A sleepy Gladys finally answered. “What is it, doll? Oliver was out late on a story and then we went into Manhattan for drinks. We just got back a few hours ago.”

“Dottie’s house. One hour. I’ll see you there.”

She slammed down the phone before Gladys could respond.

She dialed Dottie’s number, happy, at least, that she had telephones that weren’t shared with any neighbors.

“Hello?” answered the cook. “This is the Preston residence.”

Margaret could hear Joanna wailing in the background.

“This is Margaret. Please tell Mrs. Preston that Gladys and I will be there in one hour. We need to talk.”

She put the receiver down and huffed back to her house to get her coat and boots. She’d run out in her robe and slippers once she’d read the contents of William’s—no, Tom’s—latest letter.

She wished she told them half an hour. This couldn’t wait.

Sixty minutes dragged on. Margaret managed a lopsided braid and decided against cosmetics. The girls had seen her without them before. Maybe not George, but she didn’t care.

At last, ten o’clock arrived. She stepped off the bus and marched up the steep hill to Dottie’s house. Gladys was already waiting. She held a cigarette between her two fingers and her eyes bore the baggy look of weariness. Last night’s cosmetics had not yet been washed off, and the remnants of blurred mascara didn’t help.

“You’re all in a rage this morning, aren’t you?” she asked. “This is a new side to Margaret Beck.”

“Get used to it.”

Margaret was about to rap on the front door when Dottie opened it, Joanna balanced on her hip.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she apologized. “She’s cutting some teeth, and it’s been a night. I’ll hand her to the nanny as soon as I’m able to nurse her.”

She welcomed them into the parlor and put a blanket around her shoulders before settling into a chair. Margaret and Gladys took the couch.

“Ouch!” Dottie yelped.

Gladys looked sharply at Margaret, frustration in her eyes. “What’s so important that you woke my husband up, pulled me out of bed, and forced Dottie to hurry through getting her titties chewed up by a teething child?”

Margaret covered her gasp with her hand, the weight of her selfish behavior sinking in. Tom’s blasted letter had come in yesterday’s mail, but she only saw it this morning. And since then, she’d thought of nothing other than steaming about it to her friends. Yes, this was important news. But she could, in all honesty, have waited for a more proper time of day.

Although with a few more hours, she probably would have torn her pillow to bits, leaving a feathery snowfall on her floor.

Remembering Gladys’s suggestion, she’d screamed into it instead.

Margaret had never felt anger like this.