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24

Cadence

1942

W e were all out in the hot sun, weeding the Burbanks, when Mrs. Stanhope brought the Chilmark Police to our farm.

We’d discussed the news about Tom’s regiment, which Briar alerted us to and Gram heard on the radio, as well. The 75th had been hit hard at Dieppe. But being out in the field kept us from obsessively tuning in for more radio reports. The military had many ways to make a death notification. I’d heard of the news being delivered by telegram, or phone call, but usually in person. When Brenda Munson’s father was killed at Pearl Harbor, the Navy had sent the local police to deliver the news. Sometimes the Coast Guard did it, too. Usually guys with special training. Often with a priest or chaplain in tow.

My first thought when Mrs. Stanhope and the police arrived was about Peter’s whereabouts, but I quickly settled, knowing he was safely in the attic, asleep after working most of the night in the fields.

It was almost midday and I’d been watching Major Gil exercise, shirtless on the beach below us, with his commandos. I tried to look my best each morning when I raised our book-club burgee down at the flagpole on the beach, since the men came every day at seven. Did the major know I was watching from up there? Not that he thought at all about me. Though he’d cared enough to ask me for the tour.

I knelt shoulder to shoulder with Bess, pulling chickweed from around the potato plants. We’d brought up a pillow from the house for Bess to kneel on, and she was dressed that morning in one of Gram’s old housecoats. Bess’s waistbands were already feeling a bit tighter, and she had started wearing looser clothes, mostly Gram’s baggier old things, quite a comedown from the couture she was used to in her former life. Not that she seemed to mind. But if Bess had been at home, her mother would have commissioned a whole closet full of bespoke shifts and jackets for her confinement.

Gram made her come inside to eat lunch and rest periodically, but nothing could keep Bess from helping with Tom’s special crop. As much as she doted on our secret German, supplying him with Tom’s clothes and books and even his old Boy Scout belt, her care for Tom’s potatoes came in a close second.

The police car arrived first and parked in front of the cottage, then Lydia Stanhope arrived, driving herself, in a massive green convertible.

“Ugh,” Bess said as she saw her mother pull up in front of the cottage below. “Hide me.”

Fred Leo, the chief of the Chilmark Police, had been in my class at Tisbury High. Lanky and dark-haired, he’d been kept out of the war by a damaged heart valve. He unfolded himself from the car and loped up the hill to us.

I stood and walked to meet him. “Hi, Fred. Hot enough for you?”

“Sorry about this, Cadence. Mrs. Stanhope there came into the precinct, goin’ on about life and death and needing an escort here. Said you all might be violent when she came to take her daughter home.” He leaned in. “She used the word unwed in regard to her daughter. Said she’s in the family way, but I wasn’t sure that was common knowledge.”

“It’s fine, Fred,” I said. “We all know.”

He seemed relieved. “I told her the department is short-staffed, due to the war and all, and doesn’t get involved with family spats, but she threatened to call my boss.”

“You are the boss, Fred,” I said.

He grinned at that. “Any chance your Gram will be making more of that rose-hip marmalade for the farm stand? I’m pretty partial to it.”

“I’ll put in a good word, Fred.”

He waved and started down the hill, giving Mrs. Stanhope a wide berth as she ascended and made her way to us.

“Get in the car, Bess Ann,” she said. “It’s your father’s birthday, which you’ve obviously forgotten, and we’re celebrating at the club.”

Had Mrs. Stanhope ever stepped foot in a farm field before? She proudly told all who’d listen that she rarely left Edgartown or their townhome on the exclusive flat side of Beacon Hill in Boston.

Bess wiped the sweat from her brow. “Good to see you, too, Mother.”

“He’s having heart troubles, Dr. Von Prague says, not that you care.”

Bess sat up straighter. “Is he all right?”

“Surely it’s been brought on by your shenanigans.”

Bess went back to her work, and in the distance, Gram started up the hill with Briar, carrying a tray of lemonade.

Lydia crouched next to Bess. “Enough is enough, Bess Ann. It’s at least one hundred degrees out here. You should be in bed, not doing farmwork.”

Bess pulled another weed. “I’m fine, Mother. These are Tom’s plants. Burbank potatoes he thinks will be highly lucrative. And we all pitch in here.”

Lydia turned to me. “Shouldn’t you be inside, writing that column of yours? Such as it is.”

“The whole island loves Cadence’s writing,” Bess said. “She’s going to New York City to be a book editor.”

Lydia tapped the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. “Oh, please. Some of my best friends are in publishing. They won’t hire a farm girl with no experience.”

Bess smiled. “Winnie Winthrop disagrees.”

The glasses on Briar’s tray tinkled together like wind chimes as she and Gram approached us.

“Lydia Stanhope,” Gram said. “What can we do for you?” Gram knew Mrs. Stanhope from the many times Lydia had commissioned baked goods for her parties from Gram, back before Bess had come to live with us.

Lydia stood up and nodded. “Virginia. You can stop harboring my daughter, for a start.”

Out of breath, Gram blotted the sweat from her cheek with the hem of her apron. “Bess likes it here, and we’re happy to have her.”

“Women doing men’s work. It’s appalling.”

Gram set her fisted hands on her hips. “Here the women work as hard as any man.”

“Clearly,” Lydia said, and glanced back downhill. “And speaking of men, who’s that fellow I saw at your attic window?”

A spike of fear jabbed me. “Just a hand.”

“Oh, I see. Is he living in sin with you, Cadence? I know a marriage certificate means little around here. I have a mind to look around a bit.”

Gram crossed her arms above her bosom. “You’ll do no such thing. Set one foot in that house and I’ll get the police back here to cart you off.”

“What is it, Virginia?” Lydia faced Gram. “Why are you doing this to me? Just envious of our good fortune? Do you disdain every person of Mayflower lineage?”

Gram helped Briar set the tray on the milk crate. “If everybody who says they came off that ship actually did, it would have sunk long before it reached Plymouth Rock.”

“You’re clearly jealous. Is it because your dairy farm failed? It killed your husband, didn’t it, seeing it slide into ruin?”

“ Mother, ” Bess said.

Gram waved that thought away. “I wouldn’t trade places with you for all the tea in China, Lydia.”

Lydia turned to Bess. “Plainly you don’t miss me. Or your father.”

Bess stood and faced Lydia. “You know who I miss, Mother? The man I love, who gave me the gift of a lifetime—a cherished child who will be loved properly here. Tommy is off fighting and may be lying dead on a beach in France for all we know, and you don’t even ask about him.” Bess wiped a tear. “He’s the best person I’ve ever met and this is his beloved family, and each one of them would do anything for me, and I for them, and that’s what matters, Mother. And if you don’t understand it, then just leave us alone and go find someone else to insult.”

“You obviously have been indoctrinated into a cult.” With a last look at Gram, Lydia sneered, “Don’t think you’ve won this, Virginia. I won’t stand by and watch my child preyed upon by the likes of you trashy farm folk.”

“Good bye, Mother,” Bess said.

Lydia started to leave, then turned and said, “Oh, the telegram boy on his bicycle handed me this.” She held out the unmistakable yellow envelope, Copper Pond Farm typed in the little cellophane window. “Asked me to deliver it. Probably feared for his tires coming down that godforsaken road.” She lobbed it onto the lemonade tray.

We just stared at the envelope as Lydia made her way back down the hill toward her car. After a stunned few seconds, Briar picked up the envelope and stepped to Gram.

My whole body went cold. The Army only sent telegrams with bad news.

“Go ahead, Briar,” Gram said. “Read it.”