Five Brides (7 page)

Joan stood with her, picking up her own cup and saucer. “I’ll join you.” After they’d poured another cup for themselves, Joan turned to Betty. “You know? I only hope I can do something special for you one day, Betts.”

Betty pretended to pick at the pink cashmere sweater hugging her frame. When she looked up again, she smiled in the easy way she had. “Who knows, Joan,” she said, her words not really forming a question. “Maybe one day you will.”

Betty’s mother’s idea of the perfect ending to Sunday Mass was going home to a brunch of eggs Benedict, served with fresh fruit and mimosas.

Somehow, Betty found it rather odd, although she wasn’t sure if the problem fell on her mother’s need to have someone serve her an uptown drink or that she appeared completely incapable of a Sunday without the Volbrechts. She recognized, of course, that the Volbrechts were her parents’ oldest and dearest friends. But she also knew their desperation for marrying the two families. Literally.

“Make an effort,” Mother hissed as they came through the front door. She pulled off her gloves and shirked out of the full-length mink Betty’s father had recently given her for absolutely no reason at all, he said, except that he loved his wife and the coat made her happy.

“What does that mean?” Betty reached for the mink before slipping out of her cashmere coat. “Give me your gloves. I’ll put everything away,” she added, not waiting for an answer.

“Where’s Adela?” her father barked, coming in behind them and closing the door.
“Adela!”

Betty took her mother’s gloves and clutch as she somehow
managed to drape the fur and cashmere over her arm. “I’ve got it, Father,” she said.

“Adela!”
her father barked anyway.

Betty was halfway up the stairs when the front door opened again. She turned to look over her shoulder, all the while keeping one hand on the banister. Gracefully, just as she’d been taught.

“A vision of loveliness gliding up the staircase,” George Volbrecht called up to her. He smiled, his perfect white teeth made all the whiter against his suntanned skin. She returned the gesture, then turned to face forward and suppressed a snarl. By the time she returned downstairs, the family had gathered in the Florida room, which—like the rest of the house—was entirely too froufrou for Betty’s taste. George, who lounged like a cat in sunshine on an occasional chair, stood immediately.

“A drink, Betty?”

“Orange juice is fine,” she said, walking toward the wet bar. She waved a hand at him. “I can get it myself.”

But George joined her anyway, standing so close that she could smell his aftershave.

Betty poured the juice into a Tom Collins glass—one that came from her mother’s extraordinary collection of crystal. She held it up to the light coming through the window and studied it, weighed the heaviness of it.

“What are you thinking?” George whispered.

She peered up at him. Undeniably, he was one of the most handsome men she’d ever met, which was a big part of the problem she had with him. “Too handsome,” Adela had said to her once. “I don’t trust a man prettier than me.”

Betty grinned at the memory.

“What?” George said. “What’s so funny?”

Betty shook her head. “Nothing. As for what I was thinking . . .”
She took a sip of juice. “I was thinking that I’m as much at home holding a glass that cost a month of my salary as I am holding a tumbler I bought at the A&P.” She watched the features of his chiseled face grow rigid, then soften.

“You like being the rebel, don’t you?” He chuckled.

She took another sip. “I like being myself.”

He turned and leaned his elbows against the edge of the bar, then crossed his legs at the ankles. “I’ve got a secret,” he said, keeping his voice low enough that their parents—all of whom chattered away like hens and roosters—couldn’t hear.

She turned her back on the four older adults. “If you think for one second,” she mumbled, “that they can’t hear you or read your lips, you’re sadly mistaken. All that chitchat over there is nothing more than a ruse.”

He smiled at her and winked before leaning over and whispering in her ear, “Play along, Betts.”

She drew back. “All right. What’s your secret?” She set the glass back on the bar.

George stood straight and grabbed her by the elbow, ushering her with slight force to the wide French doors leading out to the veranda. “We’re going to step outside for a second,” he called over his shoulder.

The gossip from the other side of the room came to a halt. “You’ll freeze to death, Betty,” her mother said. “Where’s your coat?”

“Only for a moment,” George countered. “I want to show Betty something. It’ll only take a minute, I promise.” He grinned. “And if she gets too cold, I’ll wrap her in my arms and hold her close, Mrs. Estes.”

“Oh, George, go on,” Chloe gushed.

“Yes, George,” Betty mumbled. “
Do
go on . . .”

George turned the ornate knob and pushed the door wide
enough for them to walk through. A gust of cold air hit, forcing Betty to cross her arms over herself. “This had better be good,” she said after he’d closed the door behind them.

“This way,” George said, walking her to the end of the flagstones beneath their feet. He pointed toward a cluster of bare-limbed trees and naked bushes surrounding a rambling ranch-style house at the end of a cul-de-sac. “Pretend I’m showing you something and that you’re in awe.”

Betty sighed. “I can’t imagine what. Or why.”

“I’m pointing to a house.”

“I see that.”

“A house I just bought, Miss Estes.”

Betty swung around to search his eyes, to see if he told the truth or something to keep her guessing at his silly game. “What? Why?”

“Right now,” he continued, his eyes twinkling, “your parents and my parents are thinking that I’m telling you about the house. And that I’m asking you, once again, to marry me.”

Betty gritted her teeth. “George . . .”

“Bear with me, Betts.”

She hated it when he called her that. If anyone else did—Joan, Evelyn, the sisters—she didn’t mind in the least. But
George
saying her name in such a way was far too . . . intimate. “I’m freezing to death,” she said instead, squeezing herself tighter.

“Just listen.” He looked toward her parents’ house and smiled.

“Are you giving them some sort of signal?”

“Are you listening?”

“Hurry. Up.”

“Your father has this idea, Betty. He’s going to cut you off if you don’t stop all this running around in the city and come back home.”

“And do what?” Her arms squeezed again.

“
Marry
me, Betts. Become Mrs. George Volbrecht. My gracious, woman, don’t you ever get tired of working the old nine-to-five?” He grinned. “Besides, I’m a catch. You can’t do much better than this, you know.”

“Ugh,”
Betty said with a stomp of her foot. She swung around and headed back inside.

“Betty, wait. I was only kidding about the last—”

She kept walking. When she got to the French doors, she jerked them open and stormed through. All four of the parents stood, looking expectant.

“Well, darling. What do you think?” her mother asked.

But she didn’t answer. She crossed the room, heading for the long hallway leading to the foyer.

“Betty, where are you going?” her father called.

“Betty!” George’s voice echoed, his sounding more like a plea than a demand.

Betty took the stairs purposefully, stomping up each one, then strode down the hall until she reached her old bedroom, the one her mother had redecorated not five minutes after she’d moved to the apartment on Greenleaf. One act of defiance deserved another, she supposed, not that she cared.

She picked up the coat she’d laid across the foot of the bed earlier and slid her arms into the sleeves, then grabbed her purse. She had nearly made it out of the room when George walked in, bumping into her and grabbing her shoulders in both of his hands.

“Let go of me,” she demanded, though she kept her voice controlled. “And get out of my bedroom. You know perfectly well it’s not appropriate.”

“You’d really better hear me out.”

Betty jerked free. “I’m going home,” she said. A second later, she
dashed back down the stairs where her parents and the Volbrechts waited. She read their faces as easily as she read Mr. Ferguson’s morning reports. Her mother’s eyes begged; her father’s stormed. And as for George’s parents—theirs held confusion. How could any woman in her right mind turn down their son?

Well, maybe that was it. Maybe she wasn’t in her right mind. Maybe she—

“Young lady,” her father said, “don’t you dare leave this house.”

Betty kissed her mother’s soft cheek and drew in the scent of Shalimar that lingered from her morning bath. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. George’s footsteps could be heard coming down the upstairs hall. She looked at his parents. “Mr. Volbrecht. Mrs. Volbrecht. You must excuse me.”

And with that, Betty ran out of the house. Against the wishes of her parents.

Inga and Magda Christenson sat shoulder to shoulder on the train rushing along the tracks toward Evanston. Magda licked her right index finger absentmindedly and turned the page of the novel she’d begun the night before, while Inga sat next to the window, her eyes fixed on the gray and dying landscape.

“Christmas will be here sooner than we can blink,” she said to her sister, though she wasn’t sure Magda heard her.

Surprisingly, her sister dropped the book, holding her place with her left thumb. “What are your plans? Are we going back to Minnesota?”

Inga shook her head. “I’ve already told the airline I’d work.” She removed her hat and touched the knot of blonde hair she’d pulled into a tight chignon earlier that morning. A tiny headache throbbed behind her left ear.

Magda shifted. “But why? You know Mor and Far will want us to come home. They’ll be counting on it.”

Inga returned the hat, then patted her sister’s thigh. “You go.”

Magda’s brow furrowed and her blue eyes grew lightning fierce. “But I don’t want to go alone. You know what it will be like. They’ll grill me like a steak. Especially Far.”

Inga smiled, though she knew it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Just tell them what they want to hear.”

“You mean lie?”

She looked back out the window. They were nearing their stop. Inga picked up the purse she’d wedged between herself and the arm of the seat, then hugged it to her middle. “I mean,” she said slowly, “tell them what they want to hear. I don’t care if you lie or not.”

“After spending this morning in church, I cannot believe you’d suggest such a thing, Inga.”

Inga laughed as the train screeched to a halt. She and her sister were such opposites; she often didn’t know what to make of their relationship. “I’m kidding you, Magda. Why do you always have to be so serious?”

Magda closed her book fully and reached for her own purse. “I never can tell with you.” They stood together once the train came to a complete stop. “Besides, we haven’t been home since you took the job with the airline. I can’t imagine what the air will be like with Far.”

They walked the aisle together, then exited onto the platform.

“If it’s anything like the letter I received from him after I took the job, perhaps it’s just as well I
don’t
go home this Christmas season. He practically called me a—”

“Inga.”

Again, Inga laughed.

They began their walk toward home, Inga more grateful now than before that she’d met Betty Estes at a dinner party given by a mutual acquaintance. Six months earlier, she and Magda had come to Chicago to work for their aunt and uncle, who owned a mom-and-pop grocery on the outskirts of the city. She’d thought—they both had—that leaving Minnesota meant leaving behind the strict upbringing they’d been subjected to by their parents. Instead, Aunt Greta and Uncle Casper proved to be ten times—no, a hundred times—more controlling.

The restrictions of Inga and Magda’s father, a professor at Lutheran Bible College, couldn’t hold a candle to the religious shackles Uncle Casper wanted to lock around their ankles. For months, they’d endured the constant pressures as they worked alongside their uncle and aunt in their fledgling business. And when they could almost take it no more, Inga had done something she’d heard about but never done for herself. She’d prayed.