by Lucy Finn
‘‘I hope you trust me enough to share your secret, Hildy. Isn’t that the way it has to be if we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together?’’
Hildy pulled back enough so she could look at Mike. ‘‘Are we going to spend the rest of our lives together?’’
‘‘If you’re willing.’’ He hugged her close again.
She reached up and held the hand he had put around her shoulder. ‘‘Mike, I’ve been willing for the past ten years.’’
‘‘You’re a funny kid, Hildy Caldwell. I still can’t believe how we found each other again. It almost makes me believe in magic,’’ Mike said.
Hildy didn’t protest. She didn’t comment. She didn’t say a word.
When they arrived at the cottage, Mike walked her to the door. She hesitated and asked him to look around inside before she went in.
Thinking about the attempted purse snatching just days ago, he believed her apprehension about entering the dark cottage was completely normal. He flipped on the lights and walked from room to room, making sure the windows were secure and no one lurked inside.
The cats followed at his heels, then jumped up on the kitchen counter, protesting that they hadn’t been fed. It was nearly dawn. Their meows clearly conveyed that they had been starved.
Mike offered to stay with Hildy, but he had mixed feelings about it. He almost hoped she’d say no. He had already decided not to go to bed; it was nearly daybreak. Although he might get a nap later, his mind was sifting through the things he had to do, from checking on Jake in the hospital to getting a truck back to the Sleep-E-Z Motor Lodge to pick up the stolen machines.
Seeing his distraction, Hildy said she needed to get some rest. She wanted him to leave more than she wanted him to stay and snuggle with her in bed. Finally, she insisted that he go, but not before she asked him again to look for her bottle as soon as he could. She clutched his hands and made him promise. He swore he would. She kissed his cheek.
He kissed her back, on the lips, not the cheek, sending her head spinning. He promised to call her, but after he knew she had gotten some rest. He’d try in the afternoon. She promised, Boy Scouts’ honor, to answer the phone. They both laughed, and he left.
As she watched him pull out onto the street and drive away, Hildy noticed that the sky appeared lighter. Dawn was fast approaching.
She fed the cats. She filled the Mr. Coffee machine and set the timer for three p.m., since she was determined not to wake sooner. Then she yawned and climbed up into the sleeping loft. She turned off her clock radio alarm. She paused for a moment, then shut off the phone. She knew Corrine would be calling her first thing in the morning; she didn’t want the theme song from Gilligan’s Island waking her up. She had brain fog, she was so tired.
Her head hit the pillow. The cats dashed up the ladder, leaped onto the bed, and curled up next to her legs. Her thoughts turned to Tony G., stashed in the bottle and still, hopefully, under the Volkswagen’s front seat. She wasn’t going to give up on getting him back and hoped he knew she’d be looking for him, that she’d never willingly abandon him to an uncertain fate.
Then drowsiness lulled her into a misty place between wakefulness and slumber. The last thing she remembered was a vague awareness that the air temperature must have dropped. She didn’t feel the humidity anymore. Then she slept the sleep of the innocent, unconscious and insensate, more deeply asleep than she had ever been before.
When dawn did arrive it wasn’t with rosy fingers or clouds edged with bands of gold. An angry splash of deep red crossed the eastern sky behind an aerial ledge of high, flat, and inky black stratus clouds. A change in the weather was coming, and it wasn’t for the better.
During the island’s early morning drive-time radio show, Sonny Somers gave his six a.m. forecast with an urgency in his voice he had never used on the air before. Hurricane Angie had picked up speed and now was a category three storm, he reported. It had charged forward and was raging in the South Atlantic, churning its way through the Bermuda Triangle and heading northwest.
His voice became even more excited when he reported that the first hurricane of the season was defying all the best computer projections, zigging and zagging and changing course hourly. The National Weather Center had the entire Atlantic coastline on a storm alert. This hurricane threatened to travel fast and pack a punch. Long Beach Island was not in any immediate danger, but Sonny warned listeners to stay tuned for updates. This was a storm to watch.
Hildy wasn’t watching. She was sleeping unaware of anything, even the cats behind her knees.
At ten o’clock, the daytime programs on television and radio were interrupted by a National Weather Center storm warning. People living in lowlying coastal areas from Newport News, Virginia, to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, were being asked to voluntarily move to higher ground. It was a precautionary move, but a recommended one.
Old-timers in the Carolinas groused that the media turned every rain cloud into a major news story. They weren’t moving for this little storm. It wasn’t like Hurricane Hugo, back in ’eighty-nine, at least not yet.
By eleven o’clock Angie had become a category four hurricane that was now, unexpectedly, taking aim on southern New Jersey. Evacuation of coastal areas was being ordered, effective immediately. This was a mandatory evacuation, not a choice.
In Ship Bottom, police cruisers went block to block with loudspeakers, telling residents to take only their valuables and their pets and leave the island. But with only one road leading off the island, the evacuation was the First Responders’ worst nightmare. They wanted people to begin leaving their houses immediately, not to wait even an hour.
By eleven thirty, the causeway was at a standstill with bumper-to-bumper traffic. The inbound lane had been closed, and all lanes now led in only one direction—off the island.
Hildy did not hear the bullhorns. She never noticed when the cats moved off the bed or when the gulls stopped crying overhead. She slept soundly, lost in dreams while the barometer continued to drop, and gray clouds skittered quickly across the sky. Then the wind picked up and tossed the surface of the sea into whitecaps. Hildy never stirred.
Five hundred miles to the east, Angie swirled, spun, and took aim on Long Beach Island. Forecasters did their math and looked at their computers. They began predicting that, by late afternoon, record high tides and a dangerous storm surge could sweep away every summer cottage and new McMansion built there.
At twelve o’clock noon emergency sirens began to sound from the island’s southern tip in Holgate to the northern end at Barnegat Light. Their eerie wailing, echoing through the increasingly empty towns, warned of death and misery to come. In Surf City and Ship Bottom, the municipalities closest to Route 72, cars filled with children and dogs, cat carriers and bird cages lined up on the boulevard, waiting to get onto the causeway and cross the bay to higher ground.
Hildy’s brain registered the sound of the sirens, but it recognized no reason for alarm. A fire somewhere in town, her unconscious mind believed. She slumbered on.
By one o’clock, the Ship Bottom police started going door-to-door on foot, making sure no foolish residents decided to ride out the storm. Ship Bottom, the widest part of the island, was only a half mile across. At the narrowest spot, in Harvey Cedars, the island shrunk to just a fifth of a mile wide.
Some of the officers were old enough to remember the Ash Wednesday storm of 1962, just a fierce nor’easter, not even a hurricane. That storm cut the island into pieces, the sea digging channels from east to west. It also left the eighteen miles that stretched from north to south mostly empty sand, the majority of the island’s buildings washed away or destroyed.
Those men and women feared that once Angie, the strongest hurricane to ever come ashore, struck the Jersey coast, there would be nothing here except the black waves that would roll with deadly force across the island to Barnegat Bay.
When two Ship Bottom police officers reached Twenty-fifth Street, no vehicle sat in front o
f the little gray cottage with the cutout whales cavorting over the door. One of the officers knocked hard and listened. Nothing stirred inside. The place appeared as deserted as Mrs. Baier’s house next door. He had no reason to knock again. He had dozens of houses to check. He caught up with his partner and they moved on.
Hildy turned over in her bed, briefly stirring. Her eyelids fluttered. She nearly woke, but her eyes felt so heavy, she stopped trying. She needed more rest. She buried her face in the pillow and slept on.
Chapter 26
In Atlantic City, Mike began phoning Hildy shortly after he heard about the mandatory evacuation. He was surprised when she didn’t answer, and he was concerned. He had left her there without a car. She’d have to find a ride with someone willing to take her and a carrier containing two cats. After repeated attempts to reach her without success, he thought he had better drive to Ship Bottom to get her.
Mike kept phoning Hildy as he drove northward up the parkway. She still wasn’t picking up. Once his phone rang just after he had gotten her voice mail for probably the fifteenth time.
The caller was Hildy’s sister, Corrine. She had panic in her voice. ‘‘Is Hildy with you?’’ she asked.
Mike answered no, that he had left Hildy out on the island late last night. But he was going to get her and not to worry.
‘‘Not worry!’’ Corrine’s voice was only a shade below a scream. ‘‘She’s the only sister I have.’’
An intermittent rain had started to fall. The wind had picked up. The eye of the hurricane was still hundreds of miles away. This was just a taste of things to come.
Once Mike got to Exit 63, he discovered that New Jersey state troopers had closed the exit ramp that connected the parkway with Route 72 going east toward Long Beach Island. Without slowing down very much, Mike put the Chevy Suburban in four-wheel drive and went around the barricade and across the triangle of green lawn.
He quickly discovered why the off-ramp was blocked. Route 72 now had all lanes marked to travel west. Hoping no one would stop him, Mike went east anyway, riding down the shoulder as fast as he dared.
Going against the traffic and avoiding the shouts of drivers telling him the road was closed, he covered the five miles to the first bridge at the start of the causeway. This was the longest span of four that leapfrogged from Manahawkin to each of the three small islands in Barnegat Bay before reaching Long Beach Island.
He went no farther. An angry Manahawkin police officer, a plastic shower cap on his hat and a long oilcloth raincoat covering him from shoulder to ankle, flagged him down.
Striding over to the Chevy Suburban, the cop gestured for Mike to roll down his window. He stuck a beefy red face toward Mike and threatened to issue a citation for driving on the shoulder. Mike waited out the tirade, and then tried to talk his way onto the bridge. He frantically explained that he had left his girlfriend on the island; she had no car; she wasn’t answering her phone.
Hearing the urgency in Mike’s voice, the Manahawkin officer became more sympathetic. He told Mike no one was being allowed back on the island. As soon as the civilians were cleared, all but a skeleton crew of First Responders were leaving too.
After reassuring Mike that everyone was being evacuated and no one left behind, the cop actually called over to Ship Bottom and gave the officer on duty Hildy’s address. He had reached the same officerwho had knocked on Hildy’s door. The young man affirmed that the house was empty. No, he didn’t see any cats in the window. No one responded to the loud knocking on the door. The guy’s girlfriend must have left with a neighbor.
At that point, the Manahawkin officer had other things to do than deal with a panicky boyfriend. He gruffly told Mike to turn his vehicle around and get out of the area or he’d throw him in jail.
Mike obediently made a U-turn and briefly got into the line of traffic heading west. But as soon as he was out of sight of the police officer, he pulled off the highway into a strip mall’s parking lot. He left the Suburban there and began walking back to the bridge. Once he got near enough to see the span packed with cars filling all lanes, he realized he’d never get onto the bridge, even on foot. Cops were everywhere.
The wind pushed at his clothes and the rain soaked him through. He shoved his hands in his pants pockets and looked around, trying to figure out what to do. To his left, across the waving salt grasses along the channel, he spotted a sign saying WAVE RUNNER AND KAYAK RENTALS about two hundred yards off the highway. He hunkered down against the wind and headed for it.
On his way, he studied the water. This channel was narrow, no more than a quarter of a mile across. The sheltered bay water was choppy, but not yet impassable, the current running south at a good rate.
Mike approached the boat rental office. He peered through the window. It was dark inside. He tried the door. It was locked. He glanced around. The Wave Runners and kayaks had been dragged out of the water. Most of them were chained together up on high racks. A few older kayaks, abandonedin haste and left to their fate, lay on the ground.
Mike had spent his summers canoeing and kayaking on the Susquehanna River. His arms were brawny and his back was strong. He didn’t hesitate. He left on his sneakers but rolled up his pant legs. He grabbed one of the kayaks, checked to make sure it had its paddle, and put it in the water, where it rocked with a terrible madness. He got in and managed to stay upright. He dipped the paddle in the water and stroked hard, determined to cross this narrow channel to the island beyond.
The wind, coming hard from the north, and the rushing current pushed him southward. He knew not to fight against it but to use its power. He paddled a diagonal course that took him right under the first causeway bridge. He kept clear of the abutments by using his paddle, but he had a few bad moments when he thought he was going to turn over.
Once he was out on the other side of the causeway bridge, he could see that the island, the smallest of the three in the channel, jutted out beyond the bridge for only a short way. He was swept past its tip, too far to be able to paddle there and land. Actually that was a good thing, he decided. Now he aimed for the second island, which was just a few hundred feet beyond.
He approached shore within minutes. As soon as his paddle hit bottom, he jumped out into the muck of the salt marsh. The wind tore at his shirt as he waded ashore and slowed him down. He pulled the kayak with him until he got it up onto dry land. He didn’t know why he did that. There was little chance it would be of any use on the return trip if Hildy was along.
He looked around. He was halfway to Long Beach Island, but it was taking time, a lot of time.
Once he abandoned the kayak, he walked toward the highway which ran on pylons above the ground. On it, Mike could see cars still fleeing eastward, but moving at a good rate. He thought these must be the stragglers and emergency workers, some of the last people to leave.
He ducked under the elevated causeway and found an unpaved road leading north to a cluster of summer cottages. There another street intersected with it and went eastward. He trotted along it. Except for the sound of the wind, everything was silent. No cars remained in the driveways. The houses were empty. All the people had fled.
A few minutes later he reached the water’s edge again. The far shore was only fifty feet away, but the current was running too fast to risk swimming. He wiped the rain from his eyes and looked around. Another Wave Runner and kayak rentals dock lay on his left. Again he ran over to find the office shut tight, but as before some kayaks had been left lying on the ground, unchained.
He quickly got one in the water, feeling positive and certain he was going to make it. He aimed for the Dutchman’s Brauhaus restaurant across the narrow channel and was able to ride his kayak right onto their dock. The water had already washed over the wooden boards with the rising tide.
He climbed some stairs, then dashed through the restaurant’s parking lot to a house-lined street next to the causeway. He glanced upward. He stood there a minute watching. No cars traveled the highway no
w. He ran on. When he reached the last channel of water before Long Beach Island, he simply pulled himself up onto the bridge and jogged on the empty highway, coming out at the CVS Pharmacy, where Jimmy the Bug’s man had waited for Hildy at another time.
Running through the deserted streets of Ship Bottom, Mike finally began to think about what he should do when he got to Hildy’s. The wind was increasing by the minute. Would they have time to run back across the causeway on foot? If they did, would they be caught in the open with debris flying everywhere and the wind threatening to sweep them into the churning water below? He decided they’d have to listen to the latest reports to find out when the storm was set to hit, then decide.
All the time he was running toward Twenty-fifth Street, he assumed Hildy was still in the little cottage and still on the island. It never occurred to him that she might not be there. He knew in his heart, and he knew with the certainty that links those who love, that she was.
Chapter 27
The howling wind roused Hildy from her slumber at around three in the afternoon. She lay in bed, disoriented. A staccato beat of raindrops pattered on the roof above her, and the daylight she could glimpse outside the small window under the roof’s peak seemed extraordinarily dim for a summer afternoon. She wondered why.
She sat up and rubbed her eyes. The air felt cool against her skin. She was beginning to think something was definitely peculiar when she heard a pounding at the front door. Then she heard Mike’s voice calling her name.
She scurried over to the ladder and lowered herself down as quickly as she could. Then she raced for the door, where Mike’s fists seemed intent on breaking it down. She flung it open. Mike stood with dripping hair and drenched clothes.
‘‘Mike? What’s—’’
‘‘Hildy!’’ he cried and grabbed her in his arms, holding her close. ‘‘Are you all right?’’
Hildy said something like ‘‘Oooof,’’ as he squeezed tight. ‘‘Mike, what’s the matter? Of course I’m all right.’’