Beatrix decided not to point out that she had little choice about her work situation if Lydia wanted her college tuition paid. “I took care of it on Wednesday.”
“Thank you,” her sister murmured, lapsing into silence.
She tried to think of something to fill the vacuum. Plenty suggested itself, all related to Blackwell: her new duties, his apparent lack of salary, how he claimed he was funding her paycheck. How much shewantedto brew. How conflicted she felt.
It seemed custom-made for an argument.
She drew arrows on signs without any comment at all and went to take care of the garden, trying to recall the last time they’d talked about something other than the League or household matters, not counting the momentary detour Friday night. She’d moved from weeding to harvesting carrots before it came to her: two weeks ago, when Lydiasurprised her with a cake for her birthday and they spent the evening looking through old photos.
Her favorite—taken by Rosemarie—caught the two of them playing in the front yard, five-year-old Lydia whooping in her arms as she spun around. She missed those days, when conversations were easy. She missed the silly, boisterous girl who jumped into her lap and planted raspberries on her neck. Now that child was laser-focused and unrelenting and didn’t laugh at her jokes.
She blamed Rosemarie.
But she also owed her, more than she owed anyone. Two weeks after Dad died, as she’d contemplated the possibility of ruin and the certainty that she would have to drop out of high school a year short of graduation, Rosemarie had tapped her on the shoulder after church and announced she was moving in.My rent should cover food for us all. Take in another tenant willing to watch your sister during the day. You’re finishing high school or else, Miss Harper.
“Or else” summed up Rosemarie’s approach to everything. Beatrix had to admit it often worked.
“Need a hand?”
She looked over her shoulder, startled, to find Ella on the stone pathway snaking through the back yard, dark hair wrapped around her head in a tightly coiled braid.
“How on earth did you creep up on me like that?” Beatrix asked.
“Like this.” Her friend lifted her navy blue skirt to reveal a new pair of boots—but not the approved sort that came with narrow heels and pinched toes. These were thick, solidand clearly intended for a boy. “I bought these in Baltimore yesterday. I’m not sure what scandalized the shop owner more, that I was getting them for myself or that I called ladies’ shoes the devil’s invention.”
Beatrix grinned. “I’m telling you, tromping about the forest is much more fun barefoot.”
“I thought you might like to go for a tromp today, but if you’re digging vegetables, it must be your turn to cook dinner.”
“Alas.”
“Well,” Ella said, settling in and uprooting the last of the carrots, “how has it been? The job and the awful wizard, I mean.”
Beatrix tossed a pair of potatoes into her basket. “Actually, I’ve upgraded him on a provisional basis to ‘possibly OK.’”
“Oh, it’s worse than I thought.” Ella clicked her tongue. “He’s cast some sort of mind-altering spell on you.”
Beatrix laughed. “No, he wants me to help him brew.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m serious, and he appears to be, too.”
“Don’t tell Rosemarie, because she would declare I was ‘haring off after a direct order to the contrary,’” Ella said, catching Rosemarie’s cadence and tone so perfectly that she sounded almost exactly like her, “but I was planning to put in a complaint to the wizard ethics board anyway. Would you rather I not?”
Beatrix leaned a shoulder into hers in lieu of a dirt-stained hug. “Let’s hold off on that. But thank you from the bottom of my heart for the offer.”
“It would only have been for the principle of the thing. Because Rosemarie’s right, that board is useless.”
“They’d probably advise me to get married like a good girl and leave employment to the men,” she said, getting to her feet.
“Exactly what my father told me,” Ella muttered, brushing dirt off her hands.
“I didn’t know that.” She tried to think of what Ella had said about her parents before and couldn’t come up with anything, except that they lived in Bethesda. “How did you convince him to send you to teachers’ college?”
“I didn’t. I landed a grant to pay for it and said ‘so long.’” Ella’s punctuating smile hit the intersection of playful and bitter. “Two grand semesters of higher education.” She held the back door open and added: “So in all seriousness, it’s a wonderful thing, what you’re doing for Lydia.”
“What happened to ‘selfish’?” Beatrix snorted at the memory as they walked into her kitchen. “You know, ‘Here, sis, have my life savings so I can attend college vicariously through you—no pressure.’”
