11

IT CALMED VALERIE to imagine James beside her. Here, let me show you how I make this crust. She’d taught him to use semi-soft butter, and he’d objected, and she knew why. In cooking school he’d been told to use chilled butter for pastry, but listen, she said. Once you’ve made the dough you’ll have to chill it anyway, so what’s the diff?

“So show me how you roll it,” he replied. “How you get it from the board to the dish.”

“And then you have to try, okay?”

When his turn came, he made a mess of it. He looked chagrined.

“Nobody gets it right the first time,” said Valerie. “Or the second and third.”

“In class they’d call you an Easy Mark.”

“Just patch up the rips in the shell. Once you fill it up with fruit, who’ll notice?”

“You have a good heart,” he said.

***

She kept working and she imagined Andre sampling the tarte, but having spoken to Gerard, Valerie felt her eyes tearing up, her lungs about to fill with smoke. She could still feel her husband’s desperation, his fear crackling in the air. Stay low to the ground and stay where you are, said the 911 dispatcher to some frantic caller, said the slight breeze coming through the window, said everyone on earth with ears to hear. Watch yourself.

On va mourir, she thought. They’re going to die. She wiped the flour off her hands, then turned the TV off. Not watching didn’t help.

We can’t breathe, we’re going to suffocate, we’re up above where the plane hit, the smoke is rising.

Valerie could feel James beside her as she worked.

You have a good heart.

Putting his foot through a window, desperate for air.