All day Sunday the warnings had come over the air. At the beginning the forecasters had mentioned heavy snows, two hundred miles west, approaching slowly. Then thirty-mile winds had been predicted. Later in the day the expected winds were up to fifty miles an hour and storm warnings had been issued to all small craft. The airports, the commentator announced, had been closed down for both incoming and outgoing planes. Out West, the snows were piling up on the roads, making them impassable and stranding families on farms.
On Monday morning the disaster stories started coming in. Martha ironed and listened to all the things that were happening to people. It was remote, like all disaster stories, and yet foreboding, like the shadow that was supposed to fall across the day you were going to di
