“I hate you,” Nora said.

Her dad wasn’t looking at her face. “I told you to use Band-Aids,” he said.

Crossing her arms over her chest, Nora ran back to her room.

Annie was sitting on Evy’s four-poster bed, waiting for her to get back from the bathroom. Frank should have been here to take her home an hour ago. Where was he? She had enjoyed the movie but found Evy exhausting. Evy used to have such an amazing imagination, when they were younger, but now she seemed interested in nothing but boys and clothes. Annie loved Mr. B’s house, though, a plantation-style mansion ten miles out of town on forty acres. Downstairs, Evy’s sisters, Lucy, Clare, and Greta, were smoking and playing canasta with their mom. While Mrs. B was an averagely attractive and petite woman, nothing of her had made it through to her first three daughters. All had inherited Bennet’s lifeless eyes, lipless mouth, and lantern jaw. They were graceless girls with burly bodies and deep, harsh voices. Annie thought they almost looked like men dressed as women. They were much older than Evy—in their late twenties—and never seemed to leave home except to go shopping or visit relatives in Kansas City.

But Evy had been lucky. For one thing she was petite, like her mom, and though she did have most of her dad’s facial features—except his mouth—none of them dominated. By some biological sleight of hand, resized and repositioned, they all worked attractively together.

Hurrying back in, Evy jumped on the bed.

“So come on, what happened?” Annie said. Evy had started to tell her about a recent date before she had run off to the bathroom.

“Don’t know why I liked him,” Evy resumed. “Anyway, he started holding my hand in the movie. Just like that. I didn’t really want him to, but I didn’t know what to do. His hand was so sweaty. It was gross.”

“Did you kiss him?”

“He wanted to play padiddle when we were driving back. Told him I was feeling carsick.”

“Why’d you go out with him in the first place?”

“Well, he kinda looks like Marlon Brando.”

“How old is he?”

“I thought he was eighteen, but he’s really old. He’s like twenty-three.”

“Jeez. Your dad would kill you.”

“Kill him, more like.”

Annie could hardly imagine Evy on a date and wasn’t sure if she believed her. Though Evy was only a few months from turning fifteen, she looked no older than twelve.

“So”—putting her hand on Annie’s, Evy widened her eyes in an exaggerated manner—“when are you and Lew going to get hitched?”

Annie shrugged.

Evy frowned, annoyed. “I tell you everything, Annie. You never tell me anything.”

She pulled her hand away, but Annie snatched it back. “I adore Lew,” she said, “but I don’t know if I could marry him, really. I don’t know if I could marry anyone.”

“You’ve got to marry someone,” Evy said. “If you could marry anyone in town, who would it be?”