“What kind of ideas?”

“Like going to school to study art. Like one day getting paid to just draw pictures. Can you imagine? It would be like you getting paid to read.”

Talley giggled. “Those aren’t bad ideas.”

“Mama just doesn’t want me to forget that the Seaside Resort puts food on the table and keeps a roof over our head. Not everyone has that, she says.”

“She’s right. There’s plenty of people going hungry back home.”

“That’s why you came here?”

“That, and my mama wanted me to see the world.”

“Don’t know how big our world is here, but there’s plenty of work.”

“Better than working in the fields like your mama and mine did.”

“Mama worked in the fields?”

“Our grandfather owns a farm. Now our uncle Rich, the oldest boy, runs it. He grows melons, sweet potatoes, corn, and wheat. After the harvest last year, my back hurt and my arms felt like they’d been lined with lead.”

“When’d you start picking crops?”

“I was about ten.”

When it came to her life before here, Ruth’s mother had always skirted the questions or distracted her with a question about her drawings. “Mama works harder than anyone I know.”

“Your mama must be doing something right. This place is so pretty, and the guests look happy to me.”

“She keeps the hotel very clean. And as far as the guests, it’s the first night,” Ruth said. “As the week goes on, they find things they don’t like. Just wait; you’ll see.”

The girls rushed back to the room they now shared. It was strange having someone else in her room. Talley had tossed and turned during the night, but it was oddly comforting to have another body nearby.

Talley tucked her books under her mattress, hung her blouse carefully in the small closet, and hooked her hat on the headpost. The two girls hurried back toward the pool, now surrounded by laughter, the clink of glasses, and soft music from the phonograph playing Frank Sinatra’s “Fools Rush In.” Mama had heard it on the radio a few years ago and liked it so much she’d made a point to search it out in a Norfolk record store.

The guests, mostly women, all had drinks in their hands. The younger children were swimming in the shallow end, and Dora, Jessie, and Bonnie, all sporting beet-red shoulders and noses, had changed into cotton sundresses. They leaned close, talking, their giggles drifting above the adult voices.

“They’re as thick as thieves,” Talley said.

“Yeah.”

“You know them, right?”

“They been coming since the war.”

“And you aren’t friends?”

Ruth rubbed her belly, unconsciously uncoiling an unnamed tightness. “No mixing with the guests.”

“They look a little stuck up to me,” Talley whispered.

“I think it’s because they have breasts now,” Ruth said.

Laughter tumbled over Talley’s lips. “I have breasts, and I’m not stuck up.”

Ruth jutted out her chin. “And when I get mine, I won’t be either.”

“This winter if you write to me, I’ll write back. There’s nothing I like better than a letter.”