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“Then we ought to be hearing pretty soon. Ten minutes. Fifteen at the outside.”

“Yes, I should think.”

“Maybe twenty, allowing for the roads, but that is a good road out that far as roads go.”

“Maybe.”

“Why didn’t he tell me!” Mary burst out.

“What is it?”

“Why didn’t I ask?” She looked at her aunt in furious bewilderment. “I didn’t even ask! How serious! Where is he hurt! Is he living or dead.”

There it is, Hannah said to herself. She looked back steadily into Mary’s eyes.

That we simply have to wait to find out,” she said.

“Of course we have,” Mary cried angrily. “That’s what’s so unbearable!” She drank half her tea at a gulp; it burned her painfully but she scarcely noticed. She continued to glare at her aunt.

Hannah could think of nothing to say.

“I’m sorry,” Mary said. “You’re perfectly right. I’ve just got to hold myself together, that’s all.”

“Never mind,” Hannah said, and they fell silent.

Hannah knew that silence must itself be virtually unbearable for Mary, and that it would bring her face to face with likelihoods still harder to endure. But she has to, she told herself; and the sooner the better. But she found that she herself could not bear to be present, and say nothing which might in some degree protect, and postpone. She was about to speak when Mary burst out: “In heaven’s name, why didn’t I ask him! Why didn’t I? Didn’t I care?”

“It was so sudden.” Hannah said. “It was such a shock.”

“You would think I’d ask, though! Wouldn’t you?”

“You thought you knew. You told me you were sure it was his—in the head.”

“But how bad? What!”

We both know, Hannah said to herself. But it’s better if you bring yourself to say it. “It certainly wasn’t because you didn’t care, anyway,” she said.

“No. No it certainly wasn’t that, but I think I do know what it was. I think, I think I must have been too afraid of what he would have to say.”

Hannah looked into her eyes. Nod, she told herself. Say yes I imagine so. Just say nothing and it’ll be just as terrible for her. She heard herself saying what she had intended to venture a while before, when Mary had interrupted her: “Do you understand why J—your father stayed home, and your mother?”

“Because I asked them not to come.”

“Why did you?”

“Because if all of you came up here in a troop like that, it would be like assuming that—like assuming the very worst before we even know.”

“That’s why they stayed home. Your father said he knew you’d understand.”

“Of course I do.”

“We just must try to keep from making any assumptions—good or bad.”

“I know. I know we must. It’s just, this waiting in the dark like this, it’s just more than I can stand.”

“We ought to hear very soon.”

Mary glanced at the clock. “Almost any minute,” she said.

She took a little tea.

“I just can’t help wondering,” she said, “why he didn’t say more. ‘A serious accident,’ he said. Not a ‘very’ serious one. Just ‘serious.’ Though, goodness knows, that’s serious enough. But why couldn’t he say?”

“As your father says, it’s ten to one he’s just a plain damned fool,” Hannah said.

“But it’s such an important thing to say, and so simple to say, at least to give some general idea about. At least whether he could come home, or go to a hospital, or ... He didn’t say anything about an ambulance. An ambulance would mean hospital, almost for sure. And surely if he meant the—the very worst, he’d have just said so straight out and not leave us all on tenterhooks. I know it’s just what we have no earthly business guessing about, good or bad, but really it does seem to me there’s every good reason for hope, Aunt Hannah. It seems to me that if ...”

The telephone rang; its sound frightened each of them as deeply as either had experienced in her lifetime. They looked at each other and got up and turned towards the hall. “I ...” Mary said, waving her right hand at Hannah as if she would wave her out of existence.

Hannah stopped where she stood, bowed her head, closed her eyes, and made the sign of the Cross.

Mary