Everything That Follows

by Meg Little Reilly

  Orla bolted upright and looked at Kat.

  It was a sort of patter, like hail, but less consistent. It was loud and then soft again: a herd of cows running down cobblestone, which of course it wasn’t. But what was it, then?

  Orla went for the door to the outside first, and Kat was right behind. They burst through and looked down the wet streets. Everything looked the same outside in the post-rain gloom. But the sound...it was still around them. It wasn’t coming from the street side.

  They ran around the house, unsure of what they’d find, but awakening to the general doom that was upon them. It was the cliffs.

  Kat rounded the corner first, stopping suddenly and putting her arms out to catch Orla, as she took in the surreal scene before them.

  Just twenty feet away, the edge of the yard that sat between Island Glass and the sharp cliff’s edge was collapsing. The sound they’d heard was hundreds of clumps of saturated clay tumbling off the face of the cliff, bouncing and breaking on their way down to the water. That was the patter. Up close, they could hear the low hiss of the falling sand, as well. The loose sediment that had only minutes before been packed in tight with the clay now fell gracefully with it. And the dead winter grass they’d been propping up now slumped and hung like a vertical carpet off the face of the raw bluff...until it broke and fell too.

  With every little avalanche, the glass shop got closer to the edge.

  Orla gasped and tried to run toward the side entrance of the shop, through the flimsy police tape that had been put there after the first buckling, but Kat wrapped her arms tightly around her. She knew where Orla was going because it was the same place Kat would go if she were losing her mind to the grief of what they were witnessing. Orla wanted to get in to save the glass, a few of the pieces anyway—the stuff that wasn’t for sale: the things she’d made with her late husband, the few pieces that still remained from her father’s work in Waterford. She wanted to save the pieces that told the story of her life.

  Orla squirmed in Kat’s arms. There seemed a pause in the action, but this wasn’t the end. It was the moment at which the dragon takes a breath before unleashing his fire. It was the windup. And in the deceptive stillness, Kat could sense an irreversible motion that had been set into place. The earth was moving, and the air was moving, and maybe even the house was moving. She was watching life through a wobbly camera lens, almost imperceptibly unsteady, certainly not right.

  And then, there was motion again. The last patch of frontage grass collapsed, pulling the two old Adirondack chairs down with it. They snapped like dry kindling as they joined the crumbling bluffs on their way to the beach, falling so easily. Left behind was the house, hanging three feet over the edge of the broken bluff for several breathtaking seconds. And then, it too surrendered.

  Orla screamed as the oceanfront wall of the house began to pull away from the frame, straight down toward the beach below. Cedar planks snapped off like buttons.

  And then came the windows. Orla’s thirty-year-old stained glass windows exploded like fireworks in the debris, along with the three clear windows from Kat’s upstairs apartment, and all the rest of them. The deafening sound mixed with Orla’s cries. Kat had the feeling of drowning in the cacophony. A fire truck screamed from the other end of town, followed by police cars.

  There were people too. Kat didn’t take her eyes off the house, but she could feel the people collecting in the street behind them.

  She and Orla were alone, though, just a few strides from the naked oceanfront side of the house. They were dangerously close to the unsteady cliffs, but incapable of running to safety. They had to be there.

  The front face of the house fell off quickly, exposing the interior of their shop like a dollhouse in a nightmare. Most of the merchandise inside had fallen to the floor and broken, but Kat could see some of the small, solid pieces still intact, utterly unaware of their fate.

  The police tape barrier had fallen to the ground, and was fluttering with the earth’s movement.

  Kat was taking it all in as she loosened her grip on Orla—that was how she broke away. Orla jerked her body free and started to run. She ran directly toward the edge and a roar of cries ensued from behind. It would only take a few steps to go over—they were so close to the cliff now—but Kat knew Orla wasn’t running toward her death; she was running for the starfish. She could see that delicate glass starfish sitting just a foot from the jagged edge of the broken shop floor and knew it was what Orla was running for. Her father had made it for Sean when he was a child, just weeks before he died. It had a ribbon of gold running evenly through each arm in such a way that neither Orla nor Kat could ever fully replicate. She kept the object on a high shelf for display, and now she was running to save it.

  It took less than a second for Kat to spring forward, out of her trance and after Orla. One, two, three long strides, and then she got a hold of Orla’s arm and yanked. They were suspended in a moment of tug-of-war near the edge as Orla strained to reach the house. Kat got one nauseating look down at the shore, and the pile of fallen debris, before she overpowered Orla and pulled her back toward her. Orla tried to pry Kat’s fingers away from her pinched arm. She screamed out in agony, more emotional than physical, but Kat wouldn’t let go.

  And then there was movement again around them. A man’s voice boomed from somewhere and Kat knew time was up. She tried to pull Orla’s body toward the street, but in their struggle, they both fell. Others were yelling now too. Something was about to happen. Kat yanked Orla’s body through the muddy grass, inching her farther away from the edge and closer to safety. In the seconds that passed between the stranger’s scream and their fall, the earth beneath them turned to liquid and it suddenly felt that they were rolling with waves on the ocean.

  With a howl, Kat pulled them both to their feet. And then, they ran. Orla wasn’t resisting anymore. A cop and a stranger in plainclothes met them on the quivering edge of the lawn and led them to the road where a small group of onlookers had gathered.

  Voices were shouting and the earth was rumbling. Cops herded the spectators farther from the house and into the center of the street. Orla and Kat moved with them. A deep roar from the cliffs silenced them all.

  From there, they watched the final moments of Island Glass—Orla’s shop and Kat’s home. It started with the hardwood floors, which snapped and fell without struggle. Then came the remaining contents of the house. Shelves fell from walls, lamps toppled and everything slid down the planks of the broken floors along the fastest route to the shoreline. It would all join a churning stew of debris, unseen from where they stood. The fall came easily for the smaller things, but the frame resisted. Thick beams twisted and splintered before finally breaking off at awkward angles and plunging. Most excruciating of all was the plumbing. The copper pipes running from toilets and sinks to the island’s underground were bending and screaming their way apart, the stubborn intestines of a dying body.

  Onlookers watched the undignified death in slow, excruciating motion.

  There were objects in the falling wreckage, little flashes of ordinary life—an electric teapot and a sweatshirt that had been left on a hook—that made what they were witnessing feel too intimate for public display. Kat blushed to see the stack of books from her bedroom flutter to its demise. Her notes on Kyle would be in there, along with the recovered shreds of his scarf that she’d tucked beneath the stack. Kat didn’t see them, but they must have spent a moment exposed and airborne, before being buried in the carnage below and possibly, eventually, swept out to sea.

  When the last roof tile finally fell, it left behind the gaping wound of the garage, their glass-working studio. Three of its walls were still intact, and the fourth side—the one that connected it to the house—had pulled away neatly at the seam of the cement floor. The studio opened to the Atlantic Ocean now, so onlookers couldn’t quite see in from the street. Knowing that all her glass-working
tools were fully exposed felt to Kat like wearing her beating heart on the outside of her body.

  No one in the crowd moved or spoke for another beat. They wanted to see if there was more to come.

  Then a policewoman quickly made a barrier out of orange tape and instructed everyone to stay back. More cops appeared to shepherd people away from the sidewalk and behind the roadblocks. Kat felt her body being moved. She lost Orla in the chaos. People began chatting in hushed tones around her, sharing what they knew about the shop and its inhabitants. Kat watched their mouths move—some of them may have been speaking to her—but she couldn’t make sounds herself. She was sleepwalking through a real-life nightmare.

  Police cars and fire trucks flashed, painting the overcast morning in a carnival light.

  “C’mon,” someone said from behind.

  Kat turned to see Sean as he wrapped an arm around her. She leaned into it and let him lead her down the crowded street. He seemed to know where he was going.

  They pushed through the people, many of whom placed a sympathetic hand on Sean’s arm or made a face to indicate how sorry they were. Sean received these gestures graciously on behalf of them both.

  They walked down the steep road to the muddy lawn of a neighboring house, where two officers and an EMT were talking with Orla. When Kat arrived, they all turned to her.

  The EMT reached for Kat’s wrist and looked up close into her eyes. “Do you think you need ambulatory care?” she asked.

  Kat stared at the woman.

  “Ma’am, I’m going to have you lay down, if you’ll come this way with me.”

  She shook her head. “No, no, I’m fine. I’m just surprised, I think.”

  “You’re probably in shock,” the woman said. “We’ll have the ambulance pull around for you.”

  Kat looked at Orla, who held a brown wool blanket around her shoulders. She was standing, but catatonic. Her clothes and half of her face were covered in mud. Kat understood now what she must have looked like.

  “Can I just stay here, please?”

  Sean pulled her in. “She’s okay. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  The cops exchanged a glance, and then the older one began. “That was a crazy thing you did out there.”

  Were they talking to her? Kat looked around.

  “Running for your friend,” he said, gesturing toward Orla. “That was truly reckless and it should have killed you both... But it didn’t. You saved her life.”

  Orla looked out toward the ocean. She was barely there.

  Kat couldn’t find words in her head.

  The cop wrote something down in his notebook as he spoke. “Really, the two of you must have a goddamn death wish. Out there on those bluffs. You’re lucky as hell. Here, this is my phone number.”

  Orla took the paper.

  “Go home, Orla, and rest up. Call me in a few days when you’re ready to discuss what happens next with the garage. Until then, don’t come back here. It’s a disaster site now. You hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  Then he turned to Kat. “I understand you resided at the glass shop?”

  She nodded.

  “So, do you have somewhere to stay for a while?”

  Kat knew the house was gone. She’d watched it fall. But it wasn’t until that moment that she began to grasp the full reality of the situation. She had nowhere to sleep, no bed or clothes or books or toothbrush. She had no alarm clock or computer or electric teapot. It was strange how the big things and the small things were all mixed up together in this wave of grief, but they were. Everything familiar and indisputably hers was gone.

  Kat felt the pressure of Sean’s lips and his scratchy face against the side of her forehead. “She has somewhere to stay.”

  “Good, then.” The officer looked around uncomfortably. “If you’ll excuse me, we have to get everyone out of here and cordon it off. I’m...I’m very sorry for all of you.”

  The two police officers and the medic walked away, leaving Kat, Orla and Sean alone on a stranger’s lawn.

  Kat felt Sean take her hand. He laced his fingers through hers as she turned to watch the ocean waves.

  She had no idea where she was supposed to be.

  Chapter 16

  “Can you pass the cream?”

  Kat slid the carton across the little folding table that served as Erika’s dining area.

  “Thank you. More toast?”

  “Please.”

  “This is fun. You know you can stay here for as long as you need to, right?” Erika said, her black hair piled high on top of her head and her mascara from the night before smudged beneath her eyes.

  Kat knew she was welcome to stay forever, but she wouldn’t. Erika’s apartment was not so much an apartment as a room with a minifridge and a bathroom the size of a closet. Kat was sleeping on the pullout couch. She would have to find somewhere else to go eventually. But it was nice for now, and she was glad she decided to stay there instead of Sean’s place.

  She finished her toast and stood up. “I have to go see Orla. I’ve put it off long enough.”

  “You still doing the afternoon shift?”

  Kat nodded. She’d taken on a few bartending shifts at The Lobster Claw in the three weeks since the landslide. Erika was understaffed, and Kat was at risk of succumbing completely to her paranoid trance, so she’d agreed to do the work.

  The first shift had been good. She was moving her body and focusing her mind on something other than the trauma of the previous weeks. But then the visions of Kyle intensified. They weren’t visions like you saw in movies, when people talked to perfectly articulated ghosts. No, these were just flashes in the corner of her eye, glimpses of the familiar. Kat felt that Kyle was with her sometimes at the bar, like he was working alongside her. She’d forget what was in a Manhattan or whether you were supposed to shake an Aperol spritz and he’d remind her, sort of. She couldn’t hear him; she wasn’t crazy. She could just sort of feel him gently nudging her to the right bottles, telling her when her pours got too long. It was comforting to have him there with her.

  Kat couldn’t tell Erika about the Kyle visions because she couldn’t tell Erika anything about Kyle. It was horrible to keep it all from her, but it had to be done. As far as Erika knew, Kat’s dazed state was the byproduct of her trauma. She’d just watched her apartment and her livelihood fall into the ocean, which was enough to devastate anyone. In a strange way, Kat’s secrets got easier once the glass shop fell off the cliff. She was suddenly allowed to behave as oddly as she needed to without any reason for suspicion. And that was a good thing because Kat was feeling odder and odder.

  It wasn’t just her visions of Kyle; those were almost a comfort. The real danger was the paranoia, which had her jumping with every slamming door and honking horn. Her insomnia kept her in a continual state of edgy exhaustion, and the only way through it was movement. She couldn’t be still. There was nothing else to do—now that she had no career—but stay busy for as long as she could. Kat’s plan was to just keep working the shifts that Erika gave her and wait for someone to come arrest her. That moment felt perpetually imminent. As far as she knew, Ashley was still out there trying to take them all down. Every moment free was borrowed time.

  “I’ll see you later.” Kat kissed the top of Erika’s head.

  “Good luck.”

  She felt her pockets for her wallet and phone. Still there. She was wearing Erika’s clothes, which fit okay but didn’t feel quite right. Kat was in someone else’s life, wearing someone else’s clothes. She had nothing now, and she was almost too numb to care. She considered going shopping with the money she’d made on The Selkie, but hadn’t found the will yet. Plus, there was a certain logic to it: losing all your worldly possessions before losing your freedom entirely. She’d read about how people who knew they were going to die would give everything away, s
hed their material connection to this earth. Maybe it was like that, Kat thought, as if all of this was prewritten. She also considered that she was losing her mind.

  “Thanks. I’ll see you at the bar.”

  It took seven minutes to get from the apartment to Orla’s house on Erika’s rusty bike. The sidewalks were icy and uneven, so Kat stayed mostly in the road. Every third house had electric candles in the windows. God, Christmas. It was two days away and she had no plans. She’d spent the past six Christmases with the Murphys, so this year might only be marked by the absence of all that. The Murphy Christmases had been wonderful. Kat didn’t bring any Christmas traditions with her, so she’d gladly adopted all of theirs when she started dating Sean. They were great at Christmas, with all their rules about how to decorate the tree and what foods to eat when. The rules are the rituals, and it’s the rituals that remind you of who you are and where you come from. Who would she be now?

  “Hi, love.” Orla pulled Kat in from the cold with a weak smile. It was the first time they’d seen each other since the landslide.

  Kat sat down on the couch, as close as she could get to the crackling woodstove. “I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you sooner.”

  “Me too. It’s been quite a time.”

  “Yeah, it has.” Kat noticed that Sean’s vest was hanging from the back of a chair. He’d probably been there a lot, taking care of his mother. She looked away, trying not to think of Sean. She hadn’t seen him yet, either. He’d tried, but she needed to think about things first.

  “Tea?”

  “No, thank you.” Kat rubbed her cold thighs. “Orla, have you been back...to where the shop was?”

  Orla sat back down. “I’ve driven by. The town says they’re going to demolish it. They have some kind of natural disaster fund to pay for the removal, but we have to get the glassblowing equipment out of the garage in the next month. I don’t know where we’d take it. We could try to sell it, I suppose...”