“We have to be nice to our customers around town. That’s the only reason I went out to the parking lot with her. I checked her glove box and showed her how to open it. Then I went in and said good night to my buddies, and then I came home. And you weren’t home.”

She swallowed, took a step back. “How can you be so offended when I think it of you, and then—then turn around and accuse me?”

“I don’t know what to think, Doll. That lady Judy said you were getting awfully cozy with this guy.”

“I—well—”

“And I saw the way you got excited about this house. Like you were—in love, or something. I’ve been too wrapped up in my own head to consider—until Judy told me, I mean. Even though I should have known, what with all the books you read and the way you’re never satisfied with just life. I guess I should have known that someday you’d want more than me. I just didn’t know it would be so soon. Are you in love with him?”

“Stop it. No.”

“Judy said you’d told them something about how his fiancée had come last Friday, that you’d gone home and he left town. But you weren’t home Friday night.”

“Stop,” she said. She tried to think what she could tell him. Her improvisational muscle had gone slack. But she realized: She was tired of all the lies. She would never have the spectacular life she wanted if she couldn’t start being honest. With Byron, and with herself. Hadn’t she learned from JJ that not talking about things would lead them to fester, that the festering could and would destroy a person—or a family—from the inside out?

She took a deep breath, and started at the beginning.

By the time Dolly got to the part in the story where JJ Mickelson kissed her, she and Byron were sitting on the steps leading up to the second floor. Byron was two steps below her, leaning forward, elbows on knees, so she couldn’t see his face, which made the confession a little easier. She didn’t see a need for perfect honesty about this part of the tale, though, and simply told him, “So, Friday night, I was upset, and a little drunk, and I think he was, too, and—he kissed me. I stopped him, though! Almost right away.”

Byron looked over his shoulder at her. He looked pale, pinched around the eyes. “Almost?”

She faltered. “You have to understand, I was under the impression that you—that you were with that woman.”

She could hardly bear the heartbroken look on his face.

And yet, it was something! So much more than she had seen on his face, in his eyes, in so long.

The tragedy was that it came too late.