“But, mercy me, there comes a point when you just have to say ‘Let bygones be bygones.’ She left him twenty-seven years after the fact! She even made him drive her to the train! As if he hadn’t suffered enough, all those years. She never was in her right mind!” Mrs. Fryt shook her head. “Despite that adultery is a sin, you do have to admit that putting up with Wilma would be enough to drive any man to the arms of another woman—”

“That isn’t fair!” Dolly said.

Mrs. Fryt ignored her. “I have to say, I was a bit surprised when Wilma deigned to come home for John’s funeral. It was January of 1947 when he died, wasn’t it? So she had been gone for more than a year. Of all the nerve—to come back, when she was the one who drove him to his grave.”

“Mother,” sighed Jeannette, pressing her temple.

“More than once, he traveled down to Appleton to retrieve her, and came back empty-handed.”

“She looked great at his funeral,” said Corinne. “Said she loved school.”

“She had the nerve to shed tears for him, that day,” added Mrs. Fryt.

“Well, of course she had the right to shed tears,” put in Thelma. “He was her husband.”

Mrs. Fryt scoffed. “I say, when a woman leaves her husband, she gives up all claim to him. And can you imagine keeping all that money a secret that way? You had to pity John, the way he carried on after her. And the rest of the family! The way she left her children in the lurch. As though they meant nothing to her at all!”

“I wouldn’t say that, Cecilia,” said Corinne. “She did move up to Stone Harbor to be near Jack and Mary, when they moved there.”

“Yes, it seems we’re rid of the Mickelsons for good now,” said Mrs. Fryt. “If JJ is, in fact, gone. Is he planning to marry that Helen, then?”

Startled, Dolly shrugged.

“Well, Jack sold the bank about the minute his father died, you know. He always did think he was too good for this town. Now he runs a charter sailboat outfit up in Stone Harbor. We hear Wilma teaches piano lessons.”

“But what do you think she should have done?” Dolly said. “Let him get away with it?”

Mrs. Fryt fixed her with a steely glare, drawing herself up straight.

Judy Wasserman snickered. “Perhaps we’ve found the explanation for why Dolly’s poor husband looked so awful at church on Sunday.”

Of course Judy would have been watching Byron—she always did! “Leave my husband out of this,” Dolly said.

“You have been spending a lot of time with JJ Mickelson—fiancée or no—”

“Judy, that’s enough!” said Jeannette.