She couldn’t help it: She blushed.

He closed the refrigerator door. “Want to see the upstairs? I want to show you how good I did on the bathroom.”

“Oh,” she said, more pleased than she should have been. “All right.”

He told her to go on ahead to the second floor. He could manage stairs; it just took him a little longer.

The bath suite upstairs was a series of small rooms with heavy oak doors between each. The first room off the hallway had a porcelain sink to one side, and on the other side was a little closet enclosing a toilet of the old type, with the water tank high above and a pull chain for flushing. Next was a dressing room, with a vanity along the far wall, and a linen closet, and plenty of hooks to hang towels, robes, and clothing on. In the third room was the copper bathtub, encased in oak, with a copper tank at its head. A small stained-glass window looked out at the west lawn and the line of fir trees. The light fixtures and the window were dusty, and there were cobwebs in the corners, but the fixtures were sparkling. She could hardly believe JJ had actually cleaned. She would have fainted from shock if Byron had ever done such a thing; he hadn’t even managed to paint the bathroom at the bungalow yet, though it had been six weeks since he’d promised her he would.

She could smell JJ’s sour-sweet-spicy scent when he came into the tub room behind her. She turned, and was astounded again at how breathtaking he was when clean. Then she detected the sharp odor of new whiskey on him again; he must have sneaked a drink before starting up the stairs.

He gave her a disarming grin. “I know it’s your job to clean the place. I hope you don’t mind I stepped in. I decided I better take a bath before Mrs. Fryt smelled me on the breeze and called the cops.”

“No, I don’t mind!”

“Some bathroom, huh? I guess my great-grandpa Knute had a thing for them. This was the first house in town built with indoor plumbing.” He rapped the copper tank with his knuckles. “This tank was for heating the water after it was pumped upstairs from the cistern in the basement. There’s two more of these in this house, tubs and tanks, I mean. I guess old Knute liked to take a bath almost every day. He said he was rich enough. That’s what my grandma told me, anyway. She said even after she and my grandpa moved into the house, old Knute used to sit in the bath every day long enough to smoke a whole cigar.”

“Goodness!” Dolly said. “Do you have to pump the cistern to take a bath still?”