, relishing the awkward silence. He shakes his head. “Listen, you two. I’m okay with it. I am. I just want you to admit it to me.”
“Hey, maybe you should slow down.” I motion at the flask, and Tommy backs away.
“I just started—listen, Joe, you’re my best friend and if you want to be with my sister, fine. But I wish you had come to me like a man instead of sneaking around and kissing her in the dark.” Tommy won’t look at us then, he doesn’t even sound angry. His voice is hollow, disappointed.
“We haven’t been kissing!” Evelyn squeals, her voice like a bicycle tire losing air. It is the truth, but a technicality, not an explanation.
There is a pause filled with the crackle of emerald fireworks and the steady roll of waves. Evelyn is silhouetted in the moonlight, and I wish I knew what she was thinking, what she wanted me to say, to do. Tommy tosses his half-finished Lucky Strike onto the sand. The breeze raises the hairs on my arms, but my body is burning from the accusation, the truth in it. All those moments we were sure were subtle, hidden. Of course he knows. I’m a fool. A traitor and a fool.
I take a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you, I did, but I didn’t know how you’d react. I didn’t want you to hate me or go crazy. I didn’t want you to forbid it. I was going to... I was waiting for the right time. I...” I trail off, my excuses falling away.
“You thought I’d forbid it?” Tommy laughs, and even in the shadows I can see his anger forming, a low rumble. “What am I, her father?” He lowers the whiskey, so it is hanging loosely by his fingertips.
I falter, my voice rough with uncertainty. “I don’t know, I—You’re my best friend. I wanted to respect you.”
Tommy jabs his pointer into his chest. “Respect me by telling me. Don’t sneak around. You know how weird I felt around the two of you?” He sweeps an arm out over the beach. “You think I didn’t see what was going on?”
Evelyn jumps in, forcing a lightness to her voice. “Tommy you always had your eyes on some girl walking by.” She tries a laugh. “Honestly I never thought you’d notice.” She twists a curl of her hair, a nervous gesture that despite the tension makes my stomach flutter with longing. There is no going back, no out I want to take.
I open my palms to him, a surrender. “I am so sorry, Tommy. I really am.”
Tommy pauses for another eternity before he exhales a loud dramatic sigh. “I know you are. You’re a good man, Joe. If you’re crazy enough to want to be with Ev, I’m crazy enough to let you. I just wanted to get it out in the open. Honestly, I am okay with it.” He pauses, staring me in the eye, and warns, “As long as you marry her.”
Evelyn freezes; my mouth falls open, stammering. “We haven’t even talked about—”
“Oh geez, I’m kidding.” Tommy howls, throwing his head back. “Sheesh you two are uptight. Here—have a drink, it will help.”
We both laugh, a laugh like a release. Like coming out of our cove braced for a storm and finding the sun.
Tommy lifts his stolen whiskey in a toast. “To Joseph and Evelyn, may you live a long, happy life together, forever in love.” He grins at us before putting the flask to his lips. We pass it around, all of us taking burning mouthfuls, making us giddy and stupid and finally free, blurring the night sky until we can’t distinguish the stars.
Once Tommy knows, the rest of the summer is better than I dreamed. We aren’t overly affectionate in front of him, but I can’t help but hold Evelyn’s hand, brush the hair out of her eyes. Tommy shakes his head and calls us lovebirds, and peers around for some girl to divert his attention. Tommy works at the shipyard most days, so Evelyn and I are often alone. She visits me at the inn while I chisel away at the list my father’s left me, replacing warped flooring, rotted baseboards, missing shingles. I don’t mind the work, my brain emptying of all else in the tinkering, fixing and sanding. There’s an ease to working with my hands, and pride in a job well done, the giving back to a home that will be given to me someday. A way of imprinting myself into its history, the way I’ve seen my father, and his father, do for as long as I can remember. And I never mind her interruption. Evelyn sometimes reading on a blanket in the grass nearby, or steadying a ladder and handing up tools before we steal away and spend the afternoon together, swimming and sunning on the warm sand.
This afternoon, we lie on the dock, finding images in the clouds above us. Evelyn’s hair is damp and windswept, my hand on her thigh. Touching her skin is both thrilling and comforting, as if we’ve always lain this way, as if our relationship was never anything less than this. I turn to face her and my gaze soaks up every inch, like a painter with a model, an artist and his muse.
“What are you doing?” She blushes as she asks.
“You want to know?” I ask, suddenly shy. I can’t help it, the way she looks at me.
“Yes. I do.”
“Memorizing you, at sixteen.” It jolts me as I admit it, sixteen , the way it makes me want to see her at every age, to file this one away for later. To sort through my memories for this exact moment, for this part of our life together. The notebook tucked beneath her, containing lists of her most secret dreams. The places she wants to see, adventures to have, ideas swirling within her since she met Maelynn. Dreams she told me about but has yet to let me read, that she scribbled as she lay on her stomach on the dock, watching me swim. Sixteen, her skin tan and smooth, the thin scar across her elbow where she slipped and caught a splintered edge of the dock one summer, her body a raft I could float away on, drifting off into the bliss I feel.
She curls into me, presses her cheek against my bare shoulder, my lips by her forehead, her hair tickling my neck. “It’s weird, how it’s not weird. Isn’t it?”
“You and me?” I ask.
“You and me.”
“Feels like it was always supposed to be this way.” As I say it, it feels true, like a secret part of me knew. Our destiny mapped, waiting for us to catch up. “Doesn’t it?”
“I always hoped for it,” Evelyn says. My stomach flips, imagining her imagining this.
I whisper, “One more year away and then you’ll be home for good, you can do anything...what do you want to be, Evelyn?”
She smiles, tilts her chin to face me. “I don’t know...I want to be like Maelynn, someone who has seen the world, who has stories to tell. Did you ever hear of these traveling concert pianists?” I shake my head. “Maelynn was telling me all about them. These people get paid to play piano in an orchestra, can you imagine? Maybe that. Or, I’ll become a pilot and fly wherever I want.”
I tease, “You can’t be a pilot.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Why? Because I’m a woman?”
I laugh, smitten by her, the way she believes in everything but her own limitations. “Because you’re afraid of heights.”
She clucks her tongue, no doubt considering all the times she chickened out of jumping off the highest point of Captain’s Rock. “Oh, so now you know everything about me, Joseph Myers?”
Quietly I say, “I know some things.”
“Well, if you’re so smart, what do you want to be?”
“Yours.” My heart thuds, like our bare feet on the dirt path, all our years together racing in my chest, as I pull her chin toward me, and for the first time, kiss her.