Trying to run too fast, I tripped over the garden hose and fell. I got to my feet, momentarily dazed.
The explosion knocked me flat on my back, blinded by the flash that burst from the basement windows and through the cracking walls.
The blast tilted the den up from the bottom. Its metal and concrete floor, reinforced for the experiment, buckled but remained unbroken, like a giant slide. Down that slide, through the smashed walls, Wyn catapulted, to fall unhurt into the grass.
But the rest of the house crumpled in on the basement and caught fire. Under the blazing piles of ruins, I could only surmise, were trapped the children, both mother and son.
I wept frantically. At my age, I must have been a pitiful spectacle. Neighbors put their arms around my shoulders, tried to comfort me.
In contrast, Wyn was remarkably calm as he reported to Gus Adams.
"Every precaution was taken, Mr. Adams," he said, staring morosely into the smoking embers of the house. "Both of them ran into the basement just before the explosion. There was nothing anyone could do after that."
"Too bad, Mr. Storm, to lose your wife and son all at once," said Gus sympathetically, writing in his report book. We had kept Summer pretty well concealed behind the high board fence in recent years, so few people were aware of her retrogression. "If there's anything I can do to help, let me know."
I upbraided Wyn for his apparent callousness when we got to a room at the City Hotel.