But before she could get to the door, they heard the loudspeaker again. “This is Sheriff Schumann. You folks need to get off the island. Now.” As they watched, the cruiser did a three-point turn and sped back in the direction it had come from.
Riley reached for her phone but hesitated. “Everybody go get whatever you want to take to Southpoint. I’m calling the ferry and praying it’s not too late. Mama, could you go see about helping Maggy get ready? Make sure she has her kit and enough meds for two or three days? Billy, can you and Scott—after you run home to get your stuff—can you meet us back here to make sure we’ve got everything ready to go? And could you run by Parrish’s house and tell her we’re all bugging out?”
Billy nodded and he and Scott rushed for the front door. Evelyn began clearing the table. “Mama! Just leave the food. We need to get out of here,” Riley called. “Roo, no more arguments, you hear? We are all getting out tonight.”
* * *
Nate had been waiting all evening for her call. He’d checked all the earlier manifests and knew that she and Maggy were still on the island, and he’d been struggling with how late he would let things go before he drove over to Shutters and forcibly dragged her off the island.
“Carolina Queen,” he said, answering the phone.
Riley hesitated a beat. “Nate? Is that you?”
“It’s me.”
“Is there another ferry tonight? I’ve finally persuaded everybody we have to evacuate.”
He looked out the office window and saw the lights of the Carolina Queen riding the chop across the bay. “We just boarded the last passenger and she’s pulling away from the dock, Riley. But hang on a minute.”
Annie had been working the phones all night, booking passengers and answering panicked questions about whether or not the ferry would keep running. She put her hand over the receiver and turned to her son.
“I’ve got the sheriff on the line. He said he’s rounded up another couple of dozen stragglers who’ve finally agreed to evacuate. Wants to know if we’ll have room to take them.”
“Tell him yeah, but this is last call.”
Nate checked the NOAA satellite map he’d pulled up on his computer and went back to his own phone. “Riley? I’m looking at the radar, and they’re still projecting the storm will make landfall just north of us by nine a.m., which means we can expect tropical storm–force winds in the next four to five hours. If you can get everybody loaded up and waiting by the time the boat gets back here—say nine o’clock, we’ll make one more crossing. After that, it won’t be safe.”
“We’ll be there,” Riley said. “And Nate? Thanks.”
* * *
They made a ragtag crew, exhausted, rain-soaked, and shell-shocked, huddled together under the cover of the loading area. Parrish joined them, with her two cats in a carrying case. Mr. Banks, on his retractable leash, and Evelyn’s pug, Ollie, spooked by the lightning and thunder, raced around in circles, barking and snarling at each other and the other dogs gathered, ready to evacuate the island.
It was a much larger crowd than Riley had expected, more than a hundred people, which was at least as many as would be arriving on the island on a normal summer holiday weekend. But this, she knew, was the furthest thing from a normal summer, or a normal holiday, than she’d ever experienced before.
Evelyn cradled a large hand-tooled leather case under one arm and leaned against a large black rolling suitcase, which she directed Billy to keep by his side, refusing to allow the deckhands to stow it with the rest of the luggage being loaded into baggage bins.
“Mama, I realize you’d want to pack up all your good jewelry, but did you really need to pack Daddy’s old bowling ball in this thing?” he asked, dragging it toward the loading area.
“Hush,” she whispered. “It’s my silver. And all the baby pictures.” She opened her pocketbook, took out a tiny mother-of-pearl case, and popped a tablet in her mouth before extending it to him. “Dramamine?”
“No, thanks,” Billy said. “I try never to mix alcohol and drugs.”
At nine o’clock, Nate joined them on the loading ramp. “Everybody,” he called, raising his voice to be heard above the howling wind, “We’ll board in five minutes. Now, it’s gonna be a pretty rough ride across the sound, because we’ve got seas at six to eight feet, and the wind is blowing thirty-five to forty knots with the tide running against us, so I’m afraid there’s gonna be a lot of rockin’ and rollin’, and not the fun kind. And yes, it’s going to be crowded because, for safety reasons, I’ll ask everybody to stay together in the main cabin. Nobody will be allowed on the upper or observation decks. The deckhands are going to hand out life jackets, and we’ll ask you to put them on, not because we expect to sink, but because that’s the way my dad always did it when we had a bad storm like this one. Now we won’t have the concession stand open for obvious reasons, but my mom, Annie Milas—I think you all know her—rounded up whatever cookies and doughnuts were left at the end of the day at the Mercantile, and she’ll be handing those out to anybody who’s hungry, once we’re under way. Everybody good? Then let’s board!”
Riley decided it was the longest crossing of her life. They were all jammed together in the cabin, overheated with the orange life vests strapped around their shoulders, and miserable with crying babies, boisterous toddlers, ill-tempered islanders, and weekenders with ruined holiday expectations.
True to Nate’s prediction, the Carolina Queen pitched and rolled, and with each roller-coaster descent, Riley’s stomach protested violently. She clung to Maggy, who clung to her with each wave that crashed over the bow. She’d never experienced seasickness before, but this time she found herself dashing for the head three different times. When Annie Milas approached, halfway through the crossing, oatmeal cookie in hand, Riley almost didn’t make it a fourth time.
Finally, after a lifetime, the five-minute whistle blew, and Nate emerged into the cabin from the pilothouse and called for their attention again. “Docking is not gonna be smooth,” he warned. “Captain Wayne is the best there is at this but, again, the wind and the tide are working against us. We’ll ask everybody to be patient, and once we’re tied up, the deckhands will do their best to help everybody safely disembark. Make sure you have all your carry-on baggage with you, please, because after our passengers are unloaded, the crew and I will be heading out to find a safe place to sleep tonight, and we will not be back on board the Carolina Queen until the Weather Service and the Coast Guard give us the all-clear to do so.”
* * *
Riley turned to ask her mother if she had everything, but was amused to find Evelyn asleep, snoring softly with her mouth open, her head lolling on Billy’s shoulder. She gave her a gentle shake. “Come on, Mama. Wake up. We’re here.”
Evelyn sat up. “I wasn’t sleeping. I was just resting my eyes.” She looked around and saw Maggy, with Mr. Banks squirming in her arms, and saw Scott and Billy talking quietly, their heads close together. She saw her own dog, Ollie, dozing at her feet. She glanced around the cabin again and blinked, puzzled by what she didn’t see.
“Where’s Roo?”
Riley looked around, too. “Billy, have you seen Roo?”
“No. Maybe she’s in the head?”
“I’ll go check,” Maggy volunteered. Five minutes later she was back. “She’s not in the bathroom.”
“You’re sure?” Evelyn asked. “Maybe in the men’s room? She’s bad like that, just goes into the men’s room if the ladies’ is occupied.”
“I know. I checked there, too,” Maggy said.
“Oh, my God,” Evelyn said in a choked voice. “Roo.”
Riley found Annie Milas standing near the cabin door, counting heads. “Annie,” she said softly. “We can’t find my aunt Roo. Is there any chance she would have gone on the upper deck?”
“None,” Annie said. “Nate chained up the gangway. You’re sure she’s not in the main cabin? Or the head?”
“We looked. She’s not there.
”
“Come to think of it, I don’t recall seeing your aunt tonight, Riley. Are you sure she boarded?”
Riley turned back to the rest of the family without answering. “Everybody, think. Did anybody see Roo actually getting on the ferry?”
“Mimi sent me over to bring her back to the big house,” Maggy said. “But she said she’d wait and get a ride with Bebo.”
Billy shook his head. “I went over to the carriage house to fetch her when we got back from our place, but she told me she was going to ride with Parrish.”
“But I didn’t even come to Shutters,” Parrish said. “I went straight to the ferry from my place.”
“She never left,” Riley said, as the realization washed over her. “She scammed every one of us. She’s still on that damned island.”
* * *
The ferry’s diesel engines shuddered to a sudden halt, slamming so hard against the pier that the impact sent people sprawling onto the water-slicked floor. There was more churning, as the pilot reversed course, and then another, lesser impact. Bells rang, signaling their arrival, and then the engines shut down.
All around them, passengers sprang to life, gathering their belongings and herding toward the exit. Everybody but Evelyn Nolan and her family, who gathered in a small, bewildered knot around their matriarch.
Evelyn clutched Riley’s arm. “Roo is back there. Alone. We have to go back. Riley, you have to talk to Nate.”
“Talk to me about what?” Nate’s face was creased with weariness. He hadn’t shaved, and his jeans and windbreaker were damp and salt-crusted.
“It’s Roo. My sister-in-law. She’s still back on the island. You have to go back and get her. She’s nearly eighty. She can’t ride out that storm by herself. She wanted to stay, and so did I, but Riley made us see it wasn’t safe.” Evelyn was babbling, wild-eyed with anxiety.
“Is that true?” Nate asked.
The other passengers streamed around them, bumping and jostling in their haste to be back on solid land again.
“I’m afraid so,” Riley said. She looked down and saw Maggy, staring up at her, holding Banksy so tightly the dog gave a sharp yip of protest.
“Mama, why don’t you and the others get our stuff and wait for me on the dock,” Riley said. “Maggy, you go with Mimi and Billy.”
“Come on, Mags,” Billy said, touching her arm. “Let’s go get in the car.”
Maggy stayed planted where she was. She looked up solemnly at Nate. Her blue-gray eyes were beseeching. “Will you do it? Will you go back for Roo?”
“I’ll bring her along, Bebo,” Riley told her brother.
“Ask him, Mama,” Maggy implored. “He’ll do it if you ask.”
“It’s not safe,” Riley said, shaking her head. Even now, the heavy boat rocked violently with the break of each wave as the wind buffeted it against its mooring. “I can’t ask you to take the ferry back there, Nate. It’s too dangerous.”
“But she’s all alone,” Maggy cried. “Something bad will happen to her, I know it will. It’s a cat-two storm. They’re not as bad as a three or a four, but people die in cat-two hurricanes. Roo told me eight people died in Hurricane Donna.”
Nate looked from the little girl to her mother. “I can’t ask Wayne to pilot the ferry back to Belle Isle. We’ve only got enough fuel for a one-way trip. But I’ll go back myself. If you want me to.”
“Please, Mama? Let him save Roo. He wants to.” Maggy wrapped her arms around Riley’s waist the same way she had as a preschooler.
Riley stroked her daughter’s hair. She’d shot up this summer, almost as tall as Riley now. In the space of three short months she’d grown up more than any twelve-year-old should have had to. And now there was one more hard lesson.
“No, Maggy. I can’t ask Nate to risk his life and go back to the island for Roo. I know you love her. We all do. But Roo knew what she wanted. She wanted to ride out one more hurricane. So that’s what she’s doing. She doesn’t want to be saved.”
Nate placed his hand on top of Riley’s and squeezed it gently, before releasing it. He leaned over until his face was level with the child’s. “I’ll go back tomorrow, as soon as it’s safe. And I’ll find Roo. I promise.”
Maggy nodded. “Okay.”
“Where will you go tonight?” Nate asked Riley. “There’s a Red Cross shelter set up at the National Guard Armory.”
Riley laughed. “Can you see Evelyn Nolan sleeping on a cot in a gym? Me neither. We’ll probably just drive inland until we see a hotel with a vacancy. What about you?”
“We’ve got family in Fayetteville. They’re expecting us.”
“Will you call me?” Riley asked.
“You call me,” Nate said. “When you’re ready.”
Epilogue
Riley leaned over the rail of the observation deck, closed her eyes, and breathed in everything: the sunshine, the salt air, even the sharp tang of the Carolina Queen’s diesel engines. This was a new sensation, the letting go and letting in. When she opened her eyes and looked down, she saw a pod of dolphins, splashing along joyfully in the ferry’s wake, dipping in and out of the waves of the sound. She was by herself this trip but, out of habit, she scanned the horizon, searching for the first glimpse of Big Belle.
The lighthouse had withstood the storm, but the changed topography of the island was something that would take a long time to get used to.
Hurricane Brody had weakened hours before making landfall just north of the island, but the powerful winds and storm surge had done millions and millions of dollars’ worth of damage. Hundred-year-old oaks had been downed, homes destroyed or badly damaged.
Half a dozen oak trees had fallen at the Shutters, which had sustained only mild wind damage, but the carriage house that had been Aunt Roo’s home had been flattened. Riley’s own small rental cottage near the village had roof damage where a tree limb pierced it, but the supposedly impregnable concrete hulk of her former home on Sand Dollar Lane had borne the brunt of the storm surge and sustained such serious flood damage that she’d heard talk that the new owners were considering it a total loss.
Riley found herself curiously indifferent to the fate of that house. Whatever memories she had of her life there, good or bad, would suffice. These days her work took her to every corner of the island, and when she passed the turnoff for Sand Dollar Lane, she no longer had to avert her eyes to the wreckage.
It was her past, and it was real, but she’d made the decision to move on.
Now it was Columbus Day weekend, and she was coming home. There was still so much to be done, sometimes her stomach still knotted up, sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night, making lists, doing Internet searches, reading everything she could to educate herself in her new job. But this weekend, she vowed, she would be on vacation, a weekender again.
When the five-minute whistle blew, she gathered her bag and moved anxiously to the lower deck, lining up with the rest of the passengers eager for the holiday weekend to begin.
Out of the corner of her eye, Riley spotted her old nemesis, Andrea Payne, who spotted her at the same moment, and deliberately looked away. She’d heard through the islander grapevine that Andrea blamed Riley—and Parrish—for her best friend’s arrest and incarceration. Having Belle Isle Barbie snub her, Riley decided, was the only good outcome from Melody Zimmerman’s predicament.
She allowed herself to merge into the stream of passengers disembarking the ferry, and once she was on the landing, moved quickly toward the parking lot.
He was standing off to the side, away from the crush of arriving and departing passengers, and she was still shocked at her reaction to the sight of Nate Milas. She felt lighter, younger, newer, happier. Nate Milas was not responsible for all of this. But he was definitely one of the better byproducts of her reinvention.
She picked up the pace, walking toward him. And then he did it. He opened his arms and she walked right into them.
“Hey!” he said, holding her closel
y, kissing her, stirring up a passion she’d forgotten she was capable of. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” she said. “Like, for the past twenty years or so.”
“Is that all?” They laughed together, he rubbed his cheek against the side of her face, and she reached up and rubbed the stubble there, although she’d only been gone four days. “Getting kind of gray here, aren’t you, mister?”
“There’s nobody else I’d rather go gray with,” he said.
They walked arm in arm to the golf cart, loaded her bag, and then they were off.
“How did everything go?” he asked.
“Pretty well. The bankers I talked to in Wilmington seemed fairly open-minded. They want to see architect’s renderings for the new shops, but the fact that I have tenants already signed up seemed to go a long way.”
“What did Parrish think about the plans for her shop?”
“Parrish is Parrish. She made some tweaks to the drawings, which I’ll admit were genius, and then she signed off. I think she’s really excited about Parrish Interior Concepts. No more lawyering!”
“I saw Billy this week,” Nate said.
“You did? I thought he wasn’t allowed to have visitors yet.”
A week after the hurricane struck, Billy Nolan and his lawyer, Ed Godchaux, paid a visit to the Baldwin County District Attorney. Billy offered a detailed confession about the real circumstances surrounding the death of his AA sponsor Calvin Peebles, and in return he was given a two-year sentence in a low-security residential diversion center in Southpoint. One condition of his sentence was to enter treatment for alcoholism, another was to perform two hundred hours of community service.
“I didn’t visit him at the center,” Nate said. “I saw him on the island, with a public works crew, clearing storm debris from the east beach.”
“How did he look?” Riley asked. “Did you get to talk to him?”
“He looked good,” Nate said. “He’s grown a full beard, put on a little weight now that he’s not drinking, but I gather he’s working out. He was excited because he’s going to start giving piano lessons to kids in the after-school program at the youth center.”
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