The Happiness Pact

by Liz Flaherty

  “I like Come On In, but the hardware store already used it. Let’s give it some time and not name it until the perfect title presents itself.”

  “I think you’re right.” Libby looked at her watch. “I also think it’s midnight, the place is clean as a whistle and it’s time to call it a day. I’ll see you in church.”

  “You will if I get out of bed in time.” Neely stretched and groaned. “My mind is still twenty-two, but the body gave that age up forty years ago.”

  The omnipresent wind was whipping as they walked across the newly paved parking lot to the house. Neely waved and got into her car. Libby went up to her apartment. She took a shower, made sure the animals were all right and fell into bed. It had been a very long day.

  At two thirty, she sat up in bed. She had no idea how she knew it was two thirty, because there was no power. The darkness in her room was absolute. Beside her, Elijah meowed plaintively. That was alarming in itself, because he’d been silent ever since Jesse had brought him to her as a starved and abused kitten. Even when he purred, she could only tell if she was holding him.

  “What’s wrong, kitty?” she murmured, shoving her hair out of her eyes. “Can’t read the clock?”

  Across the room, Pretty Boy woofed.

  Libby turned on the flashlight she kept in the nightstand and got out of bed. She went to the bathroom, came back and petted the disturbed animals, and started to crawl back into bed.

  She’d just gotten the pillow into the right position under her head when she realized what had awakened her in the first place. When she’d come into the house, she’d left the money bag lying on the reception desk in the carriage house. She thought she’d locked the door and set the alarm, but had she? She’d been talking to Neely as they left the building, and no one had ever accused her of being a multitasker even on her best day.

  While Nate had paid for the use of the facility with his credit card, most of the other expenses had been paid in cash. In addition to that, she kept a bank of small bills for people who needed change. There was a lot of money in that bag, and that was important when it came to her new mortgage payment.

  She couldn’t go back to sleep. The lights didn’t come back on, and she was wide-awake. Elijah meowed again. Pretty Boy leaped onto the foot of the bed and lay there in silent wakefulness, much like Libby’s own.

  “Okay.” She got up again, tossing a robe on over her tank top and pajama shorts and pushing her feet into flip-flops. “I can’t sleep until I get that money into the house, and obviously you guys can’t, either. You coming with me?” She grabbed the flashlight and shone it on her watch again.

  Two forty-five.

  It was eerily quiet when she stepped outside with the animals beside her. No birdsong, no wind, no rustle of leaves. No cars drove past on the gravelly street. She didn’t even hear the muted slapping of the water, the “laker’s lullaby.”

  Into the soundlessness came the strident wail of a siren. Not the usual whoops or blats of fire trucks or ambulances or police cars, but an insistent one that hurt her ears as it bounced off the water. It was the kind of noise Tucker heard even if his good ear was covered. She recognized the tornado siren—they checked it at noon on the first Monday of every month, driving everyone crazy for three minutes.

  This wasn’t noon. Or Monday.

  She’d always heard that fear caused a metallic sensation in one’s mouth, although she’d never noticed it. Until now. She stood still on the paved drive between Seven Pillars and the carriage house, listening. Waiting for the sound to stop.

  When it did, she relaxed. It was just a warning, that was all, to make people aware and watchful. Not everyone woke on their own at two thirty. But when the siren stopped, the silence was back. Heavy and unnerving. Elijah, held firmly in her arms, meowed again. Pretty Boy leaned against her legs.

  And then it wasn’t silent at all. It was like the stories she’d read about the long-ago Palm Sunday tornadoes in the issues of the Elkhart Truth and the South Bend Tribune her father had kept from 1965. It was as if she were standing on the tracks with a freight train bearing down at full throttle. The air was oppressive, and stinger-like twigs and gravel blew against her bare legs.

  She looked wildly between the house and the carriage house. The house had a basement, but the carriage house was closer and two of its restrooms were in the center of the building, built where the tack room used to be. No windows, just vents that went...where did they go? It seemed important to know, but she didn’t.

  The sky was unnervingly black, but when relief from the gloom came, it was worse. She could see the rotating funnel as it roared across the lake. It was coming straight toward her, and she wondered with no small amount of terror how it could see her in the darkness. She shouted at Pretty Boy to “Come on!” but didn’t wait to see if he followed as she dashed toward the French doors of the carriage house.

  They were locked. Oh, dear God, they were locked! And what was the combination? She knew it as well as she knew her own...that was it! She punched in the scrambled digits of her Social Security number with a trembling finger, vowing if she lived through this night she’d change the combination to something shorter. Two digits, a two and a seven. That way, Tucker would remember it even if she didn’t, because that’s how much older than him she was.

  Oh, Tucker. The roar was surrounding her, pushing her and the animals inside the building and taking her breath away with its suffocating force. “Come on,” she said again, gasping, holding Elijah so close he struggled against her. Oh, Tuck, I wish I’d told you—

  * * *

  IT WAS AN unusual Saturday night. Restless and empty. There was almost always something going on at the lake during spring and summer, but this week was different. Even the Saturday night acoustic jam session at the clubhouse, which he hardly ever attended, had been canceled this week.

  Tucker hadn’t realized how much time he’d spent with Libby on their adventures until he asked her to go on one and she told him she couldn’t because it was the first week of business for the event center. His first thought—thankfully one he didn’t voice—was that she should have gotten more people to help, because it was going to be too much work for her and Neely. But then she told him about the two women she’d hired from Rent-a-Wife.

  Tucker was much more business minded than his brother. When they decided to share the CEO position at Llewellyn’s Lures, one of the reasons was that their skill sets differed so much that each of them brought something of value to the table. Jack was hands-on and practical, keeping operations going and growing; Tucker was the idea guy who got bored as soon as things were up and running.

  He wouldn’t have wanted to run a business without his brother, much less stick around long enough to help make it grow. He admired that Libby, with her high school education and handwritten business plan, was so successful.

  He wished she was happy, because he knew as surely as the sun had risen and set today that she wasn’t. Not really. Most of the time she put up a good pretense, but the mask was growing thin.

  He walked to Anything Goes early in the evening, finding Jesse at the bar. They ate dinner together then played darts, nursing draft beer and watching the water react to the wind lashing at its surface. “Tornado watch,” Mollie called from behind the bar, watching the television closest to her, “till four in the morning.”

  “Nighttime ones are the worst.” The observation came from one of the men in the dominoes corner. He sounded morose. “Recall that’n that went through Evansville in aught-five? Twenty-some people killed just like that. My missus can’t fall asleep if there’s watches or warnings going on.”

  “Sounds like Dad,” Jesse murmured. He tipped his mug to drain the last of his beer. “Some of us just order another beer and pretend not to worry.”

  The door to the grill swung open, and Holly came in. She waved at ev
eryone, but her eyes were solely on Jesse. Tucker had to bite back a wash of envy.

  Someone who looked at him like that. Yeah, that’s what he wanted. Someone with dark gray eyes and a short nose and a smile that lit up his soul.

  He put money on the bar and stepped away, handing Holly his darts. “I think I’ll head for home. Dr. Jesse here probably needs a driver—or will when he finishes that one. You going to stay around?”

  She smiled at him. “I thought I would. Are these darts lucky?”

  “Not so far.” He gave her shoulders a squeeze and waved at Mollie.

  The parking lot between Seven Pillars and the carriage house was emptying as he passed. Golf course builders from all over the country as well as Nate’s friends from North Carolina had shown up to play at Feathermoor and discuss design with Nate. The cottages at Hoosier Hills Cabins and Campground on the other side of the lake were full. So were the bed-and-breakfasts that had sprung up in the area over the past few years. The weather had cooperated until now—the weekend had been shorts weather. Tucker and Jack had both taken the pontoon out.

  The wind rose and ebbed, and he hoped the impending storms would blow themselves out before doing any damage. The cabins at the resort were particularly vulnerable, but the owner was a lifetime laker; he would never endanger guests. He probably had them in the basement barroom of the building that housed the lobby and camp store, playing pool and poker.

  Jack and Charlie were watching a movie when he got to the Dower House. He joined them, ate a piece of frozen pizza he didn’t really want and finally went to bed with a book at midnight. The wind was howling when he fell asleep. The last numbers he saw on his clock were one-two-three. He chuckled.

  “Tuck! Let’s go!”

  He came awake immediately at the urgency in Jack’s voice, following it into the wide upstairs hallway, because there was no light to lead him there. The full darkness in the house let him know the power was out. His brother and nephew were on the stairs, nearly halfway down from the sound of their footsteps. “Hurry!” Charlie’s voice, which had deepened over the past months to the point that Tucker didn’t always recognize it on the phone, was childishly high.

  It had been years since he’d been in the Dower House’s basement. He knew a moment’s regret on the stairs that he hadn’t taken time to put on shoes. He didn’t remember what the floor was like down there.

  He was relieved to feel concrete where the stairs stopped. A moment later, a light flickered to life, and then another. He looked from the battery-powered lanterns to his brother’s shadowy face. “How did you know they were down here?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack admitted. “Do you have your cell phone?”

  “No. I barely have clothes on.”

  They all barely had clothes on. If fear and worry hadn’t entered the basement with them, they’d have laughed at each other. Jack was wearing basketball shorts and a tank top. Charlie had on Star Wars pajama pants and a T-shirt in the only possible color that wouldn’t match them. Tucker had on gray sweatpants he might possibly have worn when he went to Vanderbilt.

  He watched as his brother hugged Charlie to him and remembered the December ice storm when Charlie had run away from his grandparents’ home and Llewellyn’s Lures had caught fire. The power had gone out then, too, but he remembered the look on Jack’s face when he hadn’t known where Charlie was. Later, when Charlie was safe and there’d been time to think about it, he’d wondered what it would be like to risk yourself to such a great degree by loving someone that much.

  Standing in the basement of the Dower House, hearing the wind roar overhead, he was pretty sure he already did. He wished he’d told her.

  * * *

  IN THE BASEMENT of Seven Pillars, Libby kept emergency candles, battery-powered lanterns and extra blankets. An extra pantry was full of food, and so was the extra freezer.

  Knowing that did her no good whatsoever as she huddled in an eight-by-twelve-foot restroom in the middle of the carriage house. She was glad she’d tucked a rocking chair into the corner of the room beside the cabinet that housed extra toilet paper and paper towels.

  “At least,” she told the animals, “we’ll die in comparative comfort.”

  She’d always faced life’s challenges head-on. She’d done what she had to following her parents’ deaths, after the accident. When she’d bought the house that became Seven Pillars and lived for the first few years with the paralyzing fear that she’d made a mistake, she’d dealt with that. When she’d had to acknowledge that her kind of depression wasn’t a quick fix, she’d...well, not dealt with it, precisely, but learned to live with it.

  It was odd, she thought, sitting there with Elijah in her lap, that although they’d been nearly constant companions lately, panic and anxiety weren’t pushing at her mind right now. Her breathing and heartbeat weren’t erratic. Not very, anyway.

  Because she thought she was going to die and had accepted it. She wouldn’t say she’d invited it—she’d taken cover from the storm, for heaven’s sake—but she expected it. And was okay with it.

  “Living’s harder,” Gianna had told her one time after a particularly distressing panic attack. “Linda’s parents know that. I know that. You know it, too. But it’s worthwhile. It’s always worthwhile. We have people who depend on us.”

  But Libby didn’t. She had Jesse, but he would be all right without her—Holly would see to that. There was no one in the world Libby would rather trust to love her brother.

  “It could end now, in this storm. It could be me who goes instead of someone’s mother or father or, even worse, someone’s child,” she said, her voice a desperate whisper in the dark room. “It’s not that I haven’t loved people or that they haven’t loved me.” Her voice caught, and she wondered why she was speaking aloud with no one but two animals to listen, but she went on anyway. “It’s just that it’s so hard. No one depends on me, not like Gianna meant, and I couldn’t help those who did. Not Mom or Dad or even the others in the accident. By the time I woke up, I couldn’t help anyone.” Her voice cracked. “It would be all right if it ended.”

  She was wearing her watch, but the flashlight’s battery had failed, so she couldn’t see it. She didn’t know how long they sat there. Even after the roar from outside stopped, leaving the faint sound of sirens in its wake, she was reluctant to leave the dark stillness of the room.

  Because maybe it really had ended and this was what it was like.

  That was when she heard the voice.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  TREE LIMBS AND pieces of roofing were everywhere, so Tucker and Jack didn’t bother with a car; they took the golf cart instead. People were already out, some just looking around wearing expressions ranging from avidly curious to horrified. Others were already working in the light afforded by lanterns and flashlights. They stacked branches and twigs into piles at the edge of the road, or worked in yards with neighbors. Chain saws sent up a staccato roar that echoed off the lake.

  Arlie’s and Jack’s texts had crossed each other, so they knew all the Gallaghers were all right. Gianna’s house had been slightly damaged and a tree had fallen on Arlie’s car, but there were no injuries.

  Tucker couldn’t reach Libby. He got hold of Jesse, safe at the farm with Holly, and found out he couldn’t reach his sister, either. “I’m on my way,” said Jesse.

  “I’ll see you at Seven Pillars.”

  Jack, driving the golf cart, stopped at the Toe. “You stay with Grandma Gi,” he ordered Charlie as Arlie ran out of the house carrying her medical bag. “Don’t go anywhere else. Do you hear me?”

  Charlie nodded. Arlie nearly knocked him over hugging him, then took his place on the back of the golf cart. “I can’t reach her, either.” She answered Tucker’s unasked question, grasping his arm gently and holding his gaze with steady whiskey-colored eyes. Her th
roaty voice was soft, steady. “But the tornado evidently went right through Main Street. The sheriff’s department already called to tell me there was damage to A Woman’s Place. One of the vacant buildings near it was flattened.” She bit her lip, as if she might know more, then shook her head and rested it for a minute against Jack’s back.

  It was surreal. Power was still out, but there was enough emergency lighting to see the damage that had been done. Tucker heard generators start up as they drove toward Main Street. With the sound came more light. More people working.

  Lake Road was a mess of tree limbs and leaves, but no worse than it often was after a spring storm. Main Street, on the other hand, looked like a war zone. The barbershop’s roof was gone. The sign that had graced the front of the Come On In hardware store for as long as any of them could remember had been snatched up and lay in pieces on the street. The storage shed behind Rent-a-Wife had been picked up and set neatly in the center of a lot left vacant by the land’s new owner.

  Jack stopped in the middle of the block when someone called Arlie’s name. “Over here,” called the unknown voice. “Someone’s cut pretty bad.”

  She jumped off the cart, carrying her bag, and Jack drove on, coasting to a stop at Seven Pillars.

  They sat for a fractured moment, staring at what had been Libby’s dream. Jack’s hand came to rest on Tucker’s arm. “She’s probably all right. You know Lib. She wouldn’t have slept through the storm.”

  The big Victorian was gone. Its large lot looked as if the swirling razor of wind that had decimated Main Street had taken special aim and exploded the big house. Wreckage covered the front yard. The white fence she’d been so proud of lay splintered beneath the debris. In grim contrast, the gazebo that had sat outside the tearoom’s side doors and was used for outside dining in summer was untouched. Even the wrought iron tables and chairs inside it looked ready for occupation, unmoved by the twister that had devastated their surroundings.