“I don’t think you’ll make much money working at the mall,” Jennie said.
“Maybe not, but if I’m careful and do a good job, maybe it’ll be enough to help you pay for college.” Aaron shrugged. “Hey, it’s a start, anyway.”
Holly put a hand on his shoulder, bumped her hip against his as they walked, and said, “Maybe we can work in the same place.”
“I’d like that,” Aaron said.
* * *
Tobey was sitting in the back door of an ambulance, too, at the edge of the area in the parking lot that had been cleared for triage. His wounds had been cleaned and bandaged, and although none of them seemed serious, he knew the doctors would insist on keeping him overnight in the hospital just to be sure.
He knew that Charles Lockhart and Herb Dupont and Pete McCracken were all dead. He had watched while Kaitlyn Hamilton reunited with her father and brothers and delivered the news among hugs and tears that her mother had been killed. He had witnessed the much happier reunion between Jamie Vasquez and her husband and kids.
All around the mall it continued. The tears of grief and shock, the tears of joy and relief. The miracle of life and the senselessness of death. A vicious wound had been struck today in the soul of America.
But not a fatal one. America would recover . . . this time.
If everyone soon forgot, though . . . if the politicians postured and the pundits pontificated and the apologists deflected the blame onto anyone and anything else instead of directing it at those who had truly caused this tragedy . . . then who could say? More than three thousand innocent Americans had died on September 11, 2001, and it hadn’t taken much time at all before things had gone back to normal. About a third that many had been killed today. Tobey gave it a couple of weeks, and then everybody would move on to something else. Christmas was coming, after all.
He sighed and pushed himself to his feet.
One of the paramedics paused in his busy round of activities to say, “We’ll be leaving for the hospital soon, sir.”
“That’s fine,” Tobey said. “I’ll be in here.”
He stepped up into the ambulance and moved over to the gurney fastened into place on one side. Ashley lay there, her face pale, her eyes closed, but when he slipped his left hand into her right one where it lay on the sheet covering her, she opened her eyes and tightened her fingers on his with surprising, reassuring strength.
“Hi,” she whispered.
“I’ve got something for you,” Tobey said as he reached into his pocket with his other hand and closed his fingers around the ring box. “I was going to give it to you on Christmas Eve, but I don’t think I’ll wait.”
Somebody outside closed the ambulance doors, and a moment later it pulled away, detaching itself from the sea of flashing lights around the mall. A few tendrils of smoke still rose here and there from the sprawling building, but they were soon lost in the late November sky.
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