Lost Lake House by Elisabeth Grace Foley Page B

much
longer—but if she asked her father for new ones it might bring the
wrath of her deception crashing down upon her.
    She could always stop going to the Lake
House, so as to preserve the shoes a little longer—but no, if she
stopped going now Sloop Jackson would think it was because of him.
He’d tell the others about what had happened in the hall—her ears
burned again—and they would laugh uproariously as they did at
everything. The girls who were jealous over Sloop’s paying
attention to her would exult, and they would all laugh at her and
think she was a baby and a coward.
    Dorothy sat up suddenly, surprised at her
own thoughts. Why was what the others would think the first thing
that came into her head? Wasn’t she more distressed at the thought
of losing the dancing, the music and the lights?
    She pulled her knees up and folded her arms
over them and thought about it, a little disturbed. Would she
really want to go back to the Lost Lake House on her own even if
she had the new shoes? What had happened to her? Was the charm of
forbidden fruit wearing off, or was her conscience just catching up
with her? Dorothy squirmed again.
    If she had the shoes, and the choice was
entirely hers, then…no. Dorothy shook her head. She thought it
fiercely: she wouldn’t be laughed at! After the way she had fussed
and complained to Kitty about her father’s unfairness and her
longing for dancing and excitement, her pride would not let her
back down and own that she didn’t like it so well after all. More
than anything she could not bear the thought of Sloop Jackson
mocking her to his friends out of revenge.
    But if her father found out—if she told him,
that would qualify as “finding out”—she would be absolved; she
could be pitied but not mocked for being kept at home by the force
of authority.
    That was the way out of both problems, of
course. Confess everything, take whatever rebuke or punishment came
with it—then she wouldn’t have to worry about the shoes or what her
friends thought, and life would be a little simpler. But Dorothy
quailed terribly at the thought of her father’s eyes on her, the
unbelief and then the reproach with which he would meet her
confession. He wouldn’t understand why she had gone; he didn’t know
what it was like to feel that Life was slipping away from
you and that you would simply burst if you didn’t get to try
your wings a little. And the fact that she had ended up
dissatisfied with her own transgressions after all would give him
one more thing to justly use against her.
    But if she confessed, of her own free will,
it would be a little better than if he found it out
himself…wouldn’t it?
    Slowly Dorothy unfolded herself and rose
from the bed. She was a little pale and had a wavery feeling in her
stomach…but she had to get it over with now. Now, before she had a
chance to think about it any more. She shook her hair out of her
eyes, tried to straighten her slim shoulders and opened her bedroom
door. Holding herself very tense, she went slowly down the carpeted
front staircase, crossed the patch of sun shining through the front
door’s leaded glass panes onto the hall floor, and went to the
library door.
    She had been so intent upon her own
tenseness and upon not thinking ahead of time what she was
going to say that she had not been aware of voices downstairs in
the house. At the library door she paused, awakened to recognition
that there were several men talking in the room. The polished
wooden door stood open just a few inches, and Dorothy moved up
close to it, trying to see inside. She could see only a strip of
her father’s desk and the knees and shoes of two men sitting in
chairs facing it, but she could hear their voices clearly now.
    “But don’t you understand how much of this
stuff is being moved under our noses while we wait? We could have
shut down half the speakeasies in the city by this time.”
    “Yes, and it wouldn’t bring us a step nearer
to shutting