By the Rivers of Brooklyn by Trudy Morgan-Cole

wedding bells from Rose anytime soon…”
    A heavy solid thud sounded in the basement, much louder and more compact than a load of coal being shovelled into the bucket. Then silence. Annie went to the basement door and called, “Pop? Pop? Are you all right, Pop?” Her voice went up a little on each Pop, tighter and shriller each time he didn’t reply.
    She started down the dark steps, but she was less than halfway before she saw him lying at the bottom, sprawled facedown on the dirt floor, arms thrown above his head. He’s dead , she thought. He’s taken a heart attack and died.
    Then her father moved: she saw the patch of white as his face turned sideways, his eyes searching for her. “Fell…my leg gave out,” he said, but she had to come down three more steps to hear him.
    She tried to pull him to a standing position, but he could not sit up on his own, much less stand, and he was far too big for Annie to push and pull around. From the top of the stairs her mother’s voice drifted down: “What is it, Annie? What’s the matter with your father? Is he all right?”
    Annie knelt on the cold damp basement floor beside her father. “Pop, will you be all right here if I go get help? I need to get someone, a man, to help bring you up the stairs.”
    â€œMy leg…just gave out under me,” he said, dazed.
    She hurried up the stairs, wishing she was wearing anything but the narrow-skirted bridesmaid’s dress and the pointed-toed shoes. “It’s all right, Mom,” she said, trying to staunch the flow of her mother’s worries and questions. “Pop’s all right, he’s alive. He fell over the stairs.”
    She was running through a mental list of her neighbours, thinking who would be at home and able-bodied enough to help, when there was a knock at the back door and there stood Bill Winsor. Annie didn’t stop to question what Bill had come over for; his arrival was a godsend. He carried her father up over the stairs, settled him on the chesterfield in the kitchen, phoned for the doctor and waited with her till the doctor came and examined Pop.
    â€œHis hip is broken, Annie,” Dr. Mills said. “We’ll have to take him to the Grace, probably put him in a body cast. Even after he comes home, he won’t be the same man again.”
    â€œBroken hip,” she said. This was what she’d been thinking ever since she saw him move, and it was as bad in its own way as if he had had a heart attack and fallen dead at the bottom of the stairs, worse in a way, because he would be confined to bed and need constant care, constant nursing, and he would never be up and walk and work and care for himself again.
    â€œHe’s young for a broken hip, isn’t he?” Bill said. “My grandfather had a broken hip but he was seventy-seven. Mr. Evans is, what, not sixty yet, is he, Annie?”
    â€œNo, he is young for it, but it’s not unheard of,” the doctor said. “It’s a terrible blow for a man like him, though, that’s what it is. I’m just going to go out now and bring my car around so we can take him to the hospital. Annie, will you come with him?”
    â€œI don’t know…Mom…” Annie began, and looked at Bill.
    â€œI’ll see Mr. Evans down to the Grace with you, doctor,” Bill said, as the doctor went to the door.
    Annie thought of Harold and Frances in their hotel room, enjoying their first night together. And tomorrow morning at first light, leaving on the boat. She said nothing aloud, but Bill said, “Do you want me to go down to the hotel and get Harold, tell him what’s happened?”
    â€œNo. No, don’t do that.” Harold and Frances had their plans made, their tickets bought, their lives ahead of them. “I’ll write a letter after they’re gone, tomorrow, and tell Ethel and Jim what’s happened. Harold will get the news