As soon as the car was out of sight, Dolly let the curtain fall and made a beeline for her cigarettes. She went out on the back stoop to smoke. Looking up at the stars, she began to feel better, though she missed her family terribly. She had always gone to the fireworks with her sisters and Jane, after a picnic at the lake with her parents—fried chicken, potato salad, and chocolate cake. Tonight, Byron had insisted on barbecuing the chicken on his new grill. He had burned it, and that was the beginning of the end as far as Dolly was concerned. She supposed it was nice that Byron and Roy were such close friends, but she hated that she was expected to become friends with Roy’s hideous wife. If this was Byron’s idea of a new Fourth of July tradition, she wanted none of it. Not to mention that the holiday had thrown her whole housekeeping schedule off track, and now she would spend the rest of the week feeling off-kilter.

She stubbed out her cigarette and lit a second one—she deserved it, she thought—as the night slowly enveloped her. She was just about done with her cigarette and, with her headache feeling better, ready to go inside to Cherry Ames, Night Supervisor—she didn’t care if the books were juvenile, at least Cherry had adventure in her life—when she heard the first blast of the fireworks. She was suddenly struck with a wave of loneliness, and then she got mad. That despicable Susie Ostrem was keeping her from seeing the fireworks! She dropped her cigarette and ground it out with her shoe. She walked around to the front yard, but when another firework bloomed in the sky, she knew she would have to get closer to see over the trees.

Her feet made no sound as she walked. Each time there was another explosion, cheers and applause wafted through the quiet streets and over the treetops. She walked faster, stretching herself tall to try to see. Once she was past the courthouse, she decided there wouldn’t be any harm in going another block closer.

Then she realized where she would have the best view, while still avoiding the crowd: on top of the hill where the Mickelson house stood.

She had intended only to watch from the yard, but once she got there, she found that the garage, a large birch tree, and the row of shrubs at the southern edge of the property obscured her view, so she climbed up on the back porch stoop for added height, certain that Wilma Mickelson wouldn’t have minded. She noticed with a twinge of anguish that, although the lawn was clipped short, the Peterson boy obviously didn’t trouble about the flower beds around the house; they were thick with overgrown irises and choked with weeds.