Dolly ran up the flight of steps between the street and the walk. JJ didn’t seem drunk. He still looked a little bleary-eyed, even from a distance, but he had shaved and was wearing clean clothes, including a white dress shirt over his T-shirt, which he wore untucked, with the sleeves rolled up and the top buttons unbuttoned. It was too big for him. He smiled as if he were glad to see her, though his eyes were as melancholy as they’d been in her dream.

She climbed the porch steps and sat down next to him on the top step, holding the bag of doughnuts out to him. He grinned and reached into the bag for one; she followed suit.

“Tell me what happened, JJ,” she said.

Chapter 58

THE MICKELSON HOUSE
502 W. First Street, Pine Rapids
Thursday, November 22, 1945

“What do you mean you don’t know if you can tell him?” JJ said to Elissa. “You’ve got to.”

Elissa walked over to the side of his bed and stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray on the table. She was beginning to feel queasy. “I know,” she said. Then she looked at her brother. “But he wouldn’t have come here if he didn’t have a good reason to, right?”

JJ shrugged.

“I mean, a boy doesn’t come all the way to Pine Rapids from thousands of miles away just for fun, does he? Just to see if he can get a rise out of a girl?”

JJ blew out smoke. “Depends on what sort of a guy he is.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Well, he’s much more mature than you, that’s for certain.”

He laughed. “Look, Liss, what do you want me to tell you? That, sure, Ty would be here because he lives here, too, but for this Nick to be here really means something? Is that it?”

“Well, don’t you think so?”

“Hell, I don’t know, Liss. I just got home! How am I supposed to know?”

Elissa felt her lip trembling. Certainly, one wouldn’t think the decision between Ty and Nick would be difficult. She supposed it could be said that she had had nothing but a short fling with Nick, while she and Ty had sustained a relationship for two and a half years, despite the war and the ocean standing between them for a good part of that time. Besides that, Ty was a hometown boy, and Nick was a foreigner. It seemed simple enough to see which boy she should choose to marry.

The problem was that when Nick had kissed her just moments ago, she’d felt like she had finally found the one thing true in the world. True like spun satin, merry-go-rounds, the Fourth of July. An electric thrill had stirred under their skins when they’d touched.

Ty was pleasantly warm, but he wasn’t electric.