“Ay, I’m not so blind that I didn’t just see all the lights go out,” said Milagros. “No es bueno.”
If Milagros was saying this wasn’t good, we were screwed. “We need to go get the girls,” I said to Shiloh.
“Let me grab the flashlights first,” said Hector from somewhere behind me.
“I appreciate that, but I don’t want to wait in case they try to come out and find us in the dark,” I said.
“I’ll go, Libby. You follow when you have a flashlight,” Shiloh told me.
“Be careful,” I said, reaching out to touch his arm. I’d always thought that the advice not to go to bed angry was ridiculous—who had the energy to stay up and argue, when a good night’s sleep would fix most everything on its own? Now I saw the wisdom in it. What if our last real conversation ended up being the one I couldn’t manage to have? “I’ll be right behind you,” I told him.
Hector, who had already disappeared, was muttering to himself in Spanish and English from the other room. It wasn’t until he’d gotten quiet again that the hum of the refrigerator, now gone, drew my attention to another problem.
“Charlotte’s insulin,” I said immediately.
“Eh?” said Milagros. “¿Qué es?”
“Charlotte’s insulin and test strips need to be refrigerated when it’s this hot out.” I sounded frantic—because I was. This was so much worse than I’d even allowed myself to imagine.
I could barely make out Milagros’ outline in the darkness. “Don’t worry, mija,” she said. “The fridge will stay cold for at least a day if we don’t open it. And the storm won’t last more than a day or two.”
That had been true of Maria, too, but the electricity had been out for months afterward, and access to the island had been blocked for weeks. Who was to say that this wouldn’t be the same?
“Here we are,” replied Hector, who’d reappeared. He handed me two lit-up flashlights.
“Thank you so much,” I said to him.
“De nada. I’m sorry the storm picked this week to arrive.”
“Bad timing on our part.” The worst, in fact—but now wasn’t the time to split hairs. “I’m going to go check on Shiloh and the girls. We’ll be back as soon as possible.”
“Be careful,” said Milagros. “Mother Nature isn’t messing around today.”
As if to reiterate her point, a large piece of plastic flew past my face as I opened the back door. I tucked my chin to my chest, covered my head, and ran for the guesthouse.
Shiloh had just woken the girls up when I let myself inside.
“Didn’t I say we were doomed?” said Isa. When I shone the flashlight on her, she was looking at me like I’d conjured the storm just for her benefit. “Didn’t I say that jellyfish was a sign?”
“Knock it off. You sound like Uncle Paul,” I told her, even as my pulse whooshed in my ears. I handed one of the flashlights to Shiloh, already running through a mental inventory of what we needed. “Help the girls get ready while I get the snacks and Charlotte’s insulin and kit,” I told him. She would need both in a few short hours, and I didn’t want to have to run back to the guesthouse again—though with the way the wind was wailing, I wasn’t sure that would even be an option at that point.
“This sucks,” muttered Charlotte, pulling on a pair of shorts. “I want to go back to sleep.”
“Me, too. I was having the best dream,” said Isa, who’d fallen back on the sofa and draped her arm over her eyes.
“Were you dreaming that you were home?” said Charlotte.
“How did you know?”
“Because I happen to be with you on the . . .” Charlotte started doing jazz hands.
“Worst vacation . . . ,” said Isa in a show-tunes voice.
“Ever!” said Charlotte.
“Not funny,” I said firmly. “Not funny at all.”
“We’re totally doomed, aren’t we?” said Charlotte.
I shone the flashlight in their direction so that they couldn’t see my expression. “No,” I said firmly. “We’re going to be fine.”
But for all I knew, this would not only be the worst vacation ever, but also our last—all because I’d insisted on trying to re-create an experience that was impossible to replicate.
What had I done?
NINETEEN
Outside, the wind continued to howl and rattle Milagros’ metal-slatted shutters, while rain pummeled the roof. The weather was just the start of my worries. Charlotte’s insulin and test strips would stop working if they sat in the heat for too long. With the fans off and the windows closed, the house was already sweltering; it was only a matter of time before the fridge would be, too. We’d need to find either a health clinic or a place with a generator and a refrigerator as soon as we could leave the house.
And I had no idea when that might be.
In spite of the racket, Milagros and Hector went back to bed; she was concerned about being able to see with only a flashlight to light her way. Likewise, Shiloh was drifting in and out of sleep on one of the sofas, while the girls were dozing beside me on the other. I was glad someone was able to rest, because I sure wasn’t. I knew I’d need my energy soon, but I was so wired that every time I closed my eyes I kept imagining the roof flying off, trees hitting the house, water rushing at us.
And Charlotte, shaking, sweating, unable to get her blood sugar under control, as the rest of us looked on, helpless.
“Mommy?” she said. She’d been asleep, too, but her whole body had just jerked suddenly, like she was dreaming about falling, and now she was awake.
“What is it, love? Are you feeling okay?” I asked, trying to keep the concern out of my voice. She hadn’t called me Mommy in ages.
“I’m fine,” she mumbled. “But it’s hard to sleep—it’s so hot in here. Can you tell us a childhood story?”
“Of course,” I said, already racking my brain. The girls loved to hear about my childhood, or at least the version of it that I shared—they didn’t need to find out how, say, I slept in the same bed with Paul for years longer than it was socially acceptable because I was afraid he might up and die on me, just like our mother had.
“Not the one about Uncle Paul stealing your candy,” said Isa, who Charlotte must have woken. She was referring to the time he’d pilfered every remaining piece of candy from my plastic Halloween pumpkin, scarfed it all down, then promptly Pollocked our living room walls with regurgitated chocolate. We were five then, so I barely remembered the actual event; it was really my mother’s belly-laughing recollection of it a few years later that I’d recounted to the girls.
“Or the one about the time Grandpa made you and Uncle Paul wear the same shirt,” said Charlotte.
“You’re lucky I haven’t used that one on you two yet.” I smiled to myself, thinking of how my father had made Paul and me squeeze side by side into an oversized T-shirt—albeit for all of three minutes—as punishment for slapping each other during a particularly heated argument. Paul and I rarely fought, but when we did, it had been epic. “Your grandfather is something else,” I said. “Was,” I quickly corrected myself.
A sob was bubbling up from deep within, and I did my best to swallow it. It wasn’t as though my father would have been able to airlift us off the island. But if I’d been able to talk to him, I might actually believe this was all going to work out—which was pretty much the exact opposite of how I was currently feeling. “You guys have already heard all my good stories,” I said.
“What about one about Grandma?” said Isa.
A story about my mother: this was a tall order. Little details remained, like the way her smile felt like the sun on my skin. But many of my memories were tinged with sadness from the years she spent in treatment, and worse, the ones that followed.
I was about to admit the well was dry when something came rushing back to me. “Actually . . . I do remember something I haven’t told you before,” I said.
“Is it sad?” asked Charlotte.
“I
don’t mind,” said Isa. “Some of my favorite stories are a little bit sad.”
All stories were a little bit sad if you stayed with them long enough. But eventually my girls would learn that for themselves. “Depends on how you look at it,” I said. “You know your Grandma Charlotte had cancer, right?”
They nodded.
“Not the same kind as me. And unlike me, she never went into remission,” I said, making a mental note to finally tell them about my test results if we ever got through this storm. “Anyway, Grandma’s treatment made her hair fall out.”
“Was it scary?” whispered Charlotte.
I could still remember opening the bathroom door and finding her in front of the mirror, examining a bald patch. I startled at the sight of her scalp, but her smile in the reflection calmed me just as fast.
“Kind of, because I wasn’t used to seeing her like that,” I admitted. “But she wanted to make it less scary for me, so she put on a hat and asked Grandpa to watch me and Uncle Paul while she went to the store. Grandpa took us to the park, and when we got home our car was in the driveway, so we knew Grandma was back. But when we went into the kitchen, there was a woman with a bright red clown wig standing over the sink. Your Uncle Paul took one look at her and began to scream bloody murder. Which scared the pee out of me—so I ran and got a big umbrella and ran back to the kitchen. I was ready to attack when I saw that Grandpa and the clown were both bent over laughing so hard they could barely breathe. It wasn’t long before Uncle Paul and I were cracking up, too.”
“But why did Grandma do that?” asked Charlotte.
I smiled, thinking of what Paul had said about using humor to digest hard things. “She didn’t want us to be afraid of what was happening to her, and she knew that making everyone laugh was a good way to change the way we felt about it. Now,” I said, reaching out to run a hand over their heads, “close your eyes and try to sleep, okay? We’ll need to get up soon enough.” In just a few hours, Charlotte would have to test her blood sugar and take the long-acting insulin she injected each morning and eat some of our quickly dwindling food supply. After that . . . well, I had no idea what came after that. But whatever it was, I would need to channel my mother and find a way to keep my children from being as petrified as I secretly was.
I waited until their lids had grown heavy and their breathing had slowed to check my phone. The cellular network was down, so the text I’d tried to send Paul still had an exclamation mark next to it, indicating that it was unsent. I squeezed my eyes shut and sent him another kind of message.
Help.
The sun was still shrouded by clouds a few hours later, but daybreak was just bright enough that we could get around the house without flashlights. After we’d thrown together a simple breakfast of bread, cheese, and instant coffee, Shiloh pulled me into the hallway. “I think we should move inland,” he said. His calm tone belied the fear in his eyes.
“I know we need to find a fridge, or at least some way to cool Charlotte’s supplies—but it doesn’t look safe outside,” I said. We’d cracked the shutters a few times to see how the yards were faring. Debris was strewn across the front lawn, and Milagros’ patio was a pond.
“I don’t think it’s safe here, either,” he said, gesturing toward the ceiling. Water had started to seep through a few weak spots in the roof, and the buckets we’d placed beneath the leaks were filling fast. “If this place floods—and I think it might—then it may be too late for us to get out of here safely.”
Sure, but evacuating was so . . . terrifyingly real. I must have been secretly hoping I’d click my heels three times and discover this entire thing was nothing but a very bad dream.
“Where do we go, though?” I said, glancing over my shoulder. We’d done our best to reassure the girls, but there was only so much we could do; now they were pacing like a couple of caged panthers.
“There’s a school a mile from here that operates as a shelter during natural disasters,” said Hector, who’d just come out of the bathroom. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “I hope you don’t mind, but I overheard you just now and I have to agree. I don’t think it’s safe for us to stay here.”
“You think this qualifies as a natural disaster?” I said, but no sooner had I said this than the house shook violently.
Isa squealed, while Charlotte threw an afghan over her head. Shiloh glanced in the direction of the yard, then looked back at me with alarm. “I’m thinking the tree that just toppled says yes.”
“Dios mío!” cried Milagros from the dining room. “What’s happening out there?”
Hector was already running to her. “A tree fell, amor. But not on the house, gracias a Dios.”
“Are you okay with leaving?” Shiloh asked me. His forehead was beaded with perspiration.
“No,” I said. “But I’m not okay with staying, either. We should go see what Milagros thinks.”
He nodded. “I think we should. It’ll be tight, but the six of us can squeeze into the Jeep—that seems safer than trying to take Hector’s sedan. We should get out of here as fast as we can.”
Milagros, however, wasn’t nearly as eager to leave. After we’d told her our plans, she gazed at the front door sadly. “I don’t want to leave mis perros,” she said, referring to her gaggle of strays. “They were already abandoned during Maria. I can’t do that to them again.”
When I took her hand, her skin was paper soft beneath my fingers. “Milagros,” I began, but then I had to compose myself, because I’d just started to think about how her dogs weren’t the only ones who’d lived through this before. What if she wasn’t strong enough to survive it a second time? But the thought was as galvanizing as it was terrible. Shiloh was right—we had to get out of there while we still could. “The waves are only getting higher, and the next tree that falls might not miss your house,” I continued. “I know it will be terrible to leave the dogs, and I promise I’ll personally come back and feed them myself the minute it’s safe. But for now, we have to go.”
“I believe you, mija. And so we go.” Her grip was weak as she squeezed my fingers. “Hector, I need your help putting together a bag.”
Hector wrapped his arms around her, and she instantly seemed calmer. “I’ll get everything, Milly. Don’t worry.”
“Libby, I’ll get a change of clothes for us and start putting together some food,” said Shiloh. “Can you make sure Charlotte’s kit is packed?”
“On it,” I told him.
I found a cooler in Milagros’ cupboard, but when I went to get ice packs, I realized they, like the rest of the contents of the freezer, were no longer frozen. Equally alarming, the fridge’s temperature was rising fast. As much as I wanted to believe that the cooler would serve its eponymous duty, all signs pointed to it morphing into an Easy-Bake oven before the day was over.
I stashed the kit with Charlotte’s insulin, test strips, and meter inside, then said a prayer as I zipped it closed. Through the kitchen door I watched Charlotte, who was sitting beside Milagros at the dining room table, smiling softly about something Milagros had just said to her. At any other time I would have celebrated their burgeoning relationship. Now, however, my heart was pounding and adrenaline zipped through my veins.
Stay calm so everyone else can, too, I commanded myself. Soon you’ll be at the shelter, and surely it will have a generator and refrigerator.
It had to.
TWENTY
Shortly after we nearly crashed into the ocean, Shiloh remarked to me that life is a near-death experience. While I’d had plenty of opportunities to test his theory over the years, it felt particularly apt as the six of us piled into the Jeep. The rain was coming down so hard that the wipers couldn’t keep up, and the roads were flooded and strewn with debris and fallen trees, causing us to reroute again and again. I’d begun to wonder if we’d ever make it when we finally pulled up in front of the elementary school that was doubling as a storm shelter. All around us people were clambering out of cars and running
through the rain with duffel bags or stuffed trash bags in hand.
“I’m going to drop you guys off under the awning, then go park,” said Shiloh.
“Are you sure?” I said, eyeing a car that had been abandoned next to the school’s entrance.
He nodded. “The parking lot’s all of two hundred feet away.”
“I know, but the lot looks completely full,” I said.
“Libby,” said Shiloh, swiveling toward the backseat, where I was squeezed between Hector and the girls. “I don’t want all of you out in the storm, and I don’t want to leave the car somewhere where it’s going to block other people from getting into the building. I’ll be fine.”
I nodded numbly, watching Hector help Milagros out of the Jeep. I knew she was just as tired as the rest of us, but it still pained me to see that she looked so much older than she had when we’d arrived.
“Hey,” said Shiloh, reaching for me just before I was about to climb out after Isa and Charlotte. He barely managed to smile. “Where’s my Libby? It’s going to be okay.”
Did he really not know that his Libby had been missing for weeks? Maybe even months, though I couldn’t put my finger on the point at which I’d lost my way. Now this fatalistic imposter was trying, and failing, not to imagine her husband flattened beneath a tree or fried by lightning.
“I’m here,” I said weakly, waving for the girls to follow Milagros and Hector into the school. “And I’m sorry about our fight. I didn’t mean to give you a hard time.”
“There was no fight, Libby,” he said, looking at me quizzically. “That was kind of the problem, wasn’t it?”
When he said it like that, I was forced to admit most of the fighting had happened in my head. “Still, it was a bad way to end the night. I don’t want . . .” I didn’t want that to be how we left things if he didn’t make it back. “I want to make sure we’re okay.”
“Of course we are. You’re right that we should discuss that. But you don’t need to apologize, all right? Go take care of the girls. I’ll be in as soon as I can.”
Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around Page 13