“We have to go,” Suzanne said.
Rusty pursed her lips, closed her eyes, took a deep breath and reconsidered. “Just don’t be too long. I want a promise on that.”
“Okay,” Miri said.
“Be back before eight o’clock.”
Suzanne said, “I promised my mother the same.”
Rusty nodded. “And take an umbrella.”
—
A CHILL WIND SWEPT the open corner of South and Williamson streets. At the site, floodlights, combined with the fog and the light rain, sent up an eerie glow. Miri and Suzanne stood close. There was nothing to say. Nothing that would make sense of this.
On the ground floor of the Fosters’ house there used to be a candy store, popular with the St. Mary’s kids. Now there was a burned-out shell with no roof, and piles of rubble. There was no sign that it was hit by a plane. It could have been any kind of explosion. Except for the piece of the tail. Not that Miri could see it, but everyone said it was there. Somewhere.
“They say she had to choose between her children,” a woman said to her companion. “She couldn’t save them both. Can you imagine?” Was she talking about Mrs. Foster or someone else? Miri didn’t want to think of Mrs. Foster trying to decide—eeny, meeny, miney, moe…
Suddenly Mason was behind her, his hands on her shoulders. “Hey…”
She whipped around. She’d thought he was at work.
“I have a friend who lived in that house,” he said quietly. “The one that’s gone now.”
Miri and Suzanne both looked at him.
“Polina,” he said. “She works at Janet. She has a little boy. Sometimes she kept Fred overnight.”
“Are they okay?”
He shrugged. “They lost all their stuff. They have no place to live but they weren’t home when the plane crashed, so I guess you could say they’re okay.”
Miri didn’t know how to reply except to squeeze his hand to acknowledge his feelings. She wondered if Polina knew the Fosters.
“If only Penny and Betsy hadn’t been home,” Suzanne said. “If only Mrs. Foster had taken them someplace, to the library, maybe, or to a friend’s house to play, a friend who lived in another neighborhood. If only…”
“If onlys don’t work,” Mason said.
A policeman moved through the crowd. “Go on now,” he told them. “Time to get home.”
—
THEY TOOK the bus back, got off at Suzanne’s corner then walked to Miri’s, where she kissed Mason goodnight at the front door, hiding Fred inside her jacket. Upstairs, Henry was sitting at Rusty’s kitchen table, mopping up what was left of Irene’s vegetable soup with a thick slice of bread.
“I shouldn’t have let you go,” Rusty said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It was an accident,” Henry assured her. “A tragic accident.”
“Twice in a row?”
“I know it doesn’t make sense,” Henry said, “but I’m asking you to believe me.” He got up from the table and wrapped his arms around her. “Terrible things can happen, Miri. I’m so sorry about those little girls.”
Miri dissolved when he said that, and when she did, Fred whimpered in sympathy. She unzipped her jacket. Fred cocked his head and looked around. “He can’t stay at the Steins’,” she told Rusty. “Phil’s cousin was on that plane. And he can’t stay with Mason’s friend Polina, because she lived in the house the plane slammed into.” She didn’t wait for Rusty to give her permission. She grabbed a copy of the Daily Post from the pile on the table, went to her room and closed the door.
It didn’t take long for Rusty to knock. “Miri…” The door opened. “It’s okay for Fred to stay tonight. Just not in your bed.”
But Miri had every intention of having Fred in her bed.
Elizabeth Daily Post
Special Edition
ANOTHER PLANE FALLS
Raging Inferno Destroys Block of Williamson Street
By Henry Ammerman
JAN. 22—It was a horrific scene of suffering and destruction, with bodies buried in the rubble that covered the wreckage of an American Airlines Convair en route to Newark Airport from upstate New York. The plane crashed today at 3:45 p.m. in heavy fog and driving rain, plowing into a block of houses on Williamson Street before exploding into an inferno.
Residents of the houses fled, some with their clothes aflame. Every available police and fire resource in the city was summoned to the struggle, but it would be hours before the search for bodies could even begin.
Ultimate Horror Only Feet Away
Students at Battin High School, across the street from the crash site, saw the plane skim the rooftop of their school just before the fatal crash. St. Mary’s High School, catercorner from Battin, escaped destruction, but an after-school crowd of its students were gathered at a confectionery on the ground floor of 310 Williamson St. Knocked down by the initial explosion, they managed to escape before it burst into flames.