She looked; he was holding out the picture of the man she had figured was his uncle Harry. As she picked up the sofa pillows and dropped them onto the floor, she laughed, determined to act cool. “Oh, no,” she assured him, though the image of Harry showed an innocence that JJ clearly lacked. “No, he’s handsome enough, but you could be in the movies.” She didn’t meet his eyes, or mention that he would have to play an unhealthy, troubled fellow, the way his eyes were shadowed and his waist was so thin.

“I’ve wanted to,” he said, and when she looked, his face was brighter, his eyes almost sparkling. “I mean, I’ve thought of it. My aunt Jinny,” he said, gesturing toward the picture of Harry’s sister, “she was in the movies. Mostly on the radio, but she was an extra in a couple of movies. She went out to California before the war. She got me a couple of parts on the radio, when I was in Chicago, summers.”

“Really! Well, you do have a wonderful voice.” She unfurled the sheet over the sofa, and began tucking it in around the cushions, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

He replaced Harry’s picture on the mantel. “I played a cop, one time. My line was ‘We found him just like that, sir.’”

Dolly smoothed the sheet. “I bet you were wonderful.”

“Another time,” he said, “I was this guy at a party. Know what I said then? ‘Don’t they have any good bourbon? This stuff is rot.’ Speaking of which!” He began his uneven steps toward the dining room. “Maybe there’s some of Grandpa’s old booze around here.”

The naked desperation of his tone was alarming. Her father had talked often enough about the problems of old soldiers; she had even seen it among Byron’s friends—though not, thank goodness, in Byron. She straightened up, pushing a stray lock of hair off her face. “Wouldn’t you like to check on the house?” she suggested, tossing the pillows back onto the sofa, watching his back as he limped into the dining room. “The electricity and water are on, so you shouldn’t have any trouble staying here, but a lot of things have been let go. You can see the window’s broken in the dining room. I covered it.”

“I’ll look at things later,” he said, out of sight now. She heard a cabinet door open.

“There’s a lot I could show you that needs to be done.”

The cabinet door closed, and he came limping back into the living room, a glass in one hand and a half-full decanter in the other. “Look,” he said. “My dad isn’t paying you to boss me around, whoever you are.”

“Dolly,” she said.

A disconcerting light had come into his eyes with the acquisition of the decanter. “Right. Dolly.”