“Someone with a grudge against you?” The young man’s face looked shocked.

“Someone trying to teach us all a lesson, I suspect.”

The rain had picked up now, helping to put out the fire but drenching us as we stood there. Liam was crying again. Daniel turned his attention back to us. “We must get you out of this rain.”

“Where can we go?” I said. “We’ve nothing, Daniel. No clothes, nothing.”

“It will be all right, I promise,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “I’ll take you to the Hotel Lafayette for the night. That’s not far, is it?”

I almost laughed at the absurdity of this. The Hotel Lafayette was where my good friend Ryan O’Hare, the flamboyant and roguish Irish playwright lived. I associated it with good conversation, wicked jokes, wild laughter. I allowed myself to be led away, looking wistfully across the street at Sid and Gus’s house. If only they’d been home I’d have been taken in to warmth and security. They’d be wrapping us in blankets, giving us hot drinks, telling us that everything was going to be fine—when of course it wasn’t. How could it be fine when Aggie was dead and we had lost everything, including our home?

We were soon installed in a room at the Lafayette, and Daniel ordered a tray with sandwiches and hot rum toddy to be sent up to our room. Liam was still sobbing softly, his little body trembling against me. I did what any other mother would have done, undid my shirt and put him to the breast. He suckled greedily as if desperately trying to calm himself.

“It’s a good thing I’m still breastfeeding Liam,” I said, “or I don’t know what I’d do.”

Daniel stood looking down at us, an expression of unbelievable tenderness on his face. “When I think how close I came to losing you,” he said. “But you’ll be safe enough here for the night. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“You’re leaving us?”

“I have to report to headquarters,” Daniel said. “This is what we feared might happen. I told you we had brought the Italian gang boss into custody. I’m afraid we suspected they might try to teach us a lesson, but I never dreamed they would take it out on our families.”

“Then it really was a bomb and it was the Cosa Nostra?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “I told you that they were particularly ruthless and violent and would stop at nothing.”

“What are we going to do? Won’t they try again?” I was shivering now, my wet clothes sticking to me, my hair plastered to my forehead. The back of my head was beginning to throb too, where I had struck the wall.

“We’ll have to decide what to do in the morning,” Daniel said, “but I’m afraid I really must go now. I’ve warned the night staff not to give out any information about us to anyone so we should be quite safe. Maybe they’ll be satisfied now that they’ve blown up our house and they won’t try again.” He bent to kiss me then rubbed Liam’s curls. “Get some food inside you then try to sleep.”