"It was Bob's birthday. The family—Logan, his mom and dad, and his sister, Lauren—came to celebrate the birthday with us. It may sound odd, but that's the type of people they were. We'd been with them for a long time, and Bob was in a wheelchair and we didn't go out much." She lifted her shoulders in a weary shrug. "For some reason, who knows why, I'd run out of milk. I was embarrassed."
She bowed her head. "It was my job to be prepared for such things. But they made light of it. Logan immediately said he'd run out to the store. I went with him to show him the way."
Tears ran down her wrinkled face like needles of pain.
Amanda laid a hand on hers. "You don't have to go on. Please don't distress yourself further."
Mrs. MacDonald looked up, her blue eyes swimming. "They were going to play music for us after we had the cake. Mrs. Winter was a violinist, her husband was a clarinet player, and Lauren was a singer."
I'm the son of two musicians. I know how to maintain a rhythm. The words rang in Amanda's ears. She swayed with sudden dizziness.
"We returned from the store." Mrs. MacDonald closed her eyes. "The house was gone."
"Gone?" Amanda choked on the word. The rocking chair began to tilt, and the pain in her mid-section intensified.
Mrs. MacDonald opened her tear-filled eyes. "Logan let out a roar, a cry of agony I can hear to this day. He ran forward, although I tried to stop him."
Amanda could picture him, an eager young man thrown into horror, confused, but hoping against hope that he could find something that would deny the truth of what he was looking at.
"How old was he?"
"Twenty-two," Mrs. M said heavily. "He was twenty-two years old when he saw his sister's foot, still clad in the red cowboy boots he'd given her for eighteenth birthday, sticking up out of the rubble." She dropped her head into her hands, and her shoulders shook with sobs.
Amanda rocked back and forth, silently, her arms wrapped around herself. She pictured Logan, his cool gray eyes, his ever-present composure. She heard him say, "It's not in me to love someone, Amanda."
Now she knew how he'd reached that point.
"He dug into the rubble," the housekeeper continued, "flinging it everywhere." She waved her arms about, as if demonstrating Logan's desperation. "But nothing," she said, "was attached to Lauren's foot."
"That's enough, Mrs. M!" Amanda couldn't bear to hear any more. She pushed herself to her feet and wrapped her arms around the older woman.
"It was a gas explosion," Mrs. MacDonald said, as if, having started, she was unable to stop. "They were doing construction without a permit on the house next door."
"Oh, my God." Four people dead out of carelessness.
"He never said another word about his family."
"Who can blame him?" Amanda whispered.
"We had the funerals. He never shed a tear that I know of. I thought he was in was shock."
She shook her head. "The day after the funerals, he returned to college. I tried to keep in touch, and he told me to wait. When he finished his exams, he came to see me." She paused in her recital. Her eyes became unfocused, as if she were looking into the past. "I tried to get him to talk. I thought the shock might have…settled a bit."
"'There's nothing to be said,'" he told me. "'I'm moving to New York. I could use a housekeeper.'"
"You were already retired!" Amanda knew that was not the point, but she was shocked that Logan would expect Mrs. MacDonald to return to work.
"He was right." Mrs. M. nodded. "I needed something to do, just as he did. And, although neither one of us ever said a word about it, I think we needed each other. We weren't related by blood, but we were all the family either of us had left."
"Then why did he send you here with me? I'm not family to either one of you."
"I think he cares for you more than you realize," Mrs. M said simply. "Maybe more than he realizes. I don't know how things will work out, but if he is to have any future, it must involve you, or at least the baby."
"That's not true," Amanda whispered. "He could marry and start a family with anyone."
"But would he? Is he capable of taking positive action like that? When he's buried himself behind his wall of pain,