It's a small world right now

"My office, the seven of us in this room, the authorities in Missouri. We also took a TV crew with us, but they won't air anything until I say so. It's a small world right now." "I'll wait two hours," Judge Henry said. "This meeting is adjourned." Roberta Drumm was at home with Andrea and a few friends. The kitchen table and counters were covered with food--casseroles, platters of fried chicken, cakes, and pies, enough food to feed a hundred. Robbie had forgotten to eat dinner, so he snacked as he and Martha waited for the friends to leave. Roberta was thoroughly drained. After a day receiving guests at the funeral home, and crying with most of them, she was emotionally and physically spent. And so Robbie made things much worse by delivering the news. He had no choice. He began with the journey to Missouri and finished with the meeting in Judge Henry's office. He and Martha helped Andrea put Roberta in bed. She was conscious, but barely. Knowing that Donte was about to be exonerated, and before he was buried, was simply too much. The sirens were quiet until ten minutes after 11:00 p.m. Three quick 911 calls got them started. The first reported a fire in a shopping center north of town. Evidently, someone tossed a Molotov cocktail through the front window of a clothing store, and a passing motorist saw flames. The second call, anonymous, reported a burning school bus parked behind the junior high. And the third, and most ominous, was from a fire alarm system at a feed store. Its owner was Wallis Pike, Reeva's husband. The police and guardsmen, already on high alert, stepped up their patrols and surveillance, and for the third straight night Slone endured the sirens and the smoke. Long after the boys were asleep, Keith and Dana sat in the dark den and sipped wine from coffee cups. As Keith told his story, the details poured out, and he remembered facts and sounds and smells for the first time. The little things surprised him--the sound of Boyette heaving in the grass beside the interstate, the lethargy of the state trooper as he went about the task of writing the speeding ticket, the stacks of paperwork on the long table in Robbie's conference room, the looks of fear on the faces of his staff, the antiseptic smell of the holding room in the death house, the ringing in Keith's ears as he watched Donte die, the lurching of the airplane as they flew over Texas, and on and on. Dana peppered him with questions, random and insightful. She was as intrigued by the adventure as Keith, and at times incredulous. When the bottle was empty, Keith stretched out on the sofa and fell into a deep sleep.