But what had she known about love? About as much, she supposed, as the poor spinster poet Emily Dickinson, whose just-published volumes Wilma had devoured as a teenager. Her favorite lines: “Wild nights! Wild nights! / Were I with thee, / Wild nights should be / Our luxury!” But all Wilma had dreamed of then were ice-skating parties, bonfires, Hubert Graham sneaking his hand inside her muff to clutch her hand, pressing his shoulder against hers as the firelight flickered across his face and danced in his dark eyes. And then, years later, when John Mickelson had kissed her—one night even, daringly, pressing a hand to her breast—she had thought that was all there was, really.

The wedding night had been alarming, to say the least: a horrendous puncturing of her innards. She’d had no idea what to expect, and he had simply brazened ahead. (What could she have expected? She had no idea, now. Perhaps something more discreet? More genteel? Certainly not the heaving, painful, liquid mess it was.) Subsequent nights were less surprising, though the whole of the act was still more than she could comprehend. She bore through by focusing on one sensation at a time: his piquant smell pervading her breath; his clammy cheek pressing hers; his hand trailing over her skin; her gasp when he met the place where she parted.

The newfound knowledge clotted in her gut. Some of her turned to mist, and crept out the pores of her skin.

She blamed her father. She had counted on him to insist that she stay in school at least one more year. For as long as she could remember, he had professed that her study of the piano was his dream as much as hers. He had also always been able to construe just what she wanted, whether she told him the truth or its opposite. So, following her engagement, she hadn’t hesitated to tell him—in John’s presence—that she wanted the wedding to be this summer. To her horror, he voiced not one objection, and even offered to host the reception at his home! Of course, he had recently acquired a new family, a widow and her three adolescent sons; Wilma and her sisters might as well have been dust. She set her wedding for July, and made certain it was extravagant enough that the bills, at least, would not escape her father’s attention.

But, in the end, she knew the blame was hers to share. She was a frog, splayed out flat with a finger pressed in the middle of its back that kept it from jumping. Lighten the pressure just by a whisker and the frog squirmed to get free. Lift the finger entirely and there was no telling where the frog would leap off to. Marriage, for example!