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The Diviners Libba Bray 14910K 2023-08-31

"YourHave you not heard of the Eighteenth Amendment?"

"Prohibition? I drink to its health whenever I can"

"Evangeline Mary O’Neill!" her mother snapped

"Your mother is secretary of the Zenith Women’s Temperance Society Did you think about that? Did you think about how itdrunk in the streets?"

Evie slid her bruised eyeballs in her mother’s direction Herhair coiled at the nape of her neck A pair of spectacles--"cheaters," the flappers called theerald wohted

"Well?" her father thundered "Do you have so to say?"

"Gee, I hope I won’t need cheaters someday," Evie muttered

Evie’s rown so telegram from the war office had stolen her soul thepeople see like a joke, don’t you?" Her father was off and running--responsibility, civic duty, acting your age, thinking beyond tomorrow She knew the refrain well What Evie needed was a little hair of the dog, but her parents had confiscated her hip flask It was a swell flask, too--silver, with the initials of Charles Warren etched into it Good old Charlie, the dear She’d proirl That lasted a week Charlie was a darling, but also a thudding bore His idea of petting was to place a hand stiffly on a girl’s chest like a starched doily on so, birdlike, at her édie

"Evie, are you listening to ed a smile "Always, Daddy"

"Why did you say those terrible things about Harold Brodie?"

For the first ti"

"You accused him of… of…" Her father’s face colored as he stairl?"

"Evangeline!" Her e of her and leaving her in the family way’ "

"Why couldn’t you be more like…" Her mother trailed off, but Evie could finish the sentence: Why couldn’t you be more like James?

"You mean, dead?" she shot back

Her mother’s face crumpled, and in that moh, Evangeline," her father warned

Evie bowed her throbbing head "I’m sorry"