Just like the bareback rider, Wilma thought, her brave performance was belied by trembling knees. The April air cooled her fiery cheeks; she tightened her clutch on her handbag. The muddy street was filled with cars, wagons and horses, shouting men waving newspapers, some of them cursing in German. Women were hurrying to finish their Easter shopping, palely proceeding under the pretense of nothing being out of the ordinary. I will not faint, Wilma told herself. She began walking toward home, her heels tapping steadily on the boardwalk, doing her best to focus on the difficult piece she had been working on lately, Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor. She had first heard it in college when her instructor had played it, and she’d been working up to it ever since, finally beginning on the first movement last fall. It was that movement she rehearsed in her mind now: the resonant early chords, then the ominous theme that required the lightest touch yet the greatest intensity as fingers tangled and danced to create the most gorgeous of nightmares, with a beat like a frightened heart.

But she couldn’t help thinking: I should have known it would come to this. The boys going to the war. It was payment for her sins.

She had always especially dreaded that some harm would come to Chase. God knew she had a bond with him that she did not have with her other children, and she supposed that He did not think well of her, as a result.

But she should have known it would come to this! She had never been able to stop Jack from dragging Chase along with him on all manner of adventures, from the time they were small: fishing, skiing, sledding, skating, sailing. When they got older, it was football, basketball, baseball, the two brothers competing to see which could outdo the other.

Chase’s competitive spirit waned whenever he wasn’t in direct competition with Jack; Wilma sensed that he actually preferred the solitude of his pencil and notebook. She had several of his drawings posted on her vanity mirror in her bedroom. Her favorite was a caricature of the family that he’d presented to her for Mother’s Day last year, showing Wilma seated in a chair haughtily beautiful, John standing behind her impressively pompous, Jack and Chase assembled gawkily in baseball caps, Harry with hair standing on end, Jinny perched on the arm of her mother’s chair. Our Family, 1916, he’d written in his block letters. For Mom. Love, Chase.

Chase kept his passion to himself; he was like Wilma with her piano in that way. Jack probably didn’t even see it. And now Jack was going to drag Chase off to the war!