The Harrow Home for Wayward Girls

Chapter One. Grace

CHAPTER ONE

GRACE

This home was never a happy one, not with Dad’s constant carping and the caterwauling of the wayward girls in the night—but it’s really been unbearable since she showed up.

I haven’t been in the main house two minutes before my entire body goes flushed and prickly. She’s here; I can feel it. My peony-pink nails bite into my palms. I try to ignore her. Breathe in and out. Steady. Avoid the mirror.

“Are you all right?” my brother asks, concerned. Cooper always looks concerned lately, like he’s forgotten there are other ways to look at me.

“It’s cold in here, don’t you think?” I lie. It’s the second week of June and the Eastern Shore is already sweltering hot and sticky with humidity. We haven’t got money for one of those newfangled air conditioners.

I pace the front hall like a restless cat.

Not now, please. We’re expecting the Thorpes any minute; Dad has summoned us to the main house to greet them.

Us being me and my perpetual sunbeam of a twin brother, Cooper Harrow.

We look an awful lot alike, which is to say we are both tall and blond and beautiful.

Cooper has thick eyelashes that are completely wasted on a boy, magnified by specs that might get him teased if he weren’t the fastest tailback at Greeley High.

His newly crooked nose is sunburnt, his hair a rumpled haystack.

The feminine half of our class is positively mad for him, but he’s never had a steady.

Too focused on books and football and, these last couple months, mother-henning over me.

Footsteps emerge from Mrs. Langford’s office. Not the graceful click of the boss’s peep-toe heels, but Dad’s heavy stride. My shoulders tense. Rage simmers in my stomach, a teakettle primed to shriek.

Is that anger mine or hers?

I can’t tell anymore, and that scares me more than anything.

Dad rounds the corner, tall and thin to the point of gaunt. His lips are tucked beneath his pencil mustache, his blue eyes crackling with anger. He’ll be searching for a scapegoat right about now.

“Grace, fix your hair,” he snaps. “Summer is no excuse to be slovenly. We raised you better.”

I can’t avoid her any longer. I glance into the big brass mirror, and she skitters into view. White skin and bobbed black hair, her lipsticked mouth stretched wide.

I blink and she’s gone. It’s just me in the mirror: the same sun-streaked blond hair as Cooper, but my eyelashes need a good coat of Maybelline to compete with the dark circles under my eyes. I used to be the picture of pink-cheeked health before she showed up.

I glance at Coop, but he’s unbothered. He doesn’t see her.

Nobody sees her but me.

Nobody feels the fear that swamps me, trickling down the nape of my neck and puddling sweat at the base of my spine.

I’m afraid I’m losing my mind. It keeps me awake at night. Keeps me flinching every time I pass a mirror or a dark window or a silver spoon.

I blink at my reflection: upturned nose scattered with freckles, square stubborn jaw, honey-colored hair pulled back on both sides. I don’t look like my heart’s racing fit to burst. I’m doing my best to hide it all.

But I’m not sure how much longer I can keep it up.

“Vanity is a sin, Grace,” Dad barks. “Fix your hair and be done with it!”

I move one barrette a quarter of an inch. It doesn’t matter; what matters is that I obey him without question. And that I seem appropriately chastened while I’m at it.

Mostly, Dad wants to prove that he’s still got one girl left to boss and bully.

I uncurl my fingers, which have clenched into fists at my sides. I breathe deeply, in and out, until the hot poison in my gut dissipates. Till I know I won’t say something I’ll regret. Something Dad will make me regret.

“What do you think they’ll be like? The Thorpes?” Cooper asks.

“Spoiled. Used to being waited on hand and foot. And we’re nothing but the hired help now,” Dad says, bitter.

In February, a rich hotelier from Washington approached Dad about turning the Harrow Home for Wayward Girls into a fancy hotel.

Dad didn’t want to sell. This house and its ten acres on the Chesapeake have been in the family for generations.

But the maternity home business dried up during the War.

Girls in trouble could say they’d married their soldier on furlough and been widowed by the Nazis, and nobody was any the wiser.

We were hip-deep in debt. So, Dad sold it all, lock, stock, and barrel.

In March, construction began on the White Heron Hotel.

In April, our family moved to the newly renovated caretaker’s cottage.

The hotelier’s widowed sister, Mrs. Langford, arrived in May to oversee the refurbishment.

Mr. Thorpe can’t oversee it himself because he’s in Europe on his honeymoon.

With his new wife. His fourth wife. (Dad shares that detail gleefully, as proof of the Thorpe family’s utter moral collapse.)

Now Mr. Thorpe is sending his daughters here for the summer. They’ll be staying in the family residence, the suite of rooms upstairs that used to be ours.

I wonder if those rich girls will learn to close the drapes before it’s dark enough to see a face not their own reflected back at them. If they’ll learn to cover their mirrors with scarves.

Probably not. Probably I’ll still be alone in it, only now there will be three more people I have to hide it from: this fury that rushes over me in unexpected waves.

Our family’s livelihood depends on the Thorpes now.

The idea makes my belly cramp.

I am unpredictable of late, even to myself.

“I hope they won’t expect me to wait on them,” I grumble.

“If your mother asks you to, you will. And you’ll do it with a smile,” Dad decrees. “Without any complaint. Unless you think you’re too good for an honest day’s work. Is that what you think?”

I freeze like a deer in the sights. “No, sir.”

In the fall, when the White Heron opens, Ma will be the head chef.

When Mr. Thorpe came to see the property, she served him a crab cake supper with Smith Island cake for dessert.

He offered her a job on the spot. He wants authentic Eastern Shore food for his guests, and Ma’s the best cook in Queen Anne’s County.

This summer, she’ll cook and keep house for Mrs. Langford and the Thorpe girls.

Dad isn’t happy about it. He doesn’t think women should go out to work. But Ma put her foot down for once, because it means we can stay here, even if it is in the caretaker’s cottage. And Mr. Thorpe agreed to give Dad a try as hotel manager. (The trial part vexes Dad.)

“I want you to make the Thorpes feel welcome. Be polite. Friendly. But not overfamiliar,” Dad lectures. “Remember your place. Their father is the boss now.”

“Sure,” Cooper says, affable as ever. Dad gives him a hard look. “I mean, yes, sir.”

I grit my teeth. I’m not good at kowtowing at the best of times.

And these are hardly the best of times.

“Grace?” Dad says. “Do you understand? Be sweet.”

“As pie.” I paste on a brittle smile.

“Why don’t Grace and I go wait for them outside?” Cooper’s eager to get me away from Dad.

“Sounds good, son.” Occasionally, to keep us on our toes, he likes to dole out a little praise.

Cooper runs a hand through his haystack hair. “Come on, Gracie.”

Gladly. I cannot abide being inside this house. I hurry to the door, anxious to leave her behind. Dad, too, if I’m telling the truth. As we come out onto the wide front porch, I gulp at the briny air like I’m drowning. My shoulders fall down from my ears.

Cooper peers at me. “You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.” I cut my eyes at him. “Quit pestering me.”

He leans against a rickety white column. “You think these Thorpe girls are gonna be as bad as Dad says?” He’s changing the subject. He’s a real champ, my brother.

“Worse,” I predict. “They’re probably dumb Doras who only care about boys and band leaders. They’ll hate being marooned out here in the middle of nowhere.”

He shoves his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “I don’t know, I think we should give ’em a chance.”

I huff in annoyance. Cooper always wants to give everyone a chance. It’s irritating.

But he didn’t turn his back on me when he had every right to.

Instead, he’s stuck to me like glue. Even when I try my best to push him away.

A shining black Cadillac turns onto the rutted lane. “Here they come,” I say. Ready or not.

“Be nice, Grace,” my brother begs.

I give him a toothy smile. “Whatever do you mean? I’m always nice.”

Then, in the blinding reflection off the Cadillac’s windows, I see her. Just a flash, there and gone. I let out a little gasp.

I’ve never seen her outside the main house before. I can’t always avoid the house, but I can leave. Go outdoors. That’s been my refuge.

Does this mean I can’t escape her anywhere?

Anger wars with the fear bubbling in my belly.

Maybe I deserve this. Truth is, sometimes I am the furthest thing from nice.

Sometimes I resent the bejesus out of my sweet brother.

Sometimes I’m so full of wanting—I don’t even know what—it feels like I could swallow the whole world.

More often than not, I’m grudging and greedy and spiteful.

But I can’t admit any of that out loud, not even to Cooper.

Because if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that nobody—nobody—likes an angry girl.