From This Day Forward. Christie Ridgway

of acoustic ceiling did.

      Her cheek pressed against cold linoleum smelling strongly of pine cleaner, Annie tried to make herself as flat as possible. That’s what people always did on police shows and “Gunsmoke” reruns. She didn’t know exactly why, though, because as the gunman moved her way, she realized that, flat or not, she made an easy target. Her fingernails clawed at the floor, instinctively trying to dig beneath it for cover.

      Somewhere close to Annie’s right, from her own spot of parquet, the woman who had been standing behind Annie in line moaned.

      The terrified sound sucked the last of the air from Annie’s lungs. The gunman’s shoes came nearer, and when the woman moaned again, Annie kept her eyes on the moving feet and inched her hand in the direction of the sound. The cold, thin fingers of her frightened fellow bank customer clenched hers.

      The feet paused.

      Annie’s heart stopped. The man stood right over her, the gun in his hand feeling like a hundred-pound weight on her back. Stomach roiling, Annie focused on the toes of those black shoes and waited for her life to pass before her eyes.

      It didn’t happen.

      Not until the feet moved on, and she heard the gunman shouting commands to the tellers. It was then, in the few minutes it took for them to follow his directions, that Annie’s life replayed in her mind.

      Her father’s defection when she was four. The move her mother and she made from a tiny apartment to a cottage on the Chase estate when her mother took the position of housekeeper. Public school, cooking school, her mother’s retirement. The Chases kind offer to rent Annie the cottage and, finally, the day she opened her own catering business.

      Like a winding snake of dominoes, she saw her life as static images that fell, one upon another, leading her to this moment in the Strawberry Bay Savings and Loan. Too swiftly she was dumped back in the present, her cheek against the gritty floor that smelled of pine, her toes lumps of ice in her cheesy sneakers and the underwire of her cheap bra jabbing into her side.

      If they had to take her to the hospital, she thought dizzily, her underwear would be clean, but it would be frayed.

      Whoa. No hospital thoughts, Annie ordered herself. Think macaroni and cheese. Peanut butter and jelly. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Sometimes merely thinking of comfort food brought comfort.

      The hand holding hers squeezed, and Annie turned her head to look into the eyes of the woman lying on the floor beside her. She didn’t look harried anymore, not with her pale face and too-wide eyes. She looked afraid.

      “I should have had Pop-Tarts instead of Special K this morning.” Annie read the words on the woman’s lips more than heard them, she was whispering that quietly.

      Despite her still-churning stomach, Annie’s mouth twitched in amusement. Apparently food had come to the other woman’s mind, too. But more, she knew immediately what the woman meant. Suddenly, life was too precious to spend worrying about the circumference of your thighs.

      Annie mouthed back to her. “No more store-brand ice milk for me. I’m gonna go for the good stuff.”

      From the front of the bank, another gunshot. More of the ceiling fell. “Hurry up!” the gunman shouted.

      Annie glanced at her new friend. The other woman’s pupils were even more dilated. Annie tightened her grip on the icy fingers. “Let’s think about something else,” she whispered. “I’m planning a shopping spree at a fancy lingerie store.”

      When the woman didn’t seem to hear her, Annie tried again, thinking of her crummy tennies. “And shoes. I’m going to buy some nice shoes.”

      That caught her partner’s interest. Her eyes focused. “Shoes,” she breathed.

      Annie squeezed her fingers again. “At full price.”

      The woman stared at Annie’s face and held onto her hand like it was a lifeline. “You’re right,” she said. “I have things to do.”

      And Annie knew what the other woman meant by that too. Not “things to do” in the sense of a list of chores or errands. But “things to do” in the sense of things to accomplish or experience.

      “Yes,” she whispered. “Think about what you have to do.”

      The other woman spoke again. “I didn’t kiss my husband goodbye this morning and it’s almost Valentine’s Day.” The anguish on her face twisted Annie’s heart.

      She hadn’t kissed anyone goodbye that morning either. Annie didn’t have anyone to kiss goodbye.

      When her mother had retired, she’d moved from the cottage they’d shared to an apartment closer to town. Now Annie lived alone and a romantic life was something she realized she’d been waiting patiently for, too.

      It seemed a shame—no, more than that—a crime to have been on the earth this long and never loved.

      Sirens sounded in the distance. The gunman shouted again. His black shoes moved past Annie once more, this time in such a rush that the hem of his pants fluttered. A loud clank signalled he’d left the bank through the heavy front doors.

      Someone started crying. A man muttered, “Thank God, thank God, thank God.” The customers remained glued to the floor though, probably waiting for the police to arrive and tell them it was safe to move.

      Annie shut her eyes, feeling her heart lurch as it restarted, feeling her blood begin moving through empty veins. Then emotion bubbled, bringing her even more alive, and whether it was relief or anger, or some potent combination of the two, the feeling made Annie surge to her feet. Her gaze snagged on a nearby hunk of fallen acoustical tile and then moved upward, to a yawning, jagged hole in the ceiling.

      That’s a bullet hole, she thought to herself. The man had a real gun that could really and truly have killed her. She might have died wearing discount clothing and dreaming of gourmet ice cream. And with regrets. Regrets that she’d never loved a man. Her stomach roiled again.

      Annie extended her hand to help up her new friend, though the others around them remained waiting, still belly-down on the floor. Annie shook her head. She wasn’t going to do any more waiting, not if she could help it. She had things to do and she was no longer going to postpone them.

      Life was too darned short.

      Griffin Chase, corporate attorney and vice-president of Chase Electronics, squeezed the receiver of the phone, its plastic edges biting hard into his palm. “What? She what?”

      He’d left some papers at the family home this morning, forcing him to rush away from his office at Chase Electronics to retrieve them. With his parents and the housekeeping staff on vacation, he’d naturally picked up the ringing phone, only to find himself in a strange conversation with a detective from the Strawberry Bay Police Department.

      Now the man patiently went through the facts all over again. Earlier that morning, an armed gunman had robbed the Savings and Loan branch at Kettering and Pine. The customers in the bank at the time—witnesses—were in transport to the police department to give their statements. And Annie Smith, little Annie Smith, the daughter of their former housekeeper, was one of those witnesses.

      “She gave the officer in charge this number,” Detective Morton said. “We’re calling families to come in. It might reassure the witnesses to see a friendly face after their ordeal.”

      Ordeal. Griffin squeezed the phone again, remembering shy, quiet little Annie Smith. He wasn’t even quite sure he knew how old she was now.

      “I’ve been working out of the country for two years and just returned to town earlier this week,” Griffin said, still trying to take it all in. “Did you say a robbery like this one has happened before?” Good God. Just a few months before, Strawberry Bay had been rattled by earthquakes. Now this.

      The other man’s voice turned professionally cautious. “I can’t say for sure that it’s the same robber, but the M.O. is the same.