For a moment, Dolly stood, simply taking it all in. The kitchen was at the rear of the house in the western corner. There was a large butcher block in the center of the room; counters and cabinets formed a horseshoe shape around it. The sink was in the center of the horseshoe—the window above it must have provided beautiful sunset views through the trees that lined the western edge of the property—and the stove was directly opposite that, on its own wall, with a door on either side leading out to the hallway. Across the hallway was the pantry.

Dolly preferred the more subdued, just-right décor in this kitchen to the over-the-top poppies in the bungalow. Here, the walls were painted light green, the cabinets and butcher block white, and the wall behind the stove was wallpapered in a tiny green and yellow floral pattern. The curtains were sheer white (or had been, before dirt darkened them) with embroidered daisy trim. The linoleum flooring, in a white and green block pattern, was a sure indicator that the kitchen had been “modernized” twenty or thirty years earlier; it was exactly the same flooring Dolly’s mother had had in her kitchen all Dolly’s growing up years. It was the perfect reminder of home—and a good sign, Dolly thought.

She would want new appliances, of course, but otherwise, she thought the kitchen would do very nicely, once it was spiffed up a little.

She set to work on the stove, which, fortunately, had been clean when the Mickelsons left it. Not so fortunately, her cramps suddenly felt terrible and she was bloated as sin. She was reminded of Jane, who had written in her latest letter that she’d felt “puffy” for the last month solid. Jane had just discovered she was expecting.

Really considering the matter for the first time, now that she had time to think, Dolly despaired, wiping the stove in slow circles. It was impossible not to worry about it: All of her friends from high school were having babies—even Jane, now—and here was Dolly, married longer than any of them and still babyless. As Byron always said, it wasn’t for lack of trying, but—what could it be?

It was miserable, that was what it was. Everyone knew that to be a wife you had to have a baby, preferably several. Not only for your husband’s sake, so he could show his virility and carry on his name, but for your own. “Because, as much as you’d like him to be, your husband will never really be yours,” her mother had told her, while pinning the hem of Dolly’s wedding dress, Dolly standing on a chair, pirouetting slowly; wondering, suddenly, what exactly she was getting herself into. “You will be his,” her mother had gone on, “but he’ll be his own, and the only way you really have anything is to have your children.”