With this in mind, Dolly went to the kitchen to cook Byron his favorite breakfast—three eggs, sunny side up, four sausage links, and toast with raspberry jam. When he came in, she was humming “Powder Your Face with Sunshine,” and she set his plate before him. He smiled up at her and she leaned down to kiss him, enjoying the smell of his aftershave. He was wearing her favorite red necktie. She poured cups of coffee for both of them and sat down across the table from him.

“Aren’t you eating, Doll?” he said.

“Oh, no, I’m not that hungry,” she said, smiling, not pointing out what she thought he should know after two years of marriage—that she never ate breakfast and she hated even the smell of eggs.

He took a bite of his toast. “What do you have planned for today?”

“Oh, just things around the house, you know,” she said. “You? Busy day?”

“I hope so,” he said, with his cutest smile. He went on to tell her all about a sale he had made the day before and how he was trying to talk Roy into buying advertising time on a Wausau radio station. Dolly smiled and nodded appropriately, only getting up from the table when she saw he needed his coffee cup refilled.

An hour after kissing Byron good-bye at the back door, Dolly went out the front door, heading for the Mickelson house. When she had told him she would be doing things around the house, she hadn’t specified which house. Technically, she had not lied at all.

The morning was warming to just-this-side-of-uncomfortable as the sun climbed the cloudless sky. As Dolly hurried north on Jefferson, she hardly noticed as she skirted the tricycles and scooters that littered the sidewalk in front of the pert little bungalows. Instead, her mind raced with questions about the Mickelsons. How had Elissa ever chosen between Nick and Ty? And what on earth did her choice have to do with the family abandoning the house?

Turning the corner onto First Street in front of Holman’s Market, she almost bumped into two women who were standing together. In a blur, Dolly recognized the wild purple dress on one of them. Dolly’s heart seized; her feet froze to the pavement. She said a quick prayer of thanks that she’d worn a dress today rather than her denim pedal pushers.

“Dolly,” Mrs. Fryt said. A fresh red zinnia bobbed atop her hat. “You should watch where you’re going.”

Corinne spoke up. “Oh, Cecilia, we’re standing right in the way! Are you doing some shopping today, Dolly?”

“Yes,” Dolly said quickly. “I was—out of something.”

They looked at her.

“Eggs!” Dolly said.

Behind her glasses, Mrs. Fryt squinted. “You aren’t on your way to the Mickelson house, are you? I’ve seen you going there the last two days.”

“Oh! Well—”