Read The Three for Free Online Page B

God knows how long, maybe putting him in a care home.
    Everywhere I looked I saw Lori and Bobby’s faces. We had photos up all over of the two of them. Lori holding a newborn Bobby in her arms, smiling into the camera. Bobby at Coney Island, holding a giant cookie. Lori as a schoolgirl, Lori and Bobby at Reuben’s seventieth birthday party at Jujubee’s, a year before hestarted to go downhill–when he still remembered who I was, who Lori was. I couldn’t stop thinking about when she first told me she was pregnant. I hadn’t taken it well, didn’t like the idea of her going to that place, shopping for sperm as if it was as simple as buying a dress and then being… artificially inseminated. It seemed so cold to me. ‘I’m thirty-nine, Momma’ (well into her forties she still called me Momma), she said. ‘This could be my last chance, and let’s face it, Prince Charming isn’t going to rock up any time soon.’ All my doubts vanished when I saw her with Bobby for the first time of course. She was such a wonderful mother!
    And I couldn’t help but blame myself. Lori knew that one day I hoped to relocate to Florida, move into one of those clean, sunny, assisted-living places where Reuben would get the help he needed. That’s why they’d taken the trip. She was planning on surprising me for my birthday. That was just like Lori, unselfish and generous to her very core.
    Betsy was doing her best to calm Reuben down while I paced. I couldn’t sit still. I fidgeted, kept picking up the phone, checking it was working, just in case Lori was going to call me to say that at the last moment she hadn’t made the flight. That she and Bobby had decided to take a later one. Or an earlier one. That’s what I clung to.
    News of the other crashes was starting to break, and I kept turning the damn television on and off, couldn’t decide if I wanted to see what was going on or not. Oh, the images! It’s strange to think of it now, but when I saw the footage of that Japanese boy being carried out of the forest and air-lifted up into a helicopter, I was jealous. Jealous! Because at that stage we didn’t know about Bobby. All we knew was that no survivors had been found in Florida.
    I thought we’d had all the bad luck one family could ever need. I thought, why would God do this to me? What had I ever done to deserve this? And on top of the guilt, the agony, the crushing absolute terror, I felt lonely. Because whatever happened, whether they were on that plane or not, I’d never be able to tell Reuben. He wouldn’t be able to comfort me, make any of the arrangements, rub my back when I couldn’t sleep. Not any more.He was gone too.
    Betsy only left when Charmaine showed up, said she was going to go back to her kitchen to make us something to eat, although I couldn’t have swallowed a thing.
    The next few hours are hazy. I must have settled Reuben in bed, tried to get him to eat a little soup. I remember scrubbing the kitchen counter until my hands were raw and stinging, though both Charmaine and Betsy tried to get me to stop.
    And then the call came in. Charmaine answered it while Betsy and I stood frozen in the kitchen. I’m trying to remember the exact words for you, but each time it shifts in my mind. She’s African-American, Charmaine is, with just the most gorgeous skin you’ve ever seen, they age well, don’t they? But when she walked into that kitchen, she looked ten years older.
    ‘Lillian,’ she said. ‘I think you should sit down.’
    I didn’t allow myself to feel any hope. I’d seen the footage of the crash. How could anyone have survived that? I looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘Just tell me.’
    ‘It’s Bobby,’ she said. ‘They’ve found him. He’s alive.’
    And then Reuben started screaming from the bedroom and I had to ask her to repeat herself.

Based in Washington, NTSB (National Transport and Safety Bureau) Officer Ace Kelso will be known to many readers as the star of
Ace