The Last to See Me (The Last Ghost #1) - M Dressler Page 0,20

faces.

One more look—all I’d allow myself—and then I made my feet walk on. A Finnis might long for fine linen and silver, but gawking at it did no more good than asking for a plate of full moon when only the new one was being served. I hurried back to Mrs. Strype’s boardinghouse so I wouldn’t lose the roof over my own head. I had no time to think about gowns like honey or hair ribbons streaming down straight, ironed hair. Girls like me and Frances wore our curls pinned up tight and our shirtsleeves rolled up to keep them clear of the steam off the washtubs.

In that summer, 1914, when I wasn’t yet nineteen, a boy, Tommy Allston, came one day from the Lambry House to Mrs. Strype’s to ask for a girl to come and do some extra work that needed tending to. The girl who was asked for that day was me.

There was nothing surprising about this. Those of us who worked in the village, women and men both, could be called up to one of the big houses at any time, to help with the glazing of a window or to re-shingle a water tank or to carry the heavy rugs into the backyard so they could be beaten with a mallet. Sometimes, if the Lambrys had a shipful of guests, the laundry alone overmatched the staff, especially all the shirts and collars that needed turning out and starching and pressing, to say nothing of the coats that needed buttons and brushing, and the gowns that needed their torn hems fixed, and the men’s cuffs that needed extra scrubbing—for the Lambry sons, Quint and Albert, were known to dress as fancily as their sisters. I’d seen that up close.

A girl like me wouldn’t usually get close to the Lambry children except during some hubbub holiday where the whole village rubbed elbows—like the Fourth of July, when we crowded together on the cliffs to see the fireworks splash in the cove. Quint Lambry had stood near me at the edge, trying to get as close as he could, like me, to the boom and the cannons. When we both let out a whoop at one loud, bright burst, he turned to me like a gull surprised to see another flying at the same height. Another time, I’d caught him eyeing me as I swept off the porch at Mrs. Strype’s—though when he saw I’d spotted him, he’d dropped his head in a short, funny nod, like something inside him had snapped and broken. Everyone in the village knew the Lambry children had been told not to act too proudly as they walked down the street or looked in at a shop window. Mrs. Strype had snorted through her flat nose at me, And why do they teach them that? Because there’s no good fortune in being rich if people think so poorly of you they want to kill you in your bed.

Still, I was surprised to be called to the Lambry House on that Monday, which was washing-day at all the boardinghouses, not a day that girls like me were usually called away. My shirtwaist stuck to me, damp as a sail, and I looked a mess when Tommy peered over the fence. He grinned and whistled.

“Stop your flirting, Tommy Allston,” I jeered back at him. “Go back to the telegraph office and get your messages.”

“You’re wanted at the Lambrys. Right now.”

“Why?”

“Dunno. Find out yourself.” He let go of the fence and put his cap back on, whistling.

I stepped away from the tub and took off my apron and wrung it out and flopped it on the clothes line. Promptness was expected and paid well. I called up to Mrs. Strype that I was needed by the Lambrys. Mrs. Strype was a fussy, sour woman. She stuck her head out of one of the second-story bedrooms and called, “Have a Chinaman gardener and a steamship that brings them silk on a Sunday, but they don’t think to ask if I can spare you. Lovely.”

“I’m going,” I said, glad to be away from her moods. I passed through the boardinghouse hall and tucked my hair in at the spotty mirror and then strolled out onto Albion Street, where I kept my head down and my arms folded across my wet chest, the best way to keep out of trouble with the sailors. Before I turned toward the Lambry House I looked up the hill at Evergreen and kissed