The Last to See Me (The Last Ghost #1) - M Dressler Page 0,31

where the water tower once stood. The sun, having hidden behind a cloud, comes out again, its face as bright as Alice’s China-yellow robes, as the gift of a gold watch, as the mustard seed waving, as a great globe of electric light and the glow on Quint’s face, in the summer of 1914. For it was June then, too, and I went hurrying, like this, through the waving cliff grasses, through the wind, to escape, escape.

10

The Music Hall. Then, in the summer, it still stood. Then, it was a deep forest-green hexagon planted like a carousel in the grass, with wide-sashed windows all around and a striped green-and-white awning out in front. Inside, a beamed ceiling rose to a point, like the center of a circus tent, decorated with striped bunting. At one end was the musicians’ wooden stage, in a half-circle, and at the other a banquet table set up with refreshments, punch cups hovered over by the women from the Temperance League, who made faces whenever a sunburned lumberjack came in wearing his Sunday best but looking as if he’d already had a nip of something hard. Still, all the men, and we girls, too, had to be allowed to come, because the Ladies’ Committee had decided it would be much better for us all to gather where at least we could be seen and watched, and where our steam could be let off without burning. Dances were allowed only two nights out of the month, and since the Lambrys had put up the money for the Hall, the music was Scots-descended. But the Lambrys rarely set foot inside and their sons and daughters never came, and that was all right by us.

On the night after Mrs. Lambry and I bargained over my seven-dollar wages for going to the Point, I told Mrs. Strype, after dinner, that I would be leaving soon. She’d cursed me for being an ungrateful hussy and for being dim enough to think that lightkeepers would be easier than jacks. I ignored her and hurried under the streetlamps toward the hall, hungry for escape, for a waltz, or a reel.

Frances was already in the doorway, waiting for me. Franny, my dearest friend in all the world.

“Well you’re a fast one,” she whispered in my ear, “in your short skirt.”

I laughed. I’d only shortened it because one row of old ruffles had ripped as I’d pulled it over my boot. Franny looked so fine that night in her brass buttons and sailor-blue frock that I hugged her. The freckles stood out on her cheeks like copper flakes.

The fiddlers struck up and she grabbed my arm and we promenaded around the room, elbows linked, in the thickening smoke and sweat. Her beau hadn’t shown in the doorway yet, so we circled again until we came to the punch bowl and took our cups and sipped and watched over their white rims.

“I’m sure he’ll come,” I said.

“I know he will. I just don’t want every calf-eyed saw-boy thinking he has a chance with me when he doesn’t. But you should look around and make your pick, before Lighthouse Point snatches you away.”

“You mean old lady Lambry. Lucky me.”

“I call it luck. Seven dollars a week.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t. And all for keeping Quint Lambry from trailing after me.”

“Then who’s that standing like a lost sheep in the door?”

“It can’t be.”

“It is.”

The swirling smoke from the men’s cigars and the girls twirling their skirts getting ready to reel made it hard to be sure, at first. But then, there he was. His collar high and white, his cheeks shaved, his shirt starched, and his coat cut finer than any man’s in the hall.

I turned my back, heart pounding. “I can’t let him see me. He’ll gum up the works.”

“Just keep thinking seven dollars a week and your afternoons free,” Franny said, gaping at him.

“Has he seen me?”

“He sure is looking around. Maybe he followed you?”

“He’s been doing that.” I kept my chin down, behind my cup. “Watching me at Mrs. Strype’s.”

“Look, the Temperance League biddies are about to faint! A Lambry coming into the Lambry Music Hall? What on earth is the world coming to?”

“Pipe down, Franny. He’ll hear.”

“Oh-oh, one of the company managers has spotted him.”

I peeked that way. The poor, gushing man was waving his cigar and bowing under the flag-draped entry, holding out his free palm.

“And now,” Frances giggled, “you’ll see glad-handing like it’s Easter Sunday and smiles as if the Pope himself