“When you quit bitching. Could be years from now.” He sent her a grin. “How was Iowa? You were there last week, right?”
She nodded. “Hot, flat, and boring as bedamned. I don’t know how people live there. There are hardly any buildings and the air doesn’t smell like air; it smells like cow manure and dirt.” She looked out the window and watched the suburban scenery evolve from business to gentility before continuing. “Got my backside properly situated in a sling while I was there.”
“Who did you insult?”
“Thanks for your support.” She let out a frustrated sigh. “And I didn’t insult. I disappointed everyone from the bean counters up to Davis Lee. My famous storms. They’re getting me into trouble every time I turn around.”
Richard chuckled quietly. “Kate, come on. You missed two storms in how many years?”
“See, that’s just it. It’s not years. That would be acceptable. I missed three big ones within three months, Richard. I still don’t know how I did it.” Shaking her head, she turned to him again. “I was tracking the systems, made all the right calls, and then—wham. Kate Sherman’s credibility takes a thirty-five-mile-an-hour hit. And now, Simone is rearing her ugly head.”
“Not so ugly and not so big,” he pointed out.
“Yet.”
“And not at all unexpected,” Richard continued. “With all the strange weather that has been going on over the entire middle of the country for the last few weeks, something big was bound to kick up soon. Anyway, shake it off, Kate. I’ve got a whole mess of oysters to roast on the grill—”
“Oh God.” She slumped against the seat. “You’re going to poison me with that down-home cooking again, aren’t you? I keep telling you, Chinese takeout is fine, Richard. Pizza, even. The real stuff, I mean, not the Greenwich goat-cheese-and-shredded-weeds kind.”
Richard laughed as he turned down the private beach-front road toward his house, one of the few remaining 1920s bungalows in Old Greenwich that hadn’t been stripped to its foundations and rebuilt as Versailles Lite.
Still only one story with three small bedrooms and one bath in a neighborhood of three-story palaces with more square footage than the average elementary school, the home’s ramshackle coziness seemed to Kate to be tangible evidence of Richard’s view of life.
Richard Carlisle was a national fixture in the mornings. All across the country, people tuned in to watch him and find out what to wear and whether a storm was going to hit their city. Such popularity could have made him a real jerk instead of merely wealthy. But he’d remained the same guy Kate had taken classes from a decade and a half ago: simple, unpretentious, and concerned with little more than the basic necessities for himself and the world at large. He cloaked his hippie sensibilities in a buttoned-down demeanor, delivered good science in an easy, accessible way, and didn’t have much use for outward shows of wealth. Except for that 1961 E-type Jaguar he’d remodeled his garage for.
He brought the Rover to a stop near the back door, and Kate climbed out with some encouragement in the form of a large wet nose placed against the back of her neck. Moving only slightly ahead of Finn, Kate pushed open the back door that Richard never locked and dropped her backpack on the kitchen floor, then headed straight for the refrigerator and a Red Stripe. The room’s comfortable clutter was witness to the ten years he’d spent in the house with his wife. And the last two years he’d lived there without her.
“You need a maid,” she muttered.
“You need some manners.”
She grinned at him as she pried off the cap. “So what’s on the schedule besides dinner?”
“I just got another set of blooper tapes from Joe Toliver if you’re interested,” he replied. Joe had been a classmate of Kate’s at Cornell who had become one of the new breed of meteorologists who hit the beach when the big waves did, microphone in hand and camera in tow. He also collected blooper and audition tapes from God knew where and compiled them for snide, private fun.
“One of these days he’s going to get sued.” Kate grimaced. “I haven’t recovered from the last set. The image of that sweet young thing going ass-up into the air when lightning struck the news van has stayed with me.”
“Good thing she wasn’t closer to the mast or she would have ended up with more than a broken arm and a bruised ego.” Richard took a beer from the refrigerator and leaned against the counter as he opened it. “Anyway, a new set arrived today and Joe assures me they’re the best so far. I think he’s getting ready to market them, because he’s starting to organize them according to weather event. Snowstorms, lightning strikes, and the all-important non-event of good weather.”
“Speaking of bloopers, when is your adventure in Barbados going to make it into his collection? It’s not every day you see the granddaddy of television weather reporting slide headfirst into a stone wall in a seventy-five-milean-hour gust.”
He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not going to be included by private agreement. Besides, everyone has already seen it on YouTube. Come on, let’s go outside. We might as well enjoy the sunset while I get the grill fired up. That low-pressure system is going to move in by ten.”
Kate shook her head with a smile. “I don’t care what your bones are telling you, Richard. It won’t get here till after midnight.”
It was close to ten, and Kate was sitting on the small flagstone patio overlooking Long Island Sound, watching the muted glow of Queens beyond the end of Richard’s small, dilapidated dock. She set her drink on the weathered teak table next to her and leaned back against the cushion of the chaise lounge. The sky was still clear, but the humidity was edging toward being oppressive. The stars had gone from being bright over the water to slightly smudged, and the parade of strobing aircraft transiting above Long Island had remained steady as the night air thickened with the impending storm. Night-blooming flowers growing in pots near the house lent an intoxicating sweetness to the darkness but didn’t overshadow the lingering pungence of sun-baked seaweed and freshly cut grass. Kate had long ago traded this rich, earthy lure for the sharp, man-made tang of city air, but it would always be the perfume of summer on the water, of childhood, of growing up two blocks from the beach in Brooklyn.
She turned as she heard the footfalls of Richard’s bare feet as he crossed the lawn behind her.
“Well?”
“The fact that I made a pig of myself by eating several dozen isn’t enough for you?” Kate laughed. “Okay, I hereby state for the record that oysters roasted on—what kind of wood did you say that was?”
“Apple wood.”
“Well, they’re fabulous. And your potato salad wasn’t bad, either.”
“That came from Whole Foods,” Richard admitted, idly scratching Finn’s head.
“Well done, you, for choosing it, then.” She watched him set a long, cylindrical case on the smooth, weathered stones. “It’s getting too hazy to see anything. Why bother setting up?”
“It’s not too bad yet. And I watch the planes if I can’t see anything natural,” he replied with a smile as he extended the legs of the tripod and set the telescope gently into its mount. “How’s your dad?”
Still dying. Kate lifted the sweating glass of Diet Coke to her lips and replied over its rim, “Slowing down.”
“I’m sorry to hear it, Kate.” His voice held sincerity but stopped short of sympathy. He knew better than to try that.
She lifted a shoulder with a casualness her heart didn’t share. “It was sort of inevitable, wasn’t it? You volunteer to work in the smoking pits of Hell because you’re patriotic and you’re devastated and you don’t know what else to do. And while you’re there, you breathe in billions of toxic particles every day for months and then your lungs start to fail. It’s what happens.”
“How’s your mom handling it?”
“When she’s with him, she’s a saint, and I don’t know how she keeps herself together. But when I’m around her, I definitely detect the scent of burning martyr.”
&n
bsp; “Taking care of someone isn’t easy.” He said it mildly, but Kate cringed at her thoughtlessness. She didn’t have to hide much from Richard, but this was a topic she usually sidestepped. He’d spent five months taking care of his wife as a fast and furious cancer overtook her. It had been two years since she’d passed and he still hadn’t quite come to terms with her absence. The state of his house gave that much away. Ever since Jill had died, the house had been missing something vital. So had Richard.
“I’m sorry, Richard. That was really crass.”
“Yes, it was, but it’s understandable.”
“Maybe.” She took another sip and let her head fall back against the wooden slats. She focused on the reflected lights shimmering in the barely moving water at the end of the dock. Other than some blame-avoiding bureaucratic non-name—Ground Zero Pulmonary Syndrome—no one had identified what was wrong with her father or the hundreds of other early responders who were sick with the same thing. The lack of certainty about what her father had and how it would progress afforded the family some time to adjust. Maybe too much. Either way, it was a small comfort. She was still watching her father die one breath at a time.
“Dad doesn’t complain about a thing. Ever. I mean, he’s working his way through the reading list for some course in classics at Columbia that he found on the Web. He told me that he never had the nerve to read books like those. He thought he wasn’t smart enough, but now he figures it would be a shame to—” She took a deep breath and pushed back against the emotion she felt accumulating in a hard knot at the back of her throat. “Anyway, I do what I can, but the help Mom wants isn’t the help I can give. I offered to hire someone to come in a few times a week and give her a break, but she said no. She wants me to move into the building instead.” She let out a slow, controlled breath. “I live twenty minutes away by subway and it’s not enough. Meanwhile, any discussion of my sister coming home from LA for a visit is sacrosanct.”
“She’s got her own problems.”
So do I. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’m going to change the subject before I get maudlin or just plain angry. It hasn’t been a good week on the home front.”
“Fair enough. How about those Yankees?”
“Like I care. You know I’m a Mets girl,” she replied, forcing into her voice a lightness she didn’t feel. “I have a better topic than that one.”
“I doubt it, but let’s hear it anyway.”
“I’ve added two more storms to my repertoire.”
“Why weren’t you this obsessive when you were taking my classes?” Richard replied without lifting his head from the eyepiece of his telescope.
She smiled. “Because I was eighteen.”
“And now?”
“I’m greedy. Don’t you want to know which ones?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course not. Your storm—”
“I have a storm?”
“Yes. Barbados.”
He lifted his head. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Kate, don’t drag me into this.”
You’re already in it. She shifted in her chair. “I’m not dragging you into anything. I’m including that storm and the Death Valley storm in my discussion. You have to admit that both of those were pretty damned weird. Too weird to write off as coincidence.”
“We’re talking about weather, right? The quintessential chaotic system?” he murmured as he adjusted another knob.
“Yes, and our chosen field.” She paused. “I’m holding off on adding Simone until I see how she plays out.”
“She’s comfortably a Cat 1 now. Did you know that?”
She frowned. “No. When did that happen?”
“Not long ago. I checked the status before I went to pick you up just in case you bashed me over the head with it first thing.”
She rolled her eyes and took another sip from her soda. “Okay, so we have another one in the mix. And, come on, Richard, you know every one of these was more than weird. They were spooky. Off-the-charts spooky.”
“We already hashed this out, Kate—,” he began after a barely discernible hesitation.
“We talked about it, but I don’t recall coming to any conclusion. Look, I know you think I’m nuts, but that’s okay, because I think I’m nuts,” she interrupted.
“No comment.”
“I still say the escalation in all the storms happened too quickly. You can’t change my mind on that. All five of the storms were building within normal ranges for their circumstances, and then with no warning and for no reason I can find, they became way more intense than any reasonable worst-case prediction. It was like they just exploded without anything pulling a trigger. Like, I don’t know, spontaneously.”
“Kate, storms just don’t escalate for no reason. You know that. There was a trigger mechanism. In the case of Simone, it was an underwater seismic event. That’s been documented. And compounding that is all the upper-air turbulence caused by the storms in the Gulf and blowing from the Plains to the Atlantic. Half the country is in flux right now from the jet stream anomalies. As for the other ones, you just haven’t found the triggers. But if you keep looking, you’ll find them eventually and realize they provide perfectly natural explanations.”
She shook her head. “The jury’s still out on that seismic thingie, but there is nothing there for the rest of the storms, Richard. I’ve checked every measurement, every parameter. All the obvious things and even a lot of things that have never been known to play a role—”
“Like pork belly prices? Maybe a butterfly in Tokyo flapped its wings a little harder one day that week—” He raised his head and met her eyes. “What’s this really about? Is something going on with your family?”
The question sliced into her like a paper cut, deep, sharp, and unexpected.
“Don’t go all pop psychology on me,” she said, barely containing her annoyance. “It’s about scientific curiosity. Something you have always revered. There was a time when you would have encouraged me to pursue this instead of practically insisting that I forget it. What changed?”
“Don’t get so annoyed. Nothing has changed. And I’m not insisting that you drop it. You’ve already conducted an in-depth review, so now I’m suggesting that you learn something from the experience, move forward, and apply it,” he replied mildly, bending his head once again to look through the eyepiece. “Maybe absorb a little humility while you’re at it. This is Nature we’re talking about, Kate. It can’t be neatly compartmentalized. Its very essence is chaotic and it operates in at least four dimensions with an infinite number of variables that change constantly.”
“That’s just it, Richard,” she snapped. “I haven’t learned anything. I want to learn something. I want to learn how five entirely unremarkable storms can blow up to extraordinary proportions when there’s no weather system in place to support that level of escalation or intensity, and how one additional storm—the one in Death Valley—literally came out of nowhere.”
He shook his head. “Why don’t you type ‘weather anomaly’ into Google and see what comes up? Maybe you’ll find something interesting.”
“I really don’t see any cause for getting snide. Besides, I’ve done that and I definitely don’t want to go there. I’ll stick to real science, thanks.”
“Kate, you’re a very good forecaster, but everyone makes mistakes. Just move on.” Thunder rumbled in the distance, making him straighten up. “What was that you said about midnight?”
“I haven’t felt a raindrop yet.”
He laughed, but when she didn’t respond in kind, he met her eyes and released a sigh of resignation. “What do you think you’re going to find, Kate?”
“I don’t care what I find, Richard. Anything from a hidden microclimate, to a wind anomaly, to—yes—a conspiracy theory if it can withstand some scrutiny. I just want an answer.”
He busied himself with minute adjustments for several minutes, muttering commentary on the night sky, which was beginning to get hazy
with water vapor.
Kate glanced at her watch only to find Richard’s gaze on her when she looked up. He wore the same smile she’d seen during class so many years ago.
“What time is it?”
She frowned at him, noticing the faint breeze kicking up. “Twenty after ten. Which bone was it this time?”
“Just an achy back. The rain will be here any minute.”
“Not likely.”
“Come on, help me bring in the cushions; then I’ll take you back to the train before the rain really gets going.” He helped her to her feet with a smile. “If it’s keeping you up at night, Kate, then I hope you find your answer, or at least run into someone who’s interested in your questions. You might as well get some mileage out of the time you put into the paper.”
Reluctant to leave the comfort of the chaise lounge prematurely, she got to her feet slowly. “So, out of curiosity, have you actually read it yet?”
“It’s on the top of the stack,” he assured her.
She gave him a look. “How long has it been there?”
“I’ll start it tonight. Look at that. Perfect timing.” He grinned and, as she lifted the cushion she’d just been sitting on, Kate felt a warm, fat raindrop land on her arm with a splat. It did nothing to bolster her confidence.
CHAPTER 13
The tall channels of wet, salty air rose steadily through the night-dark sky, spinning helixes of water, heat, and wind into a single vast vortex of sound, speed, and fury. Fed by the ocean’s trapped heat, the engine spun tirelessly, its convection towers contracting as they passed over cool spots, expanding as they coaxed up from the depths water that should have been colder. Thin outer walls of white at the distant edges of the storm gave way to ever denser walls of gray that spun fast and tight around Nature’s most spectacular creation, the eye of a hurricane, arguably the eye of the gods.
Moonlit calm reigned within it. Seabirds coasted along currents in the thinning air, trapped inside until flung out by an errant updraft, or, too tired to continue circling, they drifted to the calm, dark waters below to test their fates. Beneath the storm the sea rose, pushing upward and outward as it sought to offset the falling air pressure, to move away from the vast energy the storm pushed beneath the churning waves. Those low walls of water bullied their way ahead of the storm, announcing to any creatures with the sentience to know danger that the force without which life could not exist was also the force of death.
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