“I’m sorry.” I turn my face from Luke’s shoulder, which is already damp.
“It’s okay. Let it all out, Layls.”
His offer sounds earnest, so I accept. “I’m just tired of being lost and hungry and hurt, and I might be getting my period soon…except I can’t remember when I’m due.”
I glance up at him, sniffling, worried I’ve overshared, but he’s right there with me. His eyes are soft. His hands are soft, too. They wipe the tears from my face, though fresh ones are waiting to spill.
“Do you have any, um, feminine products with you?” he asks, all sincerity.
The question, along with his general sweetness, is too much. My head drops against his shoulder again and a fresh ache rises into my throat, making my words catch and tremble. “I didn’t bring any. I was supposed to be home in time.”
“We’ll figure out something. And we’ll get through this—all of it. Look at how strong we are, together.”
He’s right, I know it, and I calm down before long. Even so, I’m drawn out and tired. I sink into Luke’s lap, eyes closed, head resting against his thigh. His jeans are rough, but warm, and the solidness of him brings me comfort.
“I really am sorry,” I say again, though it’s little more than a whisper.
He stops rubbing my back to tuck some hair behind my ear. “Nothing to be sorry about.”
“But I don’t usually fall apart like this.”
“I get it. You’re being stretched too thin.”
I nod, my cheek pressed to denim. “Thanks for taking care of me, Luke.”
He runs his fingers along my hairline. “You’ve done the same for me, so many times. When I was sad or lonely or just…hurting. You were there.”
I open my eyes, look up at him.
“I don’t know if I could have hung on without you,” he continues, his jaw tight. “You were there when my mom left, and when I found that note and called her…” His voice falters, and I remember the pain that tore through me over my best friend’s suffering.
On the day she’d gone away, his mom had tucked a little goodbye note with a phone number on it under his pillow while he’d slept. He didn’t find it for a couple more days, hadn’t known she’d left anything behind for him, but when he did, he came to my house to make the call. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely dial the number, so I took over for the last few digits. He stared at me, his breaths quick and shallow, while we waited for someone to answer.
A woman’s voice came on the line, and Lucas stumbled through his greeting.
“Is this…I mean, um, could I speak to Beth Owens? Mom? It’s me, Lucas. Your son.”
His mother’s words were too muffled to overhear, but the soft regret in her tone reached me, the sadness coupled with resolve. Lucas’s head bowed. He murmured “uh huh” a few times, but each successive reply grew quieter. Finally, he said, “Okay. Bye… I love you, Mom. Mom? Mom?”
His body twisted toward mine, his eyes wild, too bright. “Do you think she heard me?”
I took the phone from him and hung it up, nodding all the while. “She heard you, Lucas. She knows.”
His young face looked drawn, so pale. “Can we go to the tree house for a while?”
Luke swallows and speaks again. “Something was so broken inside me after my mom left, and then my dad…” He’s quiet before continuing. “I remember that night when you showed up at my garage, and he was yelling at me about something. He told me to get out, and when I left, you followed.”
I remember that night, too. I had something to share, some kind of news I’d hoped would brighten Lucas’s sad, serious face. I’d run all the way to his house, and seeing the light on in the garage, I paused outside it to catch my breath, wondering which of them, father or son, was within. If it was Lucas, that meant I wouldn’t have to knock at the house.
Knocking on doors had become an obstacle for us since his mother’s leaving, since the discovery of the affair. The tension on the adult faces that answered was painful to experience. As familiar as Lucas and I had once been, we’d become symbols of intrusion.
I’d arrived at the garage, but before I could even peek around the corner of its open door, Lucas’s father had spit out a loud curse, followed by a stream of muffled yelling. I stepped into the doorway, my mouth gaping. Lucas’s dad was on his back, half-hidden beneath his truck, and Lucas was bending to pick up something. His father continued yelling cruel things, not knowing I was there, and when Lucas stood, his eyes found mine. He stared out from a colorless face and I stared back, frozen, torn between the impulse to drag him away to safety, or to shout his dad into submission for being so brutal.
His father provided the answer: he told Lucas to get lost. Lucas tore past me, heading for the woods, and I did my best to catch up. When I reached him, he was standing at the edge of a clearing, his body trembling.
I stepped in front of him, breathless from our run. He wouldn’t look at me, but the sadness in his face made my knees want to buckle. I wrapped my arms around him and we clung to each other. He never cried, not like he had the morning his mother left, but I knew, instinctively, his suffering was as much about her as anything else.
When he stepped back, his head hung. I grabbed hold of his hand and wrapped both of mine around it while we walked to the outer reaches of the woods. Eventually, I had no choice but to let go.
All that pain—Lucas’s, even his father’s—never changed a thing. His mom didn’t come back, not to live. She saw Lucas, at first occasionally and then less and less often, in some neutral place like a restaurant or mall where his father would deliver him and wait outside, still and silent. Each time, Lucas’s mother would apologize to him repeatedly and end up crying, and he’d come home more broken-hearted than he’d been before he left. As much as Lucas wanted to see her, I believe he came to dread those visits.
That didn’t stop him from offering up every birthday wish, every lucky penny, every shooting star in a universal request for her to come back. He never told me so, but I watched him close his eyes, watched his mouth form the words.
“Come home.”
His endless plea.
I watched and, privately, vowed to help fill the hollow space formed by his mother’s absence, formed by what I’d done to drive her away. It was an impossible task, of course, but I was young. I didn’t understand yet. I denied.
But what about today?
Guilt continues to burrow its way through my insides, but even this can’t make me confess the truth. If Luke finds out about the part I played in his misery, he’ll hate me forever, and he needs me, at least for now.
He speaks again about his dad. “I know he tries and I know it’s hard to be a single parent and all, but sometimes he just…”
“Sucks.”
I finish the thought for him and he breaks into a quiet smile.
“You always did know what to say.”
Luke is wrong, so wrong, but I can’t tell him that, either.
Fifteen
When the Worst Comes
The wind starts somewhere in the hours before dawn, the ones that are usually the quietest. I can’t sleep, because even though I’m tired, I’m also hurting and hungry and unable to stop my brain from talking to me, guilt and worry chasing one another in an endless loop.
At least I’m not freezing.
Luke and I have decided to keep the fire burning through the nights again, since the resident Peeping Hermit—we’ve mutually dropped the “Killer” tag—already knows we’re here. I doubt he’ll be back anytime soon, and while Luke isn’t so sure, he agrees there’s no sense in waking up iced-over every morning. But tonight, even with the heat from the stove, the cabin is struggling to hold onto its warmth. The wind is threading itself through the clay-filled crevices between the logs, keeping the temperature hovering somewhere between chilly and flat-out uncomfortable.
When the first branch falls onto the roof, Luke wakes with a jolt. His arms tighten around me. “Are
you awake?” he whispers.
“Yes,” I whisper back, though there’s no one left to disturb. It feels like this is the kind of wind we need to hide from.
We each pull on another layer of clothing, curl ourselves into one another, and wait for the wind to die down. It gets worse, instead. A wind like this is hard to comprehend, the way it stretches on and on in an endless gust, whipping through branches and around trunks, rattling windows and howling under eaves, never tiring.
At last, the sun comes up in a pewter-colored sky. The clouds are low and dense; they push past one another in a hurry while new ones line up, awaiting their turn to be swept along.
The temperature dropped steadily through the night; its downward slope continues in the daylight hours. We feed the fire and huddle under blankets and eat bits of food that don’t need to be cooked: a shared can of fruit cocktail, a few peanuts, a spoonful of peanut butter. Luke’s beef jerky is all gone, and we haven’t yet brought ourselves to de-tin the canned meat, but we’re getting close—even me. The rest of the day we spend listening to the wind or dozing, together or in turns.
At last our attention is caught by something new: silence. The wind is dying down; it’s only rising here and there in quick, powerful blasts. The tension begins to uncoil from around us, allowing our breaths to deepen.
This is when the worst of it comes.
A snapping sound punches the air and Luke and I jump; our wide-eyed stares meet and dart around the cabin as we scramble to sit up in bed. There’s another snap, and another; they’re spaced at first, but seem to come from everywhere at once. There’s a need to run, but no sense of where to go. The snapping increases and Luke pulls me back against him. With his hand on top of my head, he bends me under the curve of his torso, covering my body with his. The snaps turn to cracking sounds, there’s a sharp rise in frequency, and above us, the roof explodes.
I scream and Luke and I cower together with clouds of smoke and soot billowing over us. Choking, pulling up the necks of our shirts to cover our mouths and noses, we drag each other from bed while splinters of wood and broken branches rain down. All around us, the cabin groans.
There’s a tangle of wood—rafter and roof and tree—to weave through, and my injured ankle makes me lean on Luke; it slows us when speed is what’s most important. We reach the door and still can’t escape. One of the hammers is nowhere to be seen, so Luke uses the remaining one while I pry with the screwdriver at the boards barring us inside; our eyes keep squeezing shut from the stinging smoke. When the boards are loose, we finish the task with our bare hands. Luke wrenches open the door and, reaching for me, pulls me outside.
“It burns.” I’m coughing, clutching at my chest, not sure whether it’s the smoke or icy air scorching my lungs.
Luke’s choking beside me; when he hugs me against him, he’s shaking as badly as I am. I cling to him, my fingers like claws. I don’t want anything, ever, to make me let go.
We turn our soot-stained faces toward the destruction and my gasp only makes me cough more. The huge tree that stood behind the cabin has fallen; it seems a miracle the entire structure wasn’t crushed with us inside.
“All that ash,” Luke says between coughs, his voice hoarse. “I have to make sure nothing’s burning.” He pushes my hands away even as I tighten my hold on him. “If it burns, we’ll lose everything.”
But if it burns with him inside, I’ll lose everything. How do I explain this to him?
“Luke, wait. I—”
“No, it isn’t safe. You need to stay right here.” He locks his red, watery eyes on mine, pointing with force to the ground at our feet. “I mean it, Layla. Promise me you won’t move and I promise I’ll be right back.”
“No way. No.”
“There isn’t time to argue,” he says, already drawing away. “I need you to do this for me. I need you to promise.”
“Oh God, Luke. Okay, I promise, but you too—you have to promise.”
“I do. I promise.”
He grabs onto me and kisses me, his sooty lips pressed to mine, then returns to the cabin, peers inside, and disappears through the doorway. I wait, rooted to the spot, straining to detect any sign of danger or distress, poised to run—hobble—to him if he needs me, but afraid I’ll jinx him if I move, otherwise. We have to keep our promises, both of us.
Luke is searching for any sign of fire, but that is only one worry. Another fear, equally great, concerns any weakening of the cabin’s structure, coupled with the fact that it no longer has only its own weight to bear.
I count the seconds, watching thin ribbons of smoke filter through the punctured roof, from where the maze of limbs and branches emerge. All my will goes into asking the smoke not to thicken, the walls and roof not to succumb. I picture Luke completing his search, returning to me unharmed.
It takes about six minutes for him to come back, but even with my counting, it seems longer. My shoeless feet are aching with cold by the time he reappears in the doorway, but the only thing I feel is relief. He’s all right. Except, he can’t hide the defeat in his face.
I sense his need and try to limp forward, but my socks won’t budge. A look at Luke shows his features mirroring my own confusion.
“My socks are frozen to the ice.”
His gaze drops to my feet, and he starts to laugh. “Layls,” he says, coming to me, leaving a trail of sooty footprints behind him. He kisses the top of my head and cradles me against his chest. “You just had to prove my theory?”
I smile up at him. “Hurry up and help me, before we both freeze in place.”
He lifts me, carefully, right out of my socks. I wrap my arms around his neck, legs around his waist, and he catches my mouth in another kiss. It’s smoky again, salty, but this one’s much better than the last, because it means he’s back with me, and safe for now.
He turns us toward the cabin, promising to return to rescue my socks. His smile remains as he carries me across the snow, but his expression grows quiet as we reach the threshold to the cabin. Together, we look inside.
The chaos is staggering. Broken pieces of tree and cabin fill the center of the room: some still hang from the roof while others are spread over the floor, with bits scattered to all four corners by the force of the tree’s impact. The stove’s chimney is torn, twisted, like a tornado become stainless steel. A layer of grime and clumpy ash covers every visible surface.
“The tree seems like it’s lodged pretty well in place,” Luke says, “so I don’t think it’ll fall any further. And there’s a lot of clean up to do, but…”
“But the roof, and the stove. How are we going to survive without heat?”
Luke’s face turns stony. Maybe he was hoping I wouldn’t consider the fire just yet. “I don’t know,” is all he says.
We clean in silence, listening for any tell-tale sounds of trouble while we haul buckets of debris out the front door, tossing the mess to either side of our walking path. The limping slows me down, but I do my best and Luke is understanding, patient, as I could’ve guessed he would be. We carry the bedding outside, piece by piece, helping one another shake the soot from the fabric, glazing our faces in new layers of gray. I do the same with our clothes while Luke collects snow to fill pots on the stove, hoping to catch any remaining warmth for melting. At least we’ll have water to drink, even if it hasn’t been boiled. Dying of dehydration after everything we’ve been through would be an awful kind of irony; we refuse to allow it to happen.
Hours pass, and the cabin begins to regain some of its former appearance, aside from the tree reaching through the roof and the general grunginess, which makes it look like smog has come to rest on all things once cozy.
The bathroom is salvageable, even if we do have to duck under part of the tree to access it; the pantry took a direct hit, though, and is beyond saving. Foot-thick branches, not to mention the main section of trunk, block the door; we can only open it six inches or so, and when we do, the devastation inside is unsettling. All we can see
is splintered wood, barely identifiable as roof or branch or shelf.
Luke reaches into the space as far as he can and comes back with a bag of rice—torn, but still half-full. My body’s narrower than his, even if my arms aren’t as long; I manage to extract three bruised cans of beans and the last of the fruit cocktail. I spy the honey, and after using a branch to drag it closer, I bring that out, too. Luke manages to smile when I hand it to him. Along with the quarter-full jar of peanut butter and the eighth-full can of peanuts we’d left out earlier, this comprises our food. Even the Canned Meat Product is lost to us now.
After a while, we run out of salvage options and end up standing side-by-side in the little, semi-destroyed cabin.
“Well hell,” Luke says, his hand wrapping around my shoulder. “Guess somebody thought life was too easy for us.”
I try to laugh, but can’t even manage a smile. “How do we survive this?”
“Simple.” Luke hugs me and kisses the top of my head. “Together.”
♦ ♦ ♦
If anyone but Luke had suggested we’d had it easy in the time before the storm, I might’ve slapped them, or at least had the urge to. It turns out to be the truth, regardless. We shiver and shudder our way through the first night, hands and arms gripping each other to the point of pain. It doesn’t matter how tight we hold or how many layers of clothing and blankets we pile on, the windstorm brought temperatures dipping down into the brutally frigid, and we know by morning we can’t continue to survive without a fire. Not only are we burning through crazy amounts of precious calories trying to maintain our bodies’ core temperatures, we also need the fire to melt our drinking water, all of which froze solid overnight—or else, the dying-of-dehydration irony will become a reality. It’s a risk, lighting a fire in such a badly damaged stove, but it’s one we’ll have to take.
After sunrise, Luke suggests we start with removing the broken pieces of chimney.
Picturing You Page 14