It was impossible not to notice that Jack felt a lot better when Mary was with him. At night, Jack had trouble sleeping; when he did sleep, he had nightmares, and would wake up the rest of the family with his yelling and crying. All the Mickelsons were starting to look a little rough around the edges from the sleep they’d lost. So if Jack could find some peace during the days with Mary, Harry was glad of it—but thinking that made him feel disloyal to Chase. But what choice did Harry have, really? Jack and Mary were going to do what they would do; he might as well just accept it, he figured.

Then, toward the end of July, Wilma got a letter from John back in Pine Rapids saying that he’d told the maids to go through all of Chase’s things, and that he was going to have Chase’s room redecorated.

“Why would he?” Wilma said to Harry that afternoon, as he sat at the kitchen table, watching her pacing, her hands clenched at her sides. “How could he?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Harry said. He had a rotten feeling in his stomach again.

“I wonder if he’ll open the box!” Wilma said, and Harry remembered how she’d been when Chase’s “death effects” box had arrived at the door from the Marines. Tight-lipped and gray-faced, shaking her head, saying, “No! No one will open that box. Not while there is life in my body.” So John had carried it into Chase’s room, and there it sat patiently all year, like it was waiting for him to come home.

Harry figured that, if John was having Chase’s room cleaned out, something would have to be done with that box. But he said to Wilma, “He wouldn’t do that, Mom.”

She glared at him, and left the room.

Three days later, Wilma told Harry that she had written John to go ahead and burn Chase’s things. “Isn’t it about time, I told him!” she said, laughing. Pain burning his gut, Harry wondered which doctor in Stone Harbor was feeding his mom something.

When John arrived in mid-August to spend the rest of the summer with the family, everyone—including the Howards—met him at the boat dock. John brought with him a heavy trunk, which Jack and Harry lugged the half mile to the cottage. When they got it inside, Jack said, “Let’s take this back to the bedroom, Harry.”

But John called after them. “Bring it into the living room, boys.”

“John?” Wilma said. She tried to smile; faltered.