Saint John of the Five Boroughs. Ed Falco

not really serious at all, that, you know, he’ll recover from and be good as new.”

      “Do you think that’s it?” the boy said, and Hank heard in his voice more of a plea than a question.

      “Yes,” Hank said. “That’s what I think. We won’t know anything for sure for a while yet—but I think Uncle Ronnie’s going to be fine.”

      “Are you sure?” Keith asked.

      Hank squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “You keep working on that puzzle,” he said, “stay out of everybody’s hair for a little bit. That’ll be a big help.”

      “Okay,” Keith said, and he stretched out again on the floor, as if grateful for permission to go back to his puzzle.

      Hank said, “Where’d Aunt Kate go?”

      “Down the basement. She said she’d be right back up.”

      Hank found Kate standing in front the washing machine, her arms resting atop it as she looked out a narrow window only inches above the ground. When he came up behind her, he saw that she was watching Lindsey in the backyard, where a breeze was ruffling her sundress and she was holding it down with one arm while pressing the cell phone to her ear with her free hand. She looked besieged as she turned in small circles, taking a few steps one way and then the next to best position herself against the wind. On the horizon, a bank of clouds turned the sky that deep slate blue that announces an oncoming storm. Hank said, “It’s going to pour in a few minutes.” He put his arm around Kate’s waist and leaned into her.

      She reached back and rubbed his thigh. “You should go be with her,” she said.

      “She doesn’t want me with her.”

      Hank kissed the back of Kate’s head, and she turned and held him close, wrapping her arms around his waist. “It’s terrible,” she said. “She’s so close to Ronnie.”

      Hank nodded, agreeing. “We don’t know if he’s hurt badly yet,” he said, “but—”

      “What?”

      Hank pushed back from her a little. “Being airlifted isn’t good,” he said. “There’s a U.S. hospital in Balad where he’d go if the wounds weren’t bad.”

      “Where’s Balad?”

      “Iraq someplace.”

      “Where would they airlift him?”

      “Landstuhl, probably. Germany. That’s where they flew those reporters, the ones that got blown up on air.”

      Kate shook her head as if she didn’t know what he was talking about but didn’t want the explanation either. “How come I feel guilty?” she said, and then her eyes were suddenly full of tears.

      Hank rubbed her back and neck to comfort her and she rested her head on his shoulder. In the yard, Lindsey was talking heatedly into the phone. She was angry at something or someone, and her head bobbed a little with the force of her words. In her anger, she had forgotten about her dress, which was blowing up into her face, exposing a white slip with a gauzy patterned fringe that was pushed up over her knees. He thought that she was beautiful still, her hair, so thick and dark down to her shoulders, whipped around her head now by the wind.

      Kate whispered, “She’s as much a mother to that boy as a sister.”

      Hank said, “I hate this. It’s all—”

      “I know,” she said, and she kissed him on the lips, tenderly, before turning to look again out the window.