Just as on the first night, the door didn’t creak when she pushed it open. Bolstered by the notion that the house didn’t mind her presence, she called JJ again; no answer.

The hallway was dark, but a light burned in the living room. She moved toward it, her ballet slippers whispering on the hardwood floor. “JJ, where are you?” She ran her hand along the wall as she walked, half to keep her balance, and half to keep her senses about her, to remind her this wasn’t a dream.

The lamp in the living room cast ghastly shadows on the wall. JJ was nowhere to be seen. There were no other lights on downstairs, so Dolly tiptoed on, out of the living room, toward the staircase. She turned the corner and looked up. On the second landing, the rich colors in the stained-glass window shone in the yellow light that glowed above it. “JJ?” she called. “JJ, are you upstairs?”

He appeared at the top of the stairs then, framed in the light behind him. He had a suitcase in his hand. “Dolly?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Tears began to leak from her eyes again. “I—I saw Byron.” She stepped up one step, and then another.

JJ dropped his suitcase and started down the stairs toward her. “What happened?”

She reached the first landing, and kept going, realizing she was here for comfort, yes, and—revenge? If it came to that? But—what on earth! What was she thinking? She should turn around immediately. Two wrongs didn’t make a right, wasn’t that what her father always said? Oh, but had her father ever been as miserable and desperate as this? And her legs kept carrying her forward, up one step at a time.

“What happened, Dolly?” JJ asked again.

She had reached the landing in front of the stained-glass window, and looked up at him, descending toward her. Almost, she could imagine she was dreaming, the way he was silhouetted in the light coming from upstairs. Her limbs and even her head were heavy, as with sleep, and she was running on a continuous combustion of rage and a dreadful, deep loneliness, worse than anything she’d ever felt in her life.

“JJ?” she said. Her mouth felt dry. “What did Wilma do? When she found out about John and Florence?”

He took another step. “What happened with your husband, Dolly?”

“I mean, after she stopped playing the piano,” Dolly insisted.

Another step. “I don’t know if you should be here right now—”

She was trembling. “What did she do, JJ?”

Chapter 79

THE MICKELSON HOUSE
502 W. First Street, Pine Rapids
Friday, November 23, 1945

She didn’t remember dropping the match into the leaves. It was as though her neighbor’s sudden grasp on her elbow awakened her from a dream.

Damn that Cecilia, is there anything she doesn’t see? was Wilma’s first thought.