At five o'clock on Saturday afternoon she took the fourth pie — the one she had left at home in case she lost her nerve, the lattice apple with extra nutmeg — out of the refrigerator and looked at it.
At five-thirty she put on her camel coat.
At five-forty she stood in the front hall by the telephone, by the bench with the dip worn into the cushion, and she said out loud, to the empty house, "It was worth it. All right, Mom. I heard you." And then she picked up the pie and her car keys and went out, and the Volkswagen started on the first try.
She parked on Mill Street at ten past six. The big red doors of Station 2 were closed, and lit from inside, and through the little windows she could see the gleam of the trucks. She sat in the car for a minute with the pie in her lap and the engine running and her heart pounding, and then she turned off the engine and got out.
She was halfway across the street when the whistle blew.
Three long blasts from the bell tower, splitting the cold evening open. The big red doors rolled up, one and then the other, and light poured out across the snow. The pumper came out first with Gus Amato at the wheel, and then the ladder truck, lights wheeling, sirens rising, and as it swung past her Nora saw him — on the back step, helmet on, coat buckled, one hand on the rail. He saw her too. She saw him see her: saw his head turn, saw his whole body go still for one second as the truck went by, saw his eyes find the pie in her hands. Then the truck was past and turning onto Center Street, and the sound was going up into the dark toward the north, and he was gone.
Nora stood in the middle of Mill Street with the pie in her hands and the snow beginning to fall again.