NINETEEN
After another full day of delivering dresses—this time in waves that had her zigzagging across the Upper East Side until she thought her feet were going to fall off—Vivian met her sister at the back of the shop.
The look in Florence’s tired eyes worried her. It was inching beyond exhaustion and into defeat.
“What happened, Flo?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Florence said, sighing. “Nothing more than just… everything. Miss Ethel being awful. My head hurts. Probably just from beading all day. I’ll be fine.” She glanced sideways at her sister as they walked. “Where are you heading?”
“Home with you, of course,” Vivian said, trying to sound cheerful as she took the lunch basket that Florence had slung over one arm. “I’ll cook tonight. And I’ll clean up too, so you can go to bed early.” She hesitated, then added, “I’m worried about you.”
“I’m not the one courting trouble every night.”
“I can still worry,” Vivian said quietly.
Florence shrugged, and they made the rest of the trek home in silence.
After dinner, Vivian sent her sister to bed and washed up, then fetched a bucket of water from the washroom and brought it into the bedroom. She could feel Florence’s eyes on her as she gently scrubbed both her dancing dresses. When she hung them up to dry before crawling into bed, she finally glanced over and met her sister’s eyes.
“Yeah?”
Florence opened her mouth to say something, then closed it and looked down at the blanket that was drawn over her lap. “I guess you’re really not going anywhere tonight, then?” she asked at last.
“Nope, I’m in for the night,” Vivian said, her tone as pleasant as she could manage. “I have to be up for mass in the morning.”
Florence groaned. “Really? You get up to God knows what every night of the week, but you’ll still go to church tomorrow?”
Vivian scowled. “I always go to Sunday service, you know that. You can skip and sleep in.”
“And feel guilty all week that you made it and I didn’t?” Florence rolled her eyes heavenward. “Of all the things the nuns drilled into us, somehow that was what stuck with you.”
“That was what stuck with me,” Vivian agreed. It was an argument they had nearly every week, and the one time she felt like she beat Florence at being good. She didn’t care if anyone else thought it was a contradiction; she could like dancing and want to go to mass if both suited her. “Good night.”
But even after Florence turned down the lamp, Vivian stared at the ceiling, her mind wide awake. Any lingering doubts she had that taking Honor’s deal was the right call had faded as she spent the evening watching her sister’s bleak, exhausted face.
She couldn’t be the sort of girl Florence wanted her to be. But she could take every chance she found to make her sister’s life better. She owed her that much.
She was going to keep her head down, just for one more day, to let anyone who might be watching think she had been scared off.
After that, she’d do what Honor asked. Because whether Florence knew it or not, it was for her own good. And if it helped the Nightingale survive, that was good for Vivian too.
Vivian wasn’t sure the next evening whether Leo had taken her “maybe the day after” seriously. But the still-warm meal he had delivered less than an hour later made her think he had been paying attention. So after dinner, instead of kicking off her shoes and falling onto her bed with a long sigh as her sister did, Vivian began primping for a night out.
Florence lifted her head from her pillow. “Heading out?” Her voice was too tired to be disapproving.
Vivian didn’t turn from the mirror where she was applying her lipstick. “Yup.”
“Didn’t know your kind of places were open this early.”
“I have a date tonight.” Vivian dipped her comb in the morning’s leftover wash water and set about smoothing down the flyaways in her bob, trying to pretend she wasn’t watching her sister’s face in the mirror. There was no point in looking for approval from Florence, and as Vivian settled a hat at a jaunty angle so that it sloped over one eye, she reminded herself stubbornly that it didn’t matter anyway.
“Oh.” For a moment, Florence looked almost excited. Then her face fell. “Vivian… you didn’t agree… the dinner that man brought us…”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Vivian turned to glare at her sister. “No, I didn’t whore myself out for dinner, if that’s the question you’re asking. Is it so hard to believe there are people who like me and maybe want to do something kind every once in a while?”
Florence’s face was red with embarrassment. “I have a hard time believing that people who… that the type of folks you meet when you go out would describe themselves as kind.”
Vivian snorted. “Just because you don’t think a girl like me is worth anything doesn’t mean everyone feels the same way.”
