Mrs. Fryt rolled her eyes. “Well, just then, the door slammed open—I still remember how loudly the bells on it jingled! And here was Jack Mickelson, skidding to a stop. I’ll never forget the way he looked that day, his hair slicked back and his necktie off-kilter. I tell you, my Jeannette wasn’t the only girl in the class of 1916 who spent hours fixing herself up, hoping for a second glance from him.”

“Mother!”

Corinne laughed. “Even I remember that smile he had, back before the war,” she said. “I was a married woman by that time, but it was dazzling.”

“Well, that was the smile he was smiling that day at Tomsovik’s, I daresay,” said Mrs. Fryt. “A smile like he could conquer the world. And then I saw he was holding the newspaper, and I knew what he’d come for.

“He didn’t have a word for his mother or me. He held up the newspaper, looked straight at his brother, and said, ‘They’ve done it. I’m enlisting.’

“And then the littlest smile twitched on Chase’s face. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll go, too.’ They must have been talking about it all week long, with the president and Congress making the steps toward war.

“You should have seen the look on Wilma’s face,” Mrs. Fryt went on. “She went white as cream. Then, quick as that, she turned pink, and stomped her foot. She demanded to know what they were talking about, but she knew perfectly well. As though Jack didn’t get his arrogance from her! Those boys left on Monday, the day after Easter, for the recruiting office, to take the tests and whatnot.”

“Poor Wilma,” said Thelma, shaking her head.

“Well,” said Corinne, “you remember she was quick enough to turn her back on everyone whenever she didn’t need us.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean anything bad toward us,” Thelma said. “She knit more than anyone for the Red Cross committee during the Second World War.”

“Some little good it did when she didn’t pay any attention to the quotas,” Mrs. Fryt said. “The national chapter would put out a call for scarves, and she’d come to me with three sweaters! I was hard put to explain to the higher-ups where all our chapter’s yarn was going, when we weren’t meeting their quotas.”

“I think she just hated this town,” said Corinne. “And she hated every one of us for being part of it.”

“Oh, but she tried so hard,” Thelma objected.

“Don’t you remember the way she was?” Mrs. Fryt said. “Letting those children run wild? Not caring what anyone thought? As though living in that house on a hill made her—well, there’s no other way to say it—she thought she was better than everyone else. It was scandalous. I’d never believe she was brought up Lutheran.”