She remembered ruining the contents of the drawer in her grandmother’s bedroom. Now Dolly had done the same. Not intentionally, perhaps. But she had destroyed what she could not bear. May felt an unanticipated sympathy for her sister-in-law. The heat of the fire had been so intense that it melted the ice on the drive. From the road, it looked to May like the one brave thing her sister-in-law had ever done.Smoke had accomplished Arthur’s suffocation a little more quickly, that was all. The doctor said as much; she couldn’t blame Dolly. Hadn’t she always expected to lose him? Now, at last, circumstances had aligned to return her to the self she had been before she met Arthur: a woman who had endured humiliations and hardships and who would, if fate required it, continue to endure. May, too, could be a locked drawer. And besides, perhaps there was comfort to be drawn from the hopelessness of the situation. What loss, she wondered, could be more painful than this?In the weeks that had elapsed since the fire, Alice had not yet cried.
