John said it would do her good to relax, and called Dr. Seguin, who prescribed more sedatives. The next thing Harry knew, John was taking the family and their trunks to the Pine Rapids depot and putting them on the train to Green Bay, where they would catch the boat up to Stone Harbor. John was staying behind to work, and would come later in the summer for two weeks. John had wanted Jack to stay behind, too, to begin working at the bank, but Harry figured Wilma must have won out on that point, because Jack was coming to Stone Harbor.

Jack hardly said a word the whole time on the train, staring out the window and smoking cigarette after cigarette. Over Harry’s protests, Jinny sang the song “K-K-K-Katy” over and over again until he finally kicked her shin. She just glared then, and started singing “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” Wilma slept, crushing her fine hat against the window.

Jack had been home for less than two weeks, and he was like a stranger. His eyes were flint, his mouth a hard line. Harry had seen him once in his undershirt and had been shocked at how thin he was. His left biceps had a scar on it like a hard white spiderweb; his right had a tattoo, an anchor with the letters USMC across it. “Mom know about that?” Harry had asked him, trying to joke, even though he felt a strange lump in his throat. But Jack hadn’t answered, had just lit another cigarette.

The Mickelsons’ Stone Harbor cottage was tiny compared to their house in Pine Rapids. It was one level, and included three bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, dining room, and front room. All Harry’s life, he had shared the narrow north bedroom with his two older brothers; there were two twin beds pressed against the side walls with a small aisle between them and one bed at the foot of the room that the door barely cleared. (Now, Harry supposed, they could get rid of one of the beds, but they didn’t.) Jinny had a small room, and the master bedroom was about a third of the size of Wilma and John’s room in Pine Rapids. The dining room was just big enough for a table that sat eight. The best part of the whole place, though, was the front room, which featured a stone fireplace and windows all around, providing a stunning view of the bay out through the cedar trees and the large porch that ran the length of the cottage’s front. There was a piano in the front room, too, which, in the past, Wilma had played every day. This summer, she didn’t touch it.