HF02 - Forever After

by Deborah Raney

  She turned the heater on high. She wasn’t really cold, but maybe running the heater would help keep the windshield clear. The wipers were working overtime and not doing a very good job of it either. Thank goodness there wasn’t much traffic at this time of night. Or morning. It was twelve forty. Sunday morning.

  She smiled. That meant only three more days till Luc would be home. Or four, if he didn’t get back till Thursday. Surely this snow would be gone by then. But it sure seemed to be piling up fast. And blowing some now, too. A blizzard on the first day of spring? This was crazy.

  She passed a road sign that said ten miles to … somewhere. The name of the town was veiled in snow. She was starting to feel a little disoriented. She knew she was still on 44, but she didn’t remember passing a Leaving Oklahoma sign or a Welcome to Missouri sign. She had to have crossed the state line, though. She should be only an hour or so outside of Springfield.

  Nothing looked familiar, but how could it? She couldn’t see anything. She grabbed her phone from the seat and tried Luc’s cell again. Thank You, God. It was ringing!

  Her spirits sank when his voice mail picked up. She’d leave a message. … But what was he supposed to do when he got it? He’d just worry about her. The beep sounded and she hesitated. She started to hang up, then thought he’d worry more if he had a missed call from her and no message. “Hey, Luc. It’s me. Just wanted to let you know I … hit a snowstorm somewhere around … well, I don’t know where I am, but anyway … it’s really pretty, but I’m no fan of driving in this stuff. I’ll call you when I get to the Falls, but I’m only going about fifty on the Interstate, so it’s going to be a lot later than—”

  In the road ahead of her—right in front of her—a dark form loomed. Someone must have had car trouble and gotten out of their vehicle. Idiot! The shadow wasn’t moving. What …? It looked bigger than a man. Whatever it was … she was going to hit it!

  Oh dear God! Help me!

  She slammed on the brakes, steered sharply to the right, gripping the wheel like a lifeline. The car fishtailed and snow sprayed all around her.

  A huge bump threw her forward against the seatbelt. A loud bang split the air inside the car. A flash of light and Jenna’s hands were ripped from the steering wheel. Something slapped her hard across the face. The car kept going … spinning. She felt as if she were falling from a high place.

  Her face stung and she rubbed at her cheek, confusion clouding her thoughts. Had she hit someone? What was happening?

  She choked, breathing in a mist of powder—fine and white, like baby powder. It floated eerily in front of the car’s interior lights. She heard a hissing noise and looked down to see a puddle of white nylon pooling on the seat and the floor. Relief swept over her. The airbag. It must have deployed.

  But the car was still moving, seeming to take on a life of its own. Branches and tree boughs clawed at her windows, dumping their burden of snow as the car plowed through the woods.

  The windshield was completely blocked with snow now. She let go of the wheel and buried her face in her hands.

  An odd melody played in her head. Country music. She wanted to laugh. This wasn’t what she expected heaven to be like. “Jesus, take the wheel. …” It was the song from that American Idol girl. Jesus! Please, God. I need help. …

  He couldn’t just sit here and do nothing.

  43

  Lucas stood in the parking lot looking east. It was cold, but the sky was clear. He pulled his collar up over his ears and checked his phone again. He had plenty of bars. Why couldn’t he get through to Jenna? He’d been trying to reach her for over an hour now. Surely her phone hadn’t been out of service, in a dead spot, all this time.

  Dead spot … He shivered. Poor choice of words.

  He closed his phone and gave a low whistle. Sparky came running, wound up about this after-midnight excursion. “Come on, boy. Back inside.” He headed into the dormitory, at a loss for what to do.

  She must have turned off her phone. That was the only logical explanation. But why would she do that? Or maybe she’d forgotten to charge her battery?

  He traipsed down the cold hallway to his room, which was only slightly warmer. His legs ached in a way they hadn’t for a while.

  Sparky settled into his usual spot on the rug beside the bed. Lucas shrugged out of his coat and picked up the remote. He flipped to the Weather Channel, keeping the volume low so he wouldn’t wake the guys in the rooms on either side of him.

  The TV map still showed a line of snowstorms from the Oklahoma state line to twenty miles past Springfield, with high winds reported in many places.

  There was no way she’d made it past Springfield before Ma called at eleven. They’d left almost two hours before Jenna, and Ma said they’d barely made it. If Jenna hadn’t had the sense to pull off somewhere before she got caught in the storm, then she was right in the middle of it somewhere.

  Why didn’t she call? She had to know he was worried about her.

  He paced the short distance from the bed to the door and back. Finally he put his coat back on. He couldn’t just sit here and do nothing.

  Sparky lifted his head and watched him, whimpering a little, as if sensing his distress.

  The phone chirped and he slid it open. Jenna. Seeing her number, relief flooded him—until he realized it wasn’t a call coming in, but a message. But it was from her. He checked the time stamp. She’d called almost half an hour ago. Why hadn’t he heard his phone ring?

  He played the message, reassured to hear her calm voice. I’ll call you when I get to the Falls. … only going about fifty … it’s going to be a lot—

  The message turned into static there, and then nothing.

  He didn’t like it. Something wasn’t right.

  He dialed his house in the Falls, on the off chance that Jenna had made it home and gone there for some reason. Silly, when he knew she didn’t have a key to the house anymore. He’d seen her give it to Ma. But Jenna didn’t have a landline phone at the trailer.

  He called Ma’s cell phone next. Maybe they’d heard from her. Maybe after she couldn’t get hold of him, she’d called Ma and Geoff and arranged to hole up in Springfield until the storm passed. The possibility comforted him. Please, God, let that be it.

  But Geoff answered Ma’s phone. She was glued to the Weather Channel and they hadn’t heard anything. Geoff promised to call the Springfield police to find out if there’d been any accidents reported.

  Lucas played Jen’s message again. If she’d called around twelve forty-five, depending on how long she’d been driving in the snow, and judging by when Ma and Geoff hit the storm, Jenna should have been at least close to Springfield when she called.

  Her message said she wasn’t sure where she was, but she had to have gotten at least an hour and a half out of Tulsa.

  “Come on, Sparky. We’ve got to find her.”

  Sparky got up and trotted over to stand at his right leg, on alert, ready to work.

  Lucas grabbed his keys off the dresser, then gathered some blankets and water bottles and a box of granola bars Ma had brought him. He flipped off the lights and headed out the door with Sparky at his heel.

  It was so cold. So dark she couldn’t see her hands in front of her face now that she’d turned off the engine. She’d heard horror stories about carbon monoxide building up when a tailpipe got clogged with snow. But she could run the heater again later … just for a little while.

  At first she’d thought maybe her car was buried in snow, but occasional gusts of wind rocked it back and forth, so she must not be buried. She switched on the headlamps. Barely a glimmer. The front of the car at least must be submerged in snow. She turned the lights off again. She didn’t want to run the battery down. Hard telling how long she’d have to wait before somebody found her.

  How far off the road was she? Had she rolled the car? Or plunged into a ravine? The vehicle was upright now, but it had felt as if the car plowed forever through the trees and woods. Everyth
ing had happened so fast, it was a blur. But she had to be quite a distance off the highway.

  She heard no noise outside the car except for the wind. She was afraid to roll down a window to listen for traffic on the Interstate—or to call for help. She could barely stay warm as it was, without letting in snow and wind.

  She reached down to feel her leg and winced when she pressed on her left knee. The steering column was all messed up and the driver’s side door was mangled, but at least cold air wasn’t pouring in.

  She’d tried to crawl out from under the steering column a few minutes ago, but the pain in her knee nearly caused her to pass out.

  Was this what Lucas had felt like when he’d been injured in the fire? She scolded herself immediately. She couldn’t say how badly she was hurt, but that she was awake and thinking relatively clearly told her it couldn’t be too serious. She didn’t seem to be bleeding.

  Lucas had nearly died. Though she’d never seen the scars for herself, he’d told her that his legs bore the scars of his injuries and the surgeries he’d endured. How dare she compare this to what he’d gone through?

  She groped for the glove compartment, found it, and stretched to feel inside. Why oh why had she never purchased a flashlight and the other emergency supplies people were supposed to keep in their cars?

  She turned on the dome light and searched the car again for her cell phone—as far as she could reach anyway. Nothing. It had to be in here somewhere, but it was nowhere she could see or reach.

  A flash of memory hit her. A shadow in the road, her headlights illuminating it. Oh, dear God … had she hit something? She remembered swerving, and then the dark silhouette of some huge animal—a deer maybe? She thought she’d swerved in time, but what was that horrible bump she’d felt?

  And the airbag had gone off. … She could feel it resting on her lap, draped on the floor around her.

  Her feet were freezing. She pulled her coat tighter around her chest and leaned her head against the headrest. Images flooded her. She remembered the night, not so long ago, that she’d slept in this car after Bill and Clarissa kicked her out. What she wouldn’t have given now for all the extra clothes she’d had in the Volvo that night.

  If she could have seen a glimpse that night into where she would be today … How far she’d come! It had all been worth it. Who would have guessed God would get her attention the way He had?

  Her teeth chattered and she played mind games with herself, pretending she was in the Vermontezes’ warm, cozy kitchen, imagining that she was fixing herself a cup of hot tea. Funny, it was that modest home she’d imagined, instead of her Brookside house or even the Morgans’ mansion.

  She’d made a discovery that had changed her thinking … not only in the most important thing—what she believed about God—but also in what she believed about herself. She’d learned that it was the spirit inside a home, not the material things it contained, that was the true measure of wealth. And that it was the Spirit inside a person that measured true wealth as well.

  She smiled to herself to realize that her mailing address now was a turquoise and white trailer house—and she was rich. Richer than she’d ever been in her life.

  Sadness filled her to realize the correlation to her discovery: Bill and Clarissa lived in a mansion—in poverty. But whatever their faults, they’d been more than generous to her over the years, and she hadn’t always shown her appreciation. She prayed she’d have a chance to right things with them. Oh, God … help them find the riches I’ve found in You.

  Trying again to free her legs, she gave up at the first knife of pain. She reached over to the passenger seat until her hand rested on the Styrofoam container that held a slice of banana cream cheesecake. She smiled. She’d told Lucas it would be her midnight snack. She wasn’t hungry now, but if she was still trapped here in the morning, she’d have cheesecake for breakfast and think about Luc back in Tulsa eating his own slice of Chocolate Tuxedo. With coffee. Oh, a cup of hot coffee would be heaven right now.

  She felt herself drifting. Maybe she would sleep for a little while. That would help her forget how cold she was. Help pass the time. And when she woke up she would run the heater again. For just a little while.

  If the snow had stopped in St. Louis, maybe he could get through.

  44

  Sir, we have dozens of cars in the ditch from here to St. Louis. We’re working as fast as we can to get everybody out, but it’s not gonna be today.”

  Lucas checked his rearview mirror. He was two hours east of Tulsa on I-44 and had pulled over on the shoulder to call the highway patrol again, trying to locate Jenna. He’d driven on mostly dry roads and had only run into the storm twenty minutes ago. Now it was slow going, but fortunately, at two o’clock in the morning, there wasn’t much traffic on the Interstate.

  “St. Louis is saying it’s stopped snowing there,” the dispatcher said. “And it’s a little better here in Springfield than it was an hour or two ago. So that’s good news at least.”

  Lucas pulled his cell phone away from his ear and checked the time. “Do you have a list of the people you’ve pulled out so far?” He told the dispatcher about the message he’d received from Jenna … how she’d been cut off before she could finish.

  “Sir, I’m not aware of any serious injuries at this time. We’re advising stranded motorists to contact anyone who might be worried about them. But there are some dead zones along that route—especially with certain carriers. That may be why you haven’t heard from her.”

  “Okay … thanks.” He hung up and put the truck in gear. If the snow had stopped in St. Louis, maybe he could get through. The dispatcher had said that crews of county maintainers were already working to clear roads. His pickup could probably make it. If he’d been thinking, he would have let Jenna take his truck. But they hadn’t known about the storm when she left Tulsa. Even the weather guys on TV seemed to have been taken by surprise.

  It was almost two a.m. It wouldn’t be light for at least four or five hours. “Oh, God. I pray she’s okay. Be with her. Keep her safe. I love her, Lord. Don’t let me lose her.” Immediately the thought came—she wasn’t his to lose. He would give anything for a chance to change that.

  Sparky panted in the cab beside him, eager to go.

  “Okay, boy. Let’s go find her.”

  Lucas sat at the end of the driveway to Jenna’s rental and wracked his brain, trying to think where to look next. He’d driven all the way back to the Falls with no sign of her car, and she still wasn’t answering her cell phone. On the way he and Sparky had helped emergency crews pull four stranded motorists out of the ditch, and he could only hope that somewhere along the route another crew had done the same for Jen.

  The steep drive was drifted shut. Her Volvo would never have made it through, and the only tracks visible came from his truck. And the mobile home was dark. He’d pounded on the door a few minutes ago, just to make sure, but no one answered. It was clear Jenna hadn’t come back here.

  Maybe she’d gone to his house. She’d returned the keys to Ma, but maybe Ma had showed her where the spare key was hidden. Maybe once she made it to the Falls, she hadn’t wanted to risk driving in the country. But when he got there, it was the same story. No lights on in the house, and no tire tracks or footprints in the snow to indicate she’d ever been there.

  Where could she be? He tried calling her again and got the same message. He clicked off and dialed Bryn. Maybe she’d heard from Jenna. A sleepy voice answered.

  “Hey, Bryn, sorry to wake you up, but I’m looking for Jenna. You haven’t heard from her, have you?”

  “No … I thought she was in Oklahoma. With you.” He heard her stirring, then a little gasp. “Oh! It snowed! What time is it anyway?”

  “Almost five thirty. Sorry.” He explained about Jenna driving back in the storm and told Bryn when he’d last talked to her. “But she’s not answering her phone now, and I can’t think of anywhere else she might have gone, can you?”

&nbs
p; “No … It doesn’t make sense.” Bryn sounded as confused as he felt. “You don’t think she would have gone to the Morgans’, do you?”

  “I doubt it, but maybe. Do you have their number?”

  “I can find it. I’ll call them and give you a call either way.”

  “Okay. If they haven’t heard from her, I’m going to head back toward Springfield … see if I can find her, or at least get through on the phone.”

  “I’ll call you in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks, Bryn.”

  Lucas drove through Java Joint for a cup of black coffee, killing time waiting for Bryn to call back. The coffee shop was empty except for a lone barista serving the drive-through window. While he waited for his order, his gaze was drawn to the corner table where he and Jenna had first reconnected after the fire. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  He drove slowly through town, trying to think the way Jenna would. Bryn called to say she’d spoken to Bill Morgan and they didn’t know anything about Jenna. Turning onto Grove Street, Luc headed for Main. The windows of the homeless shelter were dark, but smoke poured from the chimney stack and swirled against the haze of a streetlight. He wondered how many people were sleeping there tonight. What would they all do on another night like this if the shelter shut down?

  Intent on getting back on the Interstate as quickly as possible, he pressed the accelerator. But something made him slow down again. Jenna wouldn’t have gone there. Would she?

  Movement behind the shelter caught his eye. Dogs maybe. No, something bigger. Deer? They sometimes wandered down from the woods in Ferris Park. He slowed the car and leaned across the seat to wipe condensation from the passenger side window.

  A man in a long coat stood at the corner of the building. A shelter resident out for an early-morning smoke, probably. He stood with his head down, appearing to be talking to himself.

  Lucas shifted into drive and started to pull away, but the figure turned and walked toward him—staggered was more like it. And it was a woman! A baseball cap obscured her features, but the gait and mannerisms were definitely feminine. Something about her seemed vaguely familiar. She held a bottle in her hand and seemed oblivious to his presence.