The first thing I heard was my daughter shouting that the kitchen floor was moving.
I thought she meant an animal had come through the back door.
Then I reached the hallway and saw a thin brown stream sliding over the wooden boards toward her bare feet.
Water was coming through the wall behind the sink, but the faucet was turned off.
My name is Lena Hart, and until that Thursday morning I believed our biggest problem was finding enough folding chairs for a meeting of exhausted women.
I was wrong about the size of our problem, although the folding chairs would eventually matter more than I could imagine.
My husband, Adrian, was already on his knees beneath the cabinet when I found the shutoff valve.
He closed it and listened to the angry noise inside the wall diminish to a miserable hiss.
Our daughter, seventeen-year-old Maisie, carried towels from the bathroom while our eight-year-old son, Finn, stood in the doorway clutching his school bag.
“Is the house going to fall down?” Finn asked.
“No,” Adrian said, although he was looking at the swelling plaster with considerable doubt.
The kitchen window faced the narrow path between our home and the house belonging to our neighbor, Vivian Price.
Vivian was standing beside her fence in a spotless cream-colored coat, watching water run down our driveway.
She did not look surprised.
She looked irritated that we were still inside.
“You ought to get everybody out,” she called when I opened the window.
“The pipe is off,” I answered.
“Old houses are unpredictable,” Vivian said.
“You should cancel whatever gathering you planned for tonight.”
That was a strange thing to say before asking whether anyone was hurt.
I looked at the clock and remembered the eight women expected at our dining room table after six.
Three worked at a garment workshop downtown, two stitched clothing at home, and the others had been referred by an employment adviser named Celia Boone.
They were coming because I knew how to calculate wages, and several of them thought their pay had been quietly reduced without explanation.
I worked as an accounts assistant for a neighborhood clinic, not as an investigator.
But I could help someone compare a promised rate with the amount arriving in an envelope.
Vivian had learned about the meeting when Maisie mentioned our crowded evening plans over the fence.
I had not invited Vivian, although she often described herself as the most successful businesswoman on the street.
She owned an elegant clothing label called Vee Price Studio and had recently announced a presentation for buyers at the city’s annual Fashion Exchange.
“We’ll manage,” I said.
Vivian tightened her mouth.
“You have children in that house, Lena. Don’t be reckless just to prove a point.”
She disappeared inside before I could ask what point she thought I was proving.
Adrian emerged from the kitchen carrying a short length of copper tubing.
It was dark at one end and freshly scored at the other.
“This was behind the siding near the side gate,” he said.
“It hasn’t failed from age.”
He turned the pipe so that I could see the deep indentation in its surface.
“Somebody hit the outdoor supply run hard enough to split it.”
I looked across the fence at Vivian’s immaculate windows.
For the first time that morning, I understood why she had known we would need to cancel.
