Swept Away

by Karen Templeton

  Before Carly could answer, however, Lane bounced to his feet and charged to the middle of the room, rounding on her with, “But who am I to talk? Me, with this second chance I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d have right in my lap, and I’m afraid of her fears?”

  Okay…clearly the conversation had taken a sharp right. Carly gawked at her father, feeling as though someone had turned her brain upside down.

  “But how do you know?” she said, and her father blinked, looking slightly lost. Yeah, well, join the club, she wanted to say. She leaned forward, her hands out. “How do you know if it’s enough? If you’re really in love?”

  Dad seemed to consider this for a moment, then said, “When you feel as though you’ve been clobbered with a two-by-four…”

  “Oh.”

  “Or sometimes, it’s like something warm washing over you, and you hear ‘oh, yeah’ inside your head. Like, who was it in the Bible? Elijah? Elisha? The one who heard the still, small voice in the wind.”

  Carly laughed. Her Sunday School memories were dim at best, but she thought she remembered this one. “Wasn’t it that God wasn’t in the wind?”

  “Maybe you’re right. But my point is, no matter what else is going on inside your head, or around you—”

  “You just know. Yeah, yeah, I get it.” Only she didn’t. Not at all.

  “Sorry, baby. But the thing is—” Dad strode back into her kitchen and picked up her coffee can, tucking it up under his arm like a football “—when one of the best things to ever happen to you comes your way, you can’t let anything get in the way of accepting it. Especially yourself.”

  Seconds later she stood at the window, watching her father make off with her only readily available source of caffeine, leaving her with an inverted brain and spilled guts all over the damn place. And this stupid weather, jeez! She cranked open the window, only to grimace at the muggy, gritty, unfall-like breeze that elbowed its way inside.

  A free spirit? Who was she kidding? Now she was Alice after she’d taken the plunge, tumbling down the rabbit hole, having no idea where—or if—she’d land, clutching frantically at the nothingness whizzing past her ears in the vain hope of latching onto something familiar and solid instead of reveling in the thrill of possible adventure, the sensation of floating, flying, weightless and unencumbered. Irritation swamped her, not only because her life, her feelings, even her body were spiraling out of control, but that she’d kill for even the smallest clue as to how, precisely, one learned to go with the flow.

  And through the angry helplessness threaded a sadness, heavy and thick as mud, that if she hadn’t heard the little voice, or felt that two-by-four, while making love with Sam Frazier, she never would.

  The breeze snatched up her sob, sucking it out the window to blend with the howl of the wind.

  “You’re changing your sheets again?” Libby asked the next morning as she stooped to gather up her backpack. “Isn’t this like the fourth time in two weeks?”

  Sam jammed the last pillowcase into the washer and let the lid crash closed. He was hardly going to tell his daughter that he’d gotten basically no sleep the night before because his sheets smelled like coconut and flowers and sex. That every time he moved, he got hard. And depressed. “Since when are you keeping track of how often I do my laundry?”

  Straightening to swing her backpack up onto her shoulder, Libby gave him a strange look. “Jeez, what’s eating you?”

  “Nothing.” He twisted the dial like he was wringing a chicken’s neck. “I’d just like to be able to go about my business without getting the third degree, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Whatever. But maybe you should get another cup of coffee or something before you inflict your mood on the rest of the world. So you’re gonna go into Claremore to pick up the rest of the stuff I need for dinner tomorrow, right?”

  Tomorrow. Thanksgiving. Oh, yeah, like he was feeling so thankful right now. What he was feeling, was like an ass. You know, one of those dumb beasts with a real long learning curve?

  “Yeah, this afternoon, I’ve got stuff to do around the place first.”

  “And Carly and Lane are coming, right?”

  “As far as I know,” came out with surprising aplomb, considering Carly had been a little preoccupied with explaining why she couldn’t stick this out to formally accept, or decline, the invitation. Whether she showed up or not, it wouldn’t surprise him.

  Hell, at this point, nothing would surprise him.

  Libby left to catch the high school bus, which came earlier than the boys’, leaving Sam, Travis, and a dog or two to ride herd for the next several minutes until, finally, they all tumbled out of the house and down the steps. Standing on the porch, Radar sitting on his hip nearby with a satisfied doggy grin, Sam watched the motley collection of too-long legs and arms in denim and cotton jersey make its disorganized way down the drive, the still, oddly warm air occasionally punctuated by a yell, a laugh, some rude noise or other. Humidity filmed Sam’s skin, plumped up smells normally kept more or less at bay due to his father’s having laid out the farm to take advantage of the seasonal wind direction.

  Travis poked Sam’s thigh, then pointed east. “Look over there, Daddy. At the clouds.”

  Sam squinted out toward the horizon, taking note of the thunderheads just beginning to build over the mountains, tinged peach from the early morning sun.

  “They’re pretty, huh?” Trav said.

  “Yeah. They are. Means we’re probably gonna get rain later.”

  “Yeah?” The boy snuggled up next to him; Sam cupped his head, his fingers lingering on the smooth skin below his hairline. “I don’t remember—do we get presents on Thanksgiving?”

  Sam chuckled. “No presents, short stuff. Just food. Good food. Pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes and turkey.”

  “Oh. Do I like pumpkin pie?”

  “You sure seemed to last year.”

  “Okay.” Apparently satisfied that the day wasn’t going to totally blow, Travis went back inside, holding open the door to let Radar in before him. Sam’s gaze, however, slid back over to those clouds, getting bigger and more bodacious by the second.

  Thunderstorms the day before Thanksgiving…yeah, that sounded about right, considering how screwy and unpredictable everything else felt these days. Still, he thought as they went back inside, at least he didn’t have to worry about the storm messin’ up his crops, this time of year.

  Something to be grateful for, he supposed.

  “I can’t tell you how much this means to me,” Faith Andrews said to Carly, the blonde’s dimpled smile as effervescent as her oldest daughter’s was shy. “To us, I guess I should say,” she added with a one-armed hug for the eleven-year-old blonde pulling up her jeans over a lime-green one-piece swimsuit. “You really, really think Heather shows promise?”

  “I really, really do,” Carly said with a smile of her own for the coltish adolescent with the long limbs, high instep and straight back of a dancer’s body. Even completely untrained, the girl already showed a natural ability that blew Carly away. She crossed the floor to crank closed the window—the wind had picked up after lunch, blowing a fine layer of dust all over everything. “And thanks for coming out today! I can’t imagine how busy you must be with Thanksgiving tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Mama’s doin’ most of the cooking this year, all I’m bringin’ are the green bean casserole and mashed potatoes, and I can do those in my sleep.” Carly waited out the twinge of envy, even though she knew how hellish holidays could be for many families. Most of the ones around here, though, seemed to have things figured out. She still hadn’t decided whether or not to go to the Fraziers, although she didn’t want to disappoint Libby and the boys.

  “So…I guess this means you’re plannin’ on sticking around?” Faith said.

  With a smile that felt more than a little forced, Carly turned around. “For a while, anyway. It all depends on…a lot of things, actually.”

  On how she and Sam co
uld pull off pretending everything was fine when basically nothing was even remotely fine.

  However, here was something to be grateful for, in the form of a willowy eleven-year-old girl with amazing potential, and the drive to go with it, from what Carly could tell from working with her this morning. She and Faith had already discussed the demands and sacrifices that went hand in hand with being a dancer, that while it was way too early to push the girl too hard, not starting lessons until eleven could put Heather at a disadvantage if she was later to compete with other girls her age who’d started at six or seven. Both mother and daughter seemed to understand, and both were more than ready to give it a shot.

  “She’ll need real practice clothes, though—a couple of leotards, pink tights, pink ballet shoes.” Just as the studio now needed a real mirror.

  Mother’s and daughter’s eyes both went wide. “You mean, those toe shoes they all wear?” Faith asked.

  Carly smiled. “No, not yet. Sorry, sweetie,” she added when Heather’s face fell. “You won’t be ready to go en pointe for another year, maybe two. Just regular ballet shoes. It’ll mean a trip to Tulsa, most likely.”

  “Oh, I think we can manage that,” Faith said with a giggle.

  “And I’d like to work with her privately, since she’s going to quickly outgrow the other class.”

  A tiny wrinkle settled between Faith’s neatly arched eyebrows; a cloud scurried across her daughter’s face. “Mama…?”

  “How much would that cost?”

  “Tell you what,” Carly said, walking them to the door. “Why don’t you go home and talk it over with Darryl, see what might fit with your budget. I’m sure we can work something out.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t want your charity—”

  “Every dance school in the country gives scholarships, Faith,” Carly said gently. “And if Heather really wants to do this…” She met the girl’s eager, bright blue eyes and got an eager, dimpled nod in response, and Carly felt a little fireworks shower go off in her chest, warm and bright and sparkly. Grinning, she faced the girl’s mother. “I cannot tell you how excited I got when Heather walked into class the other day. This is as much for me as it is for her, believe me. So we’ll make it happen, okay?”

  “Well…” Faith gnawed on her bottom lip for a moment, then nodded so hard her curls blurred. “Okay. I guess we’ve got a deal.”

  The girl squealed and clapped her hands, then—with as much exuberance as her mother—threw her arms around Carly’s neck. And Carly heard the little This is right, this is how it’s supposed to be, which at least reassured her that she could hear the voices, even if the one she most wanted to hear remained stubbornly silent.

  Over Trav’s protests that he was too big to ride in the baby seat, Sam swung the boy back up into the shopping cart and squinted out over the jam-packed parking lot, trying to remember where he’d parked the damn truck.

  “Too many cars, short stuff,” he said, his hair whipping around his face in the wind. “Besides, we’re runnin’ real late—I thought we’d be home long before this! At this rate, Libby and the boys’ll get there before we do.”

  He made a mental note to never, ever again go to Wal-Mart the day before Thanksgiving. Lord, every female residing in a hundred mile radius must’ve been there today, half of ’em in his line. He’d begun to wonder if he was gonna die there.

  They made it to the truck without major incident, Sam secured Trav in his booster seat in the back, then he jumped in, slicking his hair off his forehead. If traffic wasn’t too bad between here and Haven, they’d just make it. Not that Libby couldn’t handle her brothers for a few minutes, but she’d made it very clear she intended to start on the pies as soon as she got home.

  Once out on the highway, a light rain misted the windshield from a cloud apparently directly overhead, since the sky was clear as a bell for miles in front of him, the sun drenching spent, golden fields. The storm clouds had come and gone all day, enough to make Sam periodically check the weather report to make sure there was nothing serious in the offing. Thirty percent chance of showers, was all they’d said. So he guessed—things were getting blurry enough to warrant turning on the windshield wipers for a second—this was it.

  He’d calmed down some about Carly, at least enough to start thinking rationally again. Like she said, he couldn’t love her into being somebody she wasn’t. Or in her case, had convinced herself she wasn’t. So maybe it was for the best, their getting it over with now.

  And maybe if he kept telling himself that for another decade or so, he might actually believe it.

  “Are we gonna get home soon?” came from the back. “I gotta pee.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Trav—why didn’t you say something back at the store?”

  “I didn’t have to go then. Daddy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why’s the sky all split in two like that? No, over on my side.”

  Grateful for the distraction from the having-to-go crisis, Sam took a gander out the passenger side window…and his insides turned to stone.

  “Holy—!”

  The rest of his curse was swallowed by a roar as the funnel dropped down out of the cloud and started cheerfully chewing up the countryside.

  The weatherman had blown it this time, boy. Big-time.

  Carly’s phone rang at the precise moment the siren began to wail. The sound not registering at first, she picked up the phone, barely getting out “Hello,” before Libby’s frantic “Dad’s not over there by any chance, is he?” trampled all over it.

  “No, he’s not…Libby?”

  “He was supposed to be back by now, and that’s the tornado siren goin’ off, which means he’s out there somewhere, with Trav, I’m guessing….”

  Carly’s hand instantly fused to the phone as her brain processed only the salient points of the girl’s message, tornado shooting to the top of the list, followed quickly by Sam and Travis out there somewhere. She hurried over to the window: the wind had definitely picked up, hurling dirt and leaves against the glass, but from here the sky was still clear. “I’m sure he’ll back in a minute, sweetie—”

  “They just said on the news that one twister t-touched down right outside Claremore a few m-minutes ago!” Carly could tell the poor thing was on the verge of meltdown. “Daddy’d gone to the Wal-Mart to get some stuff for d-dinner tomorrow, and now…”

  “Libby, honey—are the other boys all with you?”

  “Yeah, they’re asking where Daddy is, too, and I need to get them down to the basement, but…”

  “But, nothing.” Carly grabbed her purse and a sweater. Not that she had a clue what she was supposed to do, but no way was she leaving Libby to deal with this on her own. “You get everybody in the basement, I’ll be there in a sec, okay?”

  She ran outside, the wind snatching at her hair and clothes like a crazed groupie a rock star, grinding grit into her eyes and mouth. She hopped into her car, first checking to make sure no funnel cloud was snaking out of the putrid gray-green sky behind her.

  “Come on, come on,” she urged the recalcitrant engine, which finally turned over as thunder cracked open the clouds, rendering her wipers useless against the river of water sluicing across the windshield. Like witches’ fingers, broken branches pelted the car as she peeled out of the yard and sped as fast as she dared past her father’s house, her heart sinking when she noticed his car wasn’t in the driveway. Yeah, he had a storm cellar, too, but fat lot of good it was going to do him if he wasn’t there. She dug her cell out of her purse and called him, but no answer.

  Swallowing down her fear for her father, for Sam, for Travis, she fishtailed into the Fraziers’ driveway and jumped out of the car, taking the porch steps two at a time. The kids—and whichever dogs and cats they could corral—were already in the basement; Frankie and Wade nearly knocked Carly down with hugs when she got to the bottom of the steps.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she whispered, wondering where the hell this flood o
f protectiveness was coming from as she hugged the little boys, taking in the valiant attempts at bravery from the other three, all of whom were calm, but trembling.

  “You ever been through a tornado before?” Mike asked her.

  “They have them in Ohio, but I’ve never seen one, no. I imagine you guys are old hands at it though, huh?”

  They all shook their heads. “We get warnings all the time,” Libby said, crouched next to one wall, hugging her knees, “but one’s never touched down in Haven proper.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I really wish Daddy and Trav were here.”

  “Yeah. So do I,” Carly said, forcing down another surge of panic. “Come on, guys, let’s sit real close to each other.”

  They lowered themselves to the floor by one of the freezers, propping their backs against the cold, damp wall. Wade and Frankie grafted themselves to her sides; Carly wrapped her arms around them and thought, Okay…now what?

  “Now we wait,” Libby said. “Until the sirens sound the all clear.”

  Even in the basement, they could hear the storm brutally pounding the house, the groans and scratches of tree branches scraping the walls, the dulled thunder of hail hammering the roof two stories above their heads. The electricity flickered, held, went out; Libby clicked on a battery-powered lantern, its light dim and eerie in the blackness. Nobody talked about the possibilities, that they might lose the house, the livestock. Or worse. The young ones huddled closer and Carly kissed their hair, the gesture so instinctive she didn’t at first realize she’d done it.

  “You guys ever see The Sound of Music?”

  “Some of us,” Libby said. “It was Mama’s favorite movie.”

  “You know the part where Maria sings to the children when they’re scared of the storm?” The teenager nodded. “Yeah, well, I don’t do that,” she said, which got little laughs out of the older ones, at least.

  Then, as if someone had turned off a radio, dead silence swallowed up the wailing, the battering.

  “Is it over?” Wade asked.