“Already dead?” my mother said. She and Marva stared at me with twin expressions of distaste, fascination, and horror.

“He sure looked like it,” I said, involuntarily seeing the body turning in the air. “Of course, someone else was flying the plane.”

“Oh, girl, you don’t mean you saw it?” Marva asked breathlessly.

I nodded, surprised at this failure of the rumor mill.

“I heard it was that young woman that lives in your apartment out there, the gal with all the muscles,” Marva said indignantly.

“Oh, we were both out in the backyard.”

“Did you see the airplane, too?” Mother asked.

I shrugged. “It was just a little ole plane, red and white. I didn’t notice any of the numbers on it.” It would be hard to find someone who knew less about airplanes than I did.

“I can’t believe it, in our little town,” Marva said, forgetting to whisper. “Maybe it was somebody Jack had sent to prison?”

Mother and I shrugged simultaneously, and shook our heads to back the shrug up.

“Well, see what you make of this situation here, and let me know,” Marva said. “I’ve been minding the door for an hour now, but I have to go home soon, I’ve got bread coming out of the oven and I don’t know if Sissy will remember to get it out of the loaf pan after ten minutes’ sitting.”

“Where is Bess?” my mother asked directly, tired of all this hissing by the front door.

“Straight through,” Marva said, nodding her head at the door at the rear of the foyer. “The kids haven’t gotten here yet, but she’s talked to both of them on the phone. They have long drives.” I remembered the Burns children, Jack Junior and Romney, went to different colleges in different states.

“We’ll put our bowls in the refrigerator before we talk to her,” Mother told Marva firmly.

Bess’s kitchen looked just like mine usually did, basically clean but messy around the edges, with bills sticking out of a letter caddy on the wall and an open box of teabags by a pitcher. Another neighbor was working out her helpful impulses by wiping the counter, and we smiled and nodded at each other in a subdued way.