As she walked with Byron down the front porch steps, he pulled her close to his side, leaned down, and, just for a moment, pressed his lips to the top of her head. He murmured her name, then leaned away from her, and gave her a shy smile. There was hope and longing in his voice; it was contagious. As they descended the flight of stairs to where the Chrysler waited at the curb, she felt something escape and rise from her, and she looked up over her shoulder at the house. She could almost see it—regret and yearning and used-up old dreams—sailing up past the house’s waiting porch, the second floor’s windows, the third floor’s peaks, the chimneys, on up into the gathering sky.

Chapter 88

THE MICKELSON COTTAGES
Water Street, Stone Harbor, Wisconsin
Tuesday, August 8, 1950

Wilma fixed JJ an iced tea (he poured in a dollop from the flask in his pocket when she wasn’t looking), and they hadn’t been sitting on the porch a minute when his mother, Mary, came running up from the dock. She rushed onto the porch and crouched next to JJ’s chair, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed his cheek. He could tell from the look on her face as she pulled away from him that she had smelled the booze on him. He grinned disarmingly, and she smiled; she would bring it up later, he knew, but she wouldn’t ruin these, their first, moments together.

She pulled up a chair and sat on the edge of it, leaning toward him, insisting he tell her everything he had been doing since she had last seen him, two months before. There was much that he omitted, and certain things that benefited from embellishment, but he liked the attention nonetheless. Freckles dusted her nose and cheeks, like they did every summer, and her honey-blond hair showed a few strands of gray around her temples. As he always found, when seeing his mother after a long absence, she was too vivid to believe.

Later, his father and Uncle Harry arrived; they had been down at the Yacht Club, working on Jack’s boat. Jack looked older, his hair entirely gray, his waist thickening a little, but his eyes were bright. A shadow darkened Harry’s face, and JJ wondered for an instant if Harry knew about him and Anne. No, he decided immediately, he can’t know, or he’d kill me.

Jack wanted to hear about the house in Pine Rapids, so JJ told everyone about the problems: the broken windows, the missing shingles. “But there’s this girl who’s been coming in and cleaning this summer. Dolly. She said the door was unlocked, and she was curious about the house. She’s new in town and she didn’t know about us.”

“That house should not have been left unlocked,” Jack said.