by Wendy Wax
Nicole’s gaze remained riveted on the screen even after the images faded and were replaced by a radar map that showed Hurricane Charlene roaring toward Biloxi. Her face reflected both regret and resignation. A few moments later she turned her attention back to her plate.
Avery could hardly sit still long enough to swallow. All she wanted was to get back to Ten Beach Road and see Bella Flora for herself. But it was two days before they were allowed back across the Howard Franklin to St. Petersburg.
Avery rode shotgun and noted the things in Tampa Bay that didn’t belong there—things like half-submerged cars and a hotel roof. A palm tree, apparently uprooted, floated against a piling. A power- and a sailboat sat aground, rammed up against a tree on the side of the causeway.
Traffic moved slowly, but it wasn’t the agonizing inching along of evacuation. It felt as if far fewer people were returning. Avery wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.
Traffic lights were out on Gulf Boulevard and crews from the power and phone company worked in pockets everywhere they looked. Trees were down and buildings were sorely damaged. Drifts of sand covered the asphalt, many with dark clumps mixed in.
“Is that seaweed?” Kyra asked. She’d been filming out the window since they’d first rolled onto the Howard Franklin. “Oh, my God, there’re fish over there.” She swung her lens toward a crosswalk where several fish lay belly up. The aroma promised many more as yet unseen.
“It kind of makes you wonder how much sand is left on the beach given how much of it is here,” Deirdre said.
No one mentioned Bella Flora, though Avery knew it had to be at the forefront of all of their thoughts. Would she still be standing? Could she be, considering her precarious position at the southernmost tip of the narrow barrier island?
Just before the Don CeSar things slowed further as identification was checked and those who’d returned via the Pinellas Bayway merged into the two lanes of Pass-a-Grille Way. “Oh, my God, look at the Don.” Kyra panned her camera up the stained pink façade. Two of the bell towers had broken off and fallen to the pavement. A whole section of windows was without glass. An employee was already busy sweeping the shards into piles on the sidewalk. Despite the traffic behind them, they slowed to gawk. “I can’t believe it. Imagine what things would look like if Charlene had come ashore anywhere near here.”
All the way down the narrow twist of road, debris cluttered their way. They gasped at the damage, which often seemed arbitrary. One minute Avery believed Bella Flora might have gotten through unscathed, the next she feared they’d find nothing waiting for them but an empty lot.
Without asking, Maddie stayed on Pass-a-Grille Way, hugging the bay rather than jogging over and paralleling the Gulf. Avery knew then that Maddie’s fears mirrored her own. At the corner of Beach Road, Maddie pulled the van to a complete stop. Cottage Inn’s cottages still stood, though they looked the worse for wear. Maddie and Avery considered each other. Kyra crouched forward so that she could shoot both out the windshield and over her mother’s shoulder.
“Are we ready?” Maddie asked.
“I’m rolling,” Kyra said as if that was all they were waiting for.
Maddie drew in a deep breath. Avery did the same.
“I’m not sure I can take this,” Avery said.
“All I want to do is close my eyes and not look until someone tells me it’s okay.”
“That might work if you weren’t driving, Maddie,” Nikki said. “Not so good as things stand.”
There was nervous laughter and a collective drawing of breath. “All right,” Maddie said, pressing down on the gas pedal. “Here we go.”
They turned onto Beach Road and headed toward number ten.
At the end of the road John Franklin’s Cadillac was bellied up to the curb. The Realtor and his wife stood in front of the white garden wall in the middle of what might have been a small sandbar. Renée Franklin was crying.
“I’m not getting a good feeling about this.” Maddie pulled the van to a stop and they clambered out, craning their necks, turning as one for a first glimpse of Bella Flora.
Avery was swept back to the first time she’d seen it and her partners all those months ago. The garden had looked bad then, but it was far worse now. In fact, it was decimated. Trees, plants, and bushes had been torn up by the roots and flung around; sand and seaweed were everywhere; the fabulous concrete fountain had toppled and smashed into far too many pieces to ever be put back together again.
But the front façade of the house appeared intact—chipped up and still damp, but all there. Even the windows seemed all right. Until Avery tilted her head up just a bit. And realized that from the doorway over there was no red tile, angled or otherwise. Because there was no roof for it to cling to.
“Oh, my God,” she breathed. “Not the roof.”
John Franklin looked helpless. Renée was in mourning. “My poor triple hibiscus,” she breathed. “That lovely jasmine and frangipani. And wait until you see what’s happened to the reclinada.”
“This doesn’t look that bad,” Deirdre said. “If it’s just a few sections of the roof, we can . . .”
The Realtor shook his head sadly. “This is the only exposure that doesn’t face water. It gets worse.”
Numb, they followed him around the west side of the house where pretty much all of the windows were either shattered or missing. Puddles of broken glass lay on the ground. There was no red tile poking over the edge of the house here, either. The western half of Bella Flora’s roof had been torn off by the wind, leaving jagged pieces of the frame poking into the sky. Shards of barrel tile lay everywhere as did pile after pile of debris, some of it mundane, some of it—like the crumpled baby stroller and the volleyball poles and netting—especially troubling.
They rounded the house, their gazes glued to the battered walls. The master bedroom’s wrought-iron balcony and spiral staircase hung crookedly down the back of the house, scraping against what remained of the loggia roof. Avery couldn’t bear to think about what Bella Flora must look like inside with so many of her windows missing and only half of a roof to protect her from the rain and the wind. All of it—the floors and doors, the hardware, the chandeliers, the walls, everything they’d worked on and slaved over, exposed and vulnerable. Deirdre’s kitchen, that work of art Avery had been unable to acknowledge, was bound to be a sodden mess. And what about the things the designers had just installed?
“Oh, my windows,” Maddie groaned. “All that time re-glazing and half of them are just . . . gone.”
“It’ll be all right,” Kyra said as she and Nikki stepped up on either side of Maddie. “We’ll just move into the pool house again and . . .” She panned her camera away from the house and toward the pass. They turned with her. And saw the reclinada palm, torn out by the roots, lying across it, the roof smashed but intact. One glassless French door lay at the bottom of the filthy pool along with the outdoor furniture.
Deirdre took Avery’s hand and squeezed it. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “It’s a good strong house with great bones. As long as it’s still standing, it can be fixed.”
Avery removed her hand and wiped it on her pant leg, automatically lashing out. “I’m not some rich client with endless money that you can jolly along,” she said. “This is not the time to bullshit.”
“It’s not the time to quit, either,” Deirdre snapped. “It’s never the time to quit.”
Avery snorted.
“I can’t believe this,” Maddie whispered. “How could this happen now?”
“It’ll be all right, Mom,” Kyra said.
“I knew I should have kept my eyes closed,” Maddie said. “I can’t bear to look at her like this.”
Avery couldn’t have agreed more. She wanted to leave right now and pretend none of it had happened. Her stomach rolled and she felt her gorge rise. Hurrying away from the group she reached a stand of sea oats and lost her breakfast. A brown pelican watched with sad eyes, making Avery fe
el even more pathetic.
Straightening, she stared out toward the beach and noticed that the fishing pier was gone, ripped from its concrete pilings and most likely lying at the bottom of the Gulf. The beach itself looked different; the sand oddly piled and rearranged, the walkovers smashed like matchsticks. The water was a murky green like some smoothie gone awry. Or a dirty martini with too many olives that had been both shaken and stirred.
Car doors slammed, and there were shouts. Avery looked up and saw Chase and Jeff and the boys standing frozen in front of Bella Flora. A wave of relief rushed through her and she tried to banish it, but she was embarrassingly glad to see him. The Hardins stood for a few long moments clearly taking in the damage, then headed around Bella Flora. Chase looked up and spotted her. He said something to his dad and then walked toward her.
“Are you all right?” He came directly to her and cupped the nape of her neck in his big warm hand. “You look almost as beat up as Bella Flora.”
She smiled a ridiculously wobbly smile. She couldn’t seem to locate their normal combative tone. “And that’s saying something.”
“We took the boys camping. I didn’t even hear Charlene had been upgraded until late yesterday,” he said. “We got back as fast as we could.”
Avery nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“I was so afraid something had happened to you.” He said this quietly but with a depth of feeling that she’d never heard from him before.
Hot tears formed. She broke eye contact to look at Bella Flora. “Something did.”
“Ah, Avery.” He pulled her close and she buried her face in his chest, breathing in the scent of wood smoke and pine forest. “She’s a beauty, but she’s just a house. She can be rebuilt.”
He put both of his arms around her and held her there. “Truly maddening women like you are harder to come by.” Carefully, he set her away from him and looked down into her eyes. “You’re a lot of things, Avery. Many of them incredibly annoying. But you’re no quitter.” He smiled, and she dredged one up to match it, but he was wrong. And so was Deirdre. She didn’t have the strength or the money to start over. None of them did.
Near the pool Jeff Hardin shook his head in dismay. Even John Franklin seemed subdued, leaning on his wife in a way that belied the blow they’d all taken. Maddie looked like someone had punched her in the gut. Every time any kind of vehicle could be heard she paused for a moment with a sad yet hopeful look that made Avery’s heart hurt even more. Nikki looked both angry and oddly determined. Kyra hid behind her camera, moving through the rubble, documenting the damage.
Forty-one
Like their very first night on Beach Road, their last would be spent at the Cottage Inn.
They’d spent the last three days doing what they could to clean up Bella Flora. Like triage nurses in a war zone, they focused on making the bleeding stop and the patient comfortable.
The show house designers came to remove what was salvageable and prepare their insurance claims for what wasn’t. The Dumpster returned to its former spot on the brick drive and filled so quickly it might have been a trick of time-lapse photography—one moment empty, the next brimming with the once-beautiful architectural details and contents of the wounded house.
Maddie, Avery, Nikki, Kyra, and Deirdre swept and mopped and wet-vacced and carried while Chase and Jeff and their crew cleared away the remains of the broken bell tower, then boarded up the missing windows and doors. Enrico and his team ripped off the damaged trussing, gathered the few whole barrel tiles, and covered Bella Flora’s gaping insides with a patchwork of tarps so that she looked like some moth-eaten circus tent that had seen better days.
It seemed to Maddie that virtually everyone who had had a hand in rebuilding Bella Flora showed up at some point to help. When they left they shook Maddie’s and the others’ hands and offered their condolences as one might after a funeral. It seemed appropriate to Maddie because deep inside she felt as if a family member had died.
Before dawn of their last day, Maddie lay in bed searching for the strength she needed to get through the next twenty-four hours. She was no longer the Little Red Hen and she surely was not the emotional Energizer Bunny. She was tired, bone tired, and she still couldn’t believe that all they had achieved had been snatched so meanly away.
She chided herself for a fool and admitted once and for all that her optimism about her marriage was as riddled with wishful thinking as her optimism for Bella Flora. Steve had not been there for his family for the last nine months, and he wasn’t here now. Cell service had finally been restored, but Andrew seemed to know no more about his father’s plans than Maddie, who’d heard nothing from Steve. Her calls to him had gone directly to voice mail, and after a couple of really pathetic messages she’d forced herself to stop calling. Perhaps he and his mother were now vacationing on the moon.
Too restless to stay in bed, Maddie got up and dressed quietly, careful not to wake Kyra as she tiptoed out of their cottage. Unable to face Bella Flora, she walked over to the bay and settled in to watch the sunrise, hoping for inspiration. But not even the bright ball of yellow sun ascending over the water and lightening the sky cheered her. Shoving her hands into the pockets of her shorts she walked along the sidewalk, noting the damage to the big homes on the other side of the bay, sidestepping the drifts of sand and seaweed along with the odd piles of debris that Charlene had deposited everywhere from the far curb to the center of the narrow streets.
At Eighth Avenue she noticed that Merry Pier, like the fishing jetty on the gulf side, was gone, ripped from its pilings, most likely not for the first time. The shops were tightly closed and the restaurants unopened. One or two people passed, walking dogs or maybe, like her, not yet ready to confront their realities. She peered down the block-long streets and saw others picking through and carting away debris, throwing open windows, sweeping away the sand. She paused to marvel at a piece of plywood embedded in the trunk of a palm tree and tried not to breathe in the smell of dead fish that permeated the air. Pass-a-Grille hadn’t been wiped off the map, but it wasn’t exactly ready for its close-up, either.
Turning on Eleventh, Maddie walked toward the beach. For a while she stood and watched the beach cleanup under way, pained by the flattened dunes and piles of foreign debris, the scattered pieces of wood that had once been walkovers.
She headed slowly back toward Bella Flora, dragging her feet along the sidewalk, still not ready to face the house they’d nurtured and brought back to life just as she had done for them. Turning, she took one last look down the beach, knowing that if there had been a couch and a remote handy she would have availed herself of them. Just like Steve had.
Footsteps sounded on the pavement behind her. When she heard the voice she thought she might have conjured it.
“Maddie?” the voice that sounded like Steve’s asked. “Is that you? Are you okay?”
She turned slowly, still thinking she was imagining things, not at all prepared for the reality of Steve.
“Maddie?”
A host of emotions bombarded her as she took in his appearance, the uncertainty on his face. She’d imagined this so many times, hoped for it, prayed for it, but now that he was here she felt not the relief and happiness she’d imagined but an unexpected wariness. And the first stirrings of anger.
With his gaze on her face, he said, “Emma’s place is so far up in the mountains we had no cell service at all. And she favors Wheel of Fortune and General Hospital over the news. Then my cell phone fell out of my pocket and got run over while I was moving in my mother’s things.” He paused, seeming to realize that he was running on and she wasn’t responding.
“Anyway, I didn’t realize what was going on here until I got back to Atlanta. That was after dinnertime yesterday. We drove all night.” His voice trailed off. “We went to the house and Kyra said you might be out here.”
A small voice told her to cross the distance between them, to put her arms around him, to be grateful that he w
as finally here. But she didn’t feel grateful. She’d been through so much: their dire financial situation, his breakdown, Kyra’s pregnancy, the appearance of Daniel Deranian and Hurricane Charlene, and had dealt with all of them alone. Steve had been more than her husband; he’d been her best friend. Yet he’d deserted her when she’d needed him most. Could she throw herself into his arms and pretend she hadn’t felt abandoned?
She didn’t want to think what would have happened to her if she hadn’t had Avery and Nikki. “I didn’t think you were going to come at all,” Maddie said. “I didn’t even realize it until now, but I guess I’d given up.”
“Don’t say that.” Steve took a step closer. “Your belief in me is what pulled me through. Your ultimatum, the thought of losing you, was what finally got me up off that damned couch. Not exactly on time, but up. Please tell me I’m not too late.”
They stared at each other. She wasn’t sure what he saw, but she didn’t feel like the same person who’d left Atlanta in May, not even close. He looked like the “old” Steve, shaved, his hair neatly trimmed, his eyes clear and focused, his voice sad and regretful. But she couldn’t see him in the same old way.
“You didn’t call,” she said. “You didn’t answer my messages. I needed you, and you couldn’t make yourself return a phone call?” Her throat clogged with all the pent-up anxiety that she’d tried so hard to beat back down. “Those ridiculous texts. They were so vague and so . . . nothing. What were those?” The anger grew hotter, like the sun overhead.
“They were the best I could do, Mad,” he said. “I was afraid to promise anything I couldn’t deliver. And I was so ashamed.”
He looked out over the beach and then back to her. “I didn’t want to come until I had something to offer. I . . .” He gestured to the nearby bench. “Will you sit a minute and just listen?”
They sat facing each other. Although she didn’t offer it, he took her hand in both of his, which was another shock. How long had it been since they’d touched in any way?