Free By The Sea, Book One: Tess by Antoinette Stockenberg Page B

better, then?" he asked
timidly, as if reality were just dawning on him.
    Tess felt as though she'd thrown a pail of
water over a songbird in its cage. "It comes and goes," she lied,
and in a kinder, softer voice: "The work's too much for her at Beau
Rêve. Without it she would get better."
    "She's too damn good for that crazy house,
anyway," her father muttered, making a fist. "We'll have her back
where she belongs. And what about you, Tess? Come home, girl. You
can find work as a casual. Or you could take in a little laundry of
your own. Or be a nurse! There's money to be made—"
    "Stop, stop!" Tess's laugh was half a wail.
"Until we find that pot of gold, we'd best stay where we are and
save what we can. I want you to promise."
    She took hold of her father's huge hand,
with its permanently blackened and crushed thumbnail, its scars
from hundreds of flying embers. "Promise me," she repeated, lifting
her gaze to his face. His hair had lately become shot with gray,
and she noticed that one eyebrow was scorched.
    He looked uncomfortable, then looked away. "
'Tisn't right to make me promise. If something came up—"
    "Then at least promise you'll talk to me
first."
    He sighed. "What a meddlesome female you
are, Tess. What a hard woman. All right. My word. But it isn't right for a father to have to answer to his daughter. I
can't say I like it and that's the God's truth."
    Tess smiled her most distracting smile.
"Tell me about young Will."
    Her father took the bait. "Have you not
heard about the trouble at the Casino, then?"
    "Nothing at all," she answered. "Has
something happened to the Tennis Tournament there?"
    "It was very nearly canceled, is all. Here's
the most important match of the tournament all set to go, and them
heathens who calls 'emselves ball-boys demands a raise or out on
strike they go. That very day! So the manager throws the lot of 'em
out, and rightly so, and then hurries the word to Father Timothy
among others that he needs replacements. It was a blessed hour that
found young Will playing stickball behind the convent. Not thirty
minutes after, off he goes to a paying job."
    "Good for Will! But ... won't there be
trouble with the striking ball-boys?"
    "My very thought! It don't pay to fool with
the radical element nowadays. But Will says except for a cry or two
of 'scab' when he went in, it was peaceable enough. Well, you know
how boys are." He chuckled to himself. "I did my share of
name-calling back in old Eire. Oh, yes."
    "Well, then," Tess said, relieved, "that's
good news to offset the bad. It's like the other week, when you
were let go, but I was moved up, and now you're up and so is Will.
Well—it all balances out, doesn't it? I suppose there are times I
worry too much." She looked around her. "I do wish I had time to
clean this place up before I go off to see Will," she added.
"Really, Father, it's such—"
    "Don't say it. A mess."
    "A big mess! I'll bring rags and soap
and some newsprint to clean the window. Do you have a bucket? And
for heaven's sake, fix this broken floorboard. Rats can come and go
like travelers on a train," she said, peering into a dark hole
under the floor.
    "Lord, you truly are meddlesome. Where do
you get it from, I wonder?"
    She looked up at him and grinned. "Straight
from your sister Teresa."
    "Ah, there may be something to that," he
said, surveying his daughter carefully for the first time in a long
while. "Same high cheekbones—funny as I've never taken notice
before—but your eyes are brighter, though that may be youth. Your
hair's thicker—again, youth. Your mouth's quite your own, in more
ways than one, o' course. Turn to the side, girl."
    Tess did. "Ha! There 'tis. Teresa all over.
Same damn belligerent chin. The Lord preserve us all."
    ****
    Tess felt a little brazen to be outside
without a parasol, especially so when she reached the top of the
hill on Bellevue Avenue and spied a group of young debutantes
clustered in front of the Newport Casino dressed entirely