Page 17

“I guess they’re all worried about looting,” Delilah Lytle said. “They don’t understand that kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Henley.”

While Ms. Lytle’s optimism might seem a touch naive, the streets of Henley were filled with residents who—once the shock had been absorbed—all pitched in and began working. For others, there wasn’t anything to clean up.

“My house should be here,” Gary Parsons said, while standing on the sidewalk and facing an empty lot where broken gas pipes and water lines erupt from the ground. “I live here,” he says, gesturing futilely. “But there’s nothing to live in.”

“Our grocery store is gone, our bakery is gone, our library is gone, our police station is gone, the firehouse is gone,” said Bailey Foxglove, 16, daughter of the sheriff. She’s been called into service herself—now manning the phone lines in her own home, as calls to the police station are being rerouted there.

“I’ve got people calling looking for their husbands, or their wives, and even their kids,” she says, wiping a tear away. “I just don’t even know what to tell them. People call asking if anybody had seen their dogs or their cats, and all I can say to them is that we don’t know. We just don’t know.”

Chaos is the word for what has happened here in Henley, with a long list of missing, and volunteers calling their names while carefully shifting rubble with bare hands. Meanwhile, emergency lights are being brought in as the search continues through the night for those who may still be counted among the living in Henley.

“‘We just don’t know,’” I repeat, looking at the words of Bailey Foxglove. I imagine her, sixteen and frightened, frantically answering phone calls and having no answers for the people on the other end.

“Hey, Mom,” I ask, and she glances over at me, muting the television. “Do you know someone named Bailey Foxglove?”

“Foxglove, Foxglove, Foxglove . . .” Mom’s eyes glaze over for a second as she consults the Henley directory in her head. “Sheriff’s daughter, right?”

“That’s her.”

“She was a couple years ahead of me, I think,” Mom says, scooting aside a candy bar wrapper on the coffee table to make room for her wineglass, and shifting Steven down to her lap. “Nice girl, always had her hair in a French braid.”

“She still around?”

“I think so, but I haven’t run into her lately. I can see if we’re friends online,” Mom offers. “I mean . . .” She grimaces, and her mouth pulls into a downward turn. “I’ll have to reactivate my Facebook account.”

“You shut down your Facebook?” I ask, my antennae going up. “Why?”

“Oh, you know,” Mom says blithely, waving a dismissive hand. “Taking a break, self-care, other buzzwords.”

“You’re lucky you’re married to a good lawyer, because you’re a bad liar,” I tell her. “You’re on every local group, from recycling to saving injured wildlife. It’s a platform for good deeds and maintaining the family presence. Why don’t you tell me the real reason you’d give up your stranglehold on the Most Active Volunteer in Markham County award?”

Mom sighs and sets her wineglass aside. “A platform for good deeds, sure. But it’s also an instant delivery system for nasty attacks.”

“Attacks?” I ask, sitting up straighter. “Did someone threaten you?”

“Calling it a threat would be putting it strongly,” Mom says.

I push my laptop across the coffee table. “Log in and show me. I’ll decide what to call it.”

“No,” Mom says, shaking her head. “You don’t need to know what was said—or who said it. If you—or your dad, or anyone with the last name of Chass reacts too strongly—we’re punching down, and it invites the floodgates to open.”

“There’s a difference between punching down and standing up for yourself,” I tell her.

“Maybe, Lydia,” Mom says, pressing her hands to her temples. “But quite frankly, I don’t even want to think about it. It was vile, and it set me back for a few days.”

“So your solution is to forget about it?” I ask. “Pretend like it didn’t happen?”

“Stop. Just stop,” Mom says, a little anger slipping into her voice. “This happened to me, not you. You don’t get to have an opinion about it, and I don’t think you’re being funny right now.”

“That’s because I’m not trying to be,” I tell her. “I’m dead serious. There are procedures for online threats. You let the platform know, and then you call the cops.”

“The cops?” Mom actually laughs. “That would be a little much. This person can just claim they’re joking, and then I’m a drama queen—and a vengeful one, at that.”

“And we’re back to being nice,” I say. “Smile and nod in the face of personal threats.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Mom says.

“No,” I correct her. “It’s the nice thing do. The nice thing and the right thing aren’t always the same thing.”