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She stepped of the train with a sigh of relief. Mom and Dad weren't the overprotective types, but they wanted their children to "be prepared" even if it meant giving them a page-long list of problems they could run into, and their list of things to be prepared for had left Molly more nervous about the trip than she already was. This wasn't a ride to the Chicago theater with her friends, this was to the next state over, and she was alone.
Luckily, the trip had gone smoothly, the only hiccup being when she misread the broken clock at the connecting station and thought she'd missed her train. It was a good thing she was wearing the watch Brad had given her for Christmas. She made it with minutes to spare, and now she waited at the West Lafayette station for Jill.
(She'd brought money for a taxi, but Jill had her own car and insisted she be the one to pick her up.)
When Jill arrived, she pulled Molly into a bear hug.
"How was your trip?" she asked. Molly grinned.
"Even more exciting than meeting Melody Moore in person all those years ago. The first train was kind of empty, it was just me and a few business people, but the one coming here was packed!" She rattled off all the interesting people she'd seen, especially a man she could swear had been the country singer Jimmy Dean.
Jill laughed, helping Molly into the car with her suitcase.
"I'd say you were letting your imagination run away with you, but last week I thought I saw Donna Reed at the diner my friends and I always eat at," she said. "I thought she'd given up the movies to serve hamburgers."
"Speaking of which," Molly said, her stomach rumbling, "I haven't eaten since breakfast on the train and I could go for a burger and fries." Jill shook her head.
"Forget burgers. You absolutely have to try the Beef Manhattan, it's an Indiana specialty." Molly snorted. Why would they name an Indiana specialty after a city in New York? But when she asked, Jill only smiled, driving down a series of side streets until they pulled into the parking lot of a small cozy-looking shack of a restaurant.
"Okay, they can call it Beef Toledo for all I care, this is so good!" She took another big bite of soft bread, juicy meat, and creamy mashed potatoes smothered in gravy. "Why don't they serve this in Jefferson? Or everywhere?" Jill daintily wiped some gravy off of her chin with her napkin and took a sip of her soda.
"Even if they did, they'd never make it like they do at Rock's. They also make the best cherry pie, but we can take it to go." Molly looked down at her plate, more than half-empty; she wanted to say she had plenty of room for dessert, but she remembered Dad and Ricky saying the same thing on Thanksgiving last year. They'd both fallen asleep on the couch not five minutes after the pumpkin pie.
"Good idea." She stirred the ice cubes in her own glass of soda. "So am I going to meet Arlene, Peggy, and Gloria? No rush, but you've got me curious with how much you've talked about them in your letters."
"The day after tomorrow," Jill said. "I told them today and tomorrow were just for me and my sister." Molly blinked.
"Really?" She and Jill had spent time together when they were younger, but they rarely put aside special "sister time". If they did, it was so Jill could help Molly curl her hair or learn to foxtrot or put on mascara without smearing it all over her eyes. The only time she could remember them specifically setting aside was Christmas of 1944, and that was so they could get the box from Dad under the tree before everyone woke up.
Not that it bothered her, of course. Given the choice Molly tended to prefer going to the movies with Susan and Linda and Grace, or writing letters to Emily, or having a soda with her old camp rival Dorinda when she was in town.
"Really," Jill told her, taking one last bite of her sandwich and pushing her plate to the side. "I've missed you since I moved away. Not that I haven't missed everyone else, of course, but you've grown up so fast. Pretty soon you'll be off to college yourself, and who knows what you'll be busy with? Last time I checked you had your heart set on being a nurse, or flying a plane."
Molly glanced down at her mostly-eaten sandwich, then back at Jill.
"It's not like we never see each other these days," she said. Except "these days" wouldn't last forever, and Jill knew it as much as she did. "And lately I've been thinking about going back into tap dancing."
"And if you do, you'll probably get a role on a Broadway show, be discovered, and spend the rest of your life on stage."
"But I'll always make time for my family." Molly slurped the last of her soda. "And I know you will, too." Jill smiled.
"Of course I will. But today and tomorrow are still sister time, and that's final." Molly laughed.
"Does that mean you'll show me all the neat places you and your friends go? Like the supper club, that ancient library, the Nickelodeon that's still up and running, the museum?" Jill called for a waiter to pack up their leftovers, asked for two pieces of cherry pie to go, and took out her wallet to pay the check.
"The Nickelodeon first," she said. "It's probably the only one still open in the whole part of this country, and they're showing a Buster Keaton movie today."
After a quick stop at Jill's apartment to put the food in the icebox, they drove towards the little theater. As they watched the movie, Molly began to wonder about taking acting lessons.
Movie stardom could be a promising path.