There was a thud, like someone had kicked something. “He said if I hadn’t dragged Chase off to the war to be killed, it never would have happened.”

Wilma pressed her fingers to her lips. Steady, steady, she told herself.

“Goddamn him.”

“We’re going to have to tell Nick,” Jack said. “And Lissa.”

“Let him tell Nick. Make him be the one to tell!”

“He’s drunk.”

Drunk? John? Wilma thought. For heaven’s sake!

“I’ll bring him a cup of coffee,” Harry growled. After a moment, he sighed. “I’d like to keep it from Mom—I mean, she doesn’t need to know, right? At this point?”

Wilma’s ears perked. She began to put together what they had been saying. His secretary. Nick. Wouldn’t have happened if Chase hadn’t been killed.

But—how could it be? Her breaths were coming shorter. I thought of Chase when I looked at him, yes, but—

“I’ll tell Nick,” said Jack.

Harry exhaled in a quick puff. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “I’m his brother, too.”

For a moment, everything before Wilma’s eyes seemed to go white, and she staggered on her feet, pressing her hand to the wall to keep herself from falling. She leaned against it, gasping, as though she had forgotten how to breathe. Before her eyes it seemed that all the days of her life became distinct, and scrambled to line themselves up in rank and file, scattering their truths like dust. She saw Chase’s little smile. The garden. Her knitting needles, skeins of yarn. Jinny tossing her hair. Harry sprawled on the football field, his knee twisted out of shape, his face betraying his howling pain. John waltzing her around the kitchen. The broken jar of pickles.

And she remembered Florence Overby, the woman’s face popping into her mind, as clear as day after all this time. A woman she would not have known that she remembered. But she did. And, though she had been half out of her mind at the time, she remembered now all those nights, around the time Chase was killed, when John had worked late. He had said he was busier than ever, with the war, but she had known: He just didn’t want to be around her. And now she knew, there had been Florence Overby.