Bernice allowed his words to sink in. “You’re right, Kip. My apologies to both of you. I just . . .” She collapsed onto a stool at the counter. “I just don’t know how we’ll ever recover from this. I don’t think we ever will.”

Kip slid his half-eaten eggs away and lit a Winston. “I’ll tell you one thing: that wrecked bridge was a damn sight to behold.”

“You mean you went there?” Bernice asked. “You saw it?”

“We both did,” Don Paul said. “Why do you think we’re here so early, smelling like a damn sewer? Been knee deep in that river all night.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I’ve been a card-carrying member of the volunteer fire department for twenty-three years,” Don Paul said. “Kip for seventeen. We both got the call on our cell phones while we were sitting there in the stadium, wondering where the hell the Jackrabbits were, just like everyone else. By the time the team was a half hour late, some school officials decided they’d best go looking for ’em. Didn’t take them long to discover the busted-up bridge. The VFD had Kip and me on the horn before they even made the announcement over the stadium PA. I figure we were the first ones in that stadium that knew what happened. Kip and I got to the crash site about twenty minutes later.”

“It must have been just ghastly, seein’ those poor boys pulled outta that river.”

The men exchanged a look.

“Uh, nobody got pulled from the river, honey.”

“What? Kip, don’t tell me they’re just gonna leave them down there.”

“Not indefinitely. But according to the news, last night’s flash flood was the worst these parts have seen in a half century. Said it dumped nine inches of rain in less than an hour. The banks where the bus finally sank are pretty steep, and right now they’re too soft to get the necessary equipment in. Pulling a body from a river is one thing; pullin’ forty of ’em out of a sunk school bus is another.”

Don Paul lit a Salem. “They even brought in a tropigaffer.”

“Topographer,” Kip corrected.

“Yeah, right, one a them. This fella said the bus went down in the deepest section of river within fifty miles. Talk about your damn luck.”

“They sent a couple of frogmen down there to inspect things, see if they might be able to get some of the kids out,” Kip said.

“And?”

“They said it was such a tangled, gory mess down there, there was no way they could get any of ’em out.”

“But why?”

Kip looked at her. “You really want me to paint a picture for you?”

Bernice shuddered. “So what did you do there all night?”