From years spent drilling underground, Papa was an ashen boulder of a man. He was the sort gossipy ladies whispered about. On account of his being a widower, they’d say of his draw to the bottle, his aloof demeanor.

To me, he was a quiet yet kind provider. And though we didn’t constitute a “real family” in the traditional sense, it was all I ever knew.

He gently broke away when a woman approached. She informed him that drivers outside were taking survivors to be checked over at a local hospital. Only then did I note a soreness in my muscles, an ache in my joints. My fingers were tired and stiffening, as if having scaled a rope to the sky. Arie must have felt just as worn.

I glanced over to gauge his condition, but he had vanished.

“We go now,” Papa said to me.

At the memory of the exit, a sense of panic resurged. “But I can’t… I won’t… The stairs—”

“Maak je geen zorgen,” he assured me in Dutch, saying not to worry, that we’d leave the way he came in.

Relaxing a little, I hiccupped a sigh. Then I clutched his arm and followed him to a fire escape on the side of the building, where we joined others in line for the ladder.

I should have realized the stairwell wasn’t an option, no doubt still blocked by those inside. At the thought of the final layers being exhumed, I recalled Arie’s toy plane, lying on the floor, crushed.

How quickly something so cherished and whole could be damaged beyond repair.

Chapter 10

On the morning of the funerals, snow blanketed the town. The fresh layer of powdery flakes normally encouraged laughter and frolicking, snowball battles and snow-fort building. Not on that day. Instead, the colorless landscape served as mere contrast to supporters in black, flanking the road for a full two miles.

They had come from neighboring counties, states even, to pay their respects. Awaiting the procession, the thick lines of mourners stretched to a cemetery just past Eden Springs, on land not owned by the mine.

Papa and I stood on the road’s edge, a quarter mile or so down. When we’d arrived for the services, the churches were overflowing. I was glad for it, having dreaded the promise of open caskets. I had seen enough death to haunt me.

Finally bells tolled from the steeples. Bundled in my coat, green mittens, and winter stockings, my body went rigid from more than the cold. With the services over, fleets of hearses would merge on the main road and roll this way.