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When she lost the first five pounds, George, gleeful, invited Helen to meet for lunch at the country club.

It was a chance to wear a dress she’d bought last spring, knowing even in the fitting room that it was slightly too tight and bound to get tighter.

“Well, I think you look nice,” Helen had said that day in the fitting room when George mentioned the snug waist. “And anyway, it’s a wonder what a week of cottage cheese and lettuce will do for a girl. I wouldn’t worry.”

George hadn’t worried. She wasn’t fat. It was just that things had begun .

.. shifting. And while her height accommodated more shifting than some women’s, still, things were changing, and not for the better.

Her week of cottage cheese and lettuce hadn’t had the slightest effect.

But now she’d lost five pounds, and George could think of nothing she’d done to give them a reason to leave.

She wore the dress, met Helen at the club, saw Helen’s eyes pass over her slimmer waist and her mouth tighten. George returned home pleased.

Two weeks later, she stepped on the scale again to find that five more pounds had disappeared.

The mirror revealed no difference. Her stomach still pooched a bit, as did her inner thighs.

Most likely she’d purchased a bum scale.

Maybe she’d get herself a new one for Christmas. Or give up on scales altogether.

But now she was intrigued. Rather than weighing herself every seven to ten days, she stepped on the scale—skeptically, as it was clearly not to be trusted—every day just before dinner. Her weight held steady for three days, and then another pound was gone. And two days later, another.

George, ignoring the voice in the back of her mind that said doctor , in increasingly urgent tones, tossed the scale in the trash and didn’t weigh herself again for months.

Adele wasn’t there to say anything. There was only Helen, who marveled at how slender George had become and pleaded with her to share her secret, pretty please.

And Frank, whose pleasure in her body seemed connected to something so deep within her that he never seemed to notice how it had changed.

George let the phone ring twice before picking it up.

“Hello, Tom.” There was a companionable pause while he sipped from his glass.

His Sunday night tumbler with two fingers of rye and three lumps of ice.

They hadn’t had much news for one another lately.

But this past week they’d each received a letter from Ruth.

At last she was coming home. “I still can’t believe she stayed for a second year,” said George.

“You never hear of anyone wanting to stay longer.”

“Come on, George. Remember how devastated you were to leave the WASP? Maybe that’s how she feels.”

“Maybe. But I was flying airplanes. Not stitching up wounded teenagers.”

“Maybe stitching up wounded teenagers feels like flying to Ruth.”

“I think she stayed because of Ivy,” said George.

Tom sighed. “I don’t think we can blame Ivy for this.”

“Oh, I know Ivy didn’t ask her to stay. When did Ivy ever ask anyone for anything unless it was to stay out past curfew or something like that? But I think Ruth didn’t want to leave her. I think she’s afraid Ivy will disappear again.”

The sound of Tom taking another sip. And another.

He often reverted to silence when she brought up Ivy.

But Ivy was a mystery she couldn’t help but probe.

Ruth had sent them letters announcing her DEROS date, but Ivy would never tell them her own return date, let alone where she was going.

They’d found her—sort of—but it wasn’t as if they could jet over to Vietnam and see her.

“And it’s not like Ivy’s going to come home to Enid,” said George.

No, Tom agreed, that was probably true. But Ruth was coming, and that was something. And when she was back, she could tell them all about Ivy. “And maybe,” said Tom, “Ivy’ll tell Ruth when she’s coming back to the States.”

“Maybe,” said George. She wanted both of her daughters to come home, but she was also terrified to see them.

She still had the letter from Quigley in the drawer of her nightstand: “Met your daughters in Cu Chi. Spitting image. Understand one of them goes by Shaw now.”

Quigley swore he hadn’t told them a thing, but the fact that they had asked him meant Ruth and Ivy had never bought the explanation that Joyce was just a drunk spouting nonsense.

Which meant the whole thing was blowing up.

And George, who’d had years to prepare for the day they demanded the truth, who had laid out explanation after explanation in her mind, and found none of them sufficient, knew that time was nearly up.