The radio announcer had more to say. “And we’re just getting news now that the hurricane has a name. And that name is Hurricane Janine.”
Janine burst into laughter. She howled and placed her hand over her mouth. Nancy and Elsa joined in, both in shock.
“I wonder if God is playing some kind of trick on us?” Janine asked.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Elsa returned.
Nancy drove as swiftly as she could. Their tires slushed through growing puddles, and rain flattened its droplets against the windshield so rapidly that the wipers couldn’t keep up. Nancy’s fingers were bright white as she clutched the steering wheel.
“There. It’s there.” Elsa pounded the back of Janine’s seat with her fists when she spotted Carmella’s apartment building’s sign, which was slightly crooked— proof this wasn’t exactly a fine place to live. But, as far as Nancy knew, Carmella had never made a high income and had lived carefully, even as Elsa and Aiden had bought that mansion down the road and built their fortunes. For Carmella, a small apartment for one had always been enough.
The apartment building’s parking lot was essentially a lake already. Nancy’s tires laced through one side of it as she rushed toward Carmella’s portion of the apartment complex. She parked near the tree line, then immediately leaped back into the torrential rain.
“Hurricane Janine!” she cried as she raced toward the staircase, which led up to Carmella’s apartment. Unfortunately, her voice was lost to the whipping winds.
Janine and Elsa jumped up the steps behind her. In a moment, they hovered outside Carmella’s door as Nancy’s fist pounded at the wood. “CARMELLA? ARE YOU IN THERE?”
“It looks dark.” Elsa peered through the window located left of the door. “She’s not here.”
At that moment, one of the enormous trees on the edge of the parking lot ripped up from the ground below, roots and all. The sound was monstrous as Janine, Nancy, and Elsa turned around just as the tree pounded across Nancy’s BMW. Glass shards scattered; there was a horrible crunch. And in the moments that followed, the three Remington-Grimson women were far too petrified to do anything but stand there and listen to the howl of the wind.
Chapter Sixteen
It was almost comical. Maybe later, they would find ways to tell this story, highlighting just how stupid this all was. But just then, as the trees flattened with the severity of the wind and the parking lot grew deeper into a lake, the clouds darkened and comedy was the furthest thing from their minds. Nancy, Elsa, and Janine hovered under the overhang at Carmella’s apartment building with lackluster, frightened hearts. They were miles from the safe house. And when Nancy lifted her phone to call someone for help, they realized cell service was down. They were trapped.
In a rush, Elsa took off toward the far end of the apartment building and began to rap on people’s doors, hollering for help. But everyone had retreated from the apartment building, knowing that it wasn’t exactly a safe place to wait out the storm.
“We should have known Carmella was too smart to stay here,” Elsa pointed out as she pressed her hands over her eyes. “Although with how down she gets, there was no telling what she would do.”
Nancy kicked the side of the railing and again blinked down at her dilapidated BMW. Her stomach tightened with panic.
“Wouldn’t she be with Cody, regardless?” she said suddenly.
Elsa dropped her hands from her eyes. “Yes, of course.”
“And do you have any idea of where he lives?”
Elsa pressed her lips into a line and pondered. Janine stepped toward the staircase; with her hood so tight over her head, she looked like an alien, the first to explore the earth and all its wild climates. “We should get to the road regardless before the water rises.”
Nancy followed behind Janine as Elsa continued to think about Cody’s location. The water had already lined itself around the bottom of the staircase; Nancy dreaded to see what sort of havoc the water would take on these bottom floors. She’d seen flood footage before with families wading in through their old residences, up to their waists in water as they looked at their old wardrobes and blackened televisions.
She prayed the mansion on the south side would be spared.
But of course, if the house went with the storm, then it went with the storm. All she truly cared about was her girls, her family. All her life, she had lost things, people, situations, and residences. She knew what mattered most, now. She had enough experience to know.
Martha’s Vineyard no longer felt like Martha’s Vineyard. It was now akin to a war zone. The rain splattered across their heads as they sloshed through the edges of the massive puddle and headed up the small hill toward the main road. Nobody spoke. There was nothing to say, and the wind was far too loud for anyone to be heard. With each step, Nancy fell deeper into feelings of guilt. She should have forced the girls to get on the buses. Maybe she should have gotten on a bus herself.
It’s just that she wouldn’t have forgiven herself if something had happened to Carmella.
When they reached the main road, Elsa pointed toward the right and said, “If I’m not mistaken, Cody lives this way.”
“How far is the walk?” Janine hollered.
“I don’t know.” Elsa bit hard on her lower lip again and glanced leftward. “I can’t remember the last time I saw this road empty. It’s like a ghost town.”
They staggered along for a few minutes. Nancy continued to glance back, checking for some sign of a vehicle— anyone who could help them. Janine took her hood off her head and said she was soaked through, regardless. “The best quality raincoat has nothing on Hurricane Janine,” she blurted out.
Nancy’s throat tightened. She glanced back yet again and caught sight of a truck. It was a crooked, busted-up truck, one that had seen much better days. It plugged along through the winds and rain, and before she knew what she’d done, Nancy swung out into the center of the road, trying to wave the vehicle down.
“Mom! What are you doing?” Janine cried.
But Nancy knew all too well she had to flag this truck down if they wanted to get anywhere. This wasn’t any worse than the hitchhiking she’d done all over the United States, across Europe, and into Asia, during those years after she’d left New York and prior to her move to Martha’s Vineyard. It was funny how she could drop back into this mindset so easily, especially in times of strife.
The truck halted just a few feet away. The rain was so heavy; they couldn’t make out who was in the driver’s seat.
“What if he’s a murderer?” Elsa whispered as they rushed for the front door.
“We can outsmart him, but we can’t outsmart a hurricane,” Nancy told her, just before she yanked open the passenger side for a full view of the inside of the truck.
There, seated in the driver’s seat, was a man in his late sixties, early seventies. Nancy had met him only a handful of times over the years, as he tended to spend time alone. As a result, he was dubbed one of the island’s recluses.
His name was Stan Ellis. And he was something of a pariah around Martha’s Vineyard. He’d been on the boat that had sunk the night Anna Sheridan had died. He’d been driving it without the lights on, and she’d been cheating on her husband, Wes. As a result, he’d destroyed a family.
And Nancy knew the guilt had nearly destroyed him. You could see it in the wrinkles etched across his face and the hollowness of his eyes.
“Get in,” he ordered, waving them in with his arm.
They did as they were told. Elsa and Janine hopped into the smaller backseat, still within the confines of the truck’s enclosed space. Nancy took the front seat and latched her seatbelt.
“What are you girls doing out here like this? You know, you need to take cover.” Stan’s windshield wipers barely did anything against the rain. His eyes were petrified.
“I should say the same to you,” Nancy told him. “We have to check on my daughter, Carmella. We’re worried she’s not safe.”
Stan’s face loosened slightly. “Do you know where she is?”
“We have a hunch,” Nancy replied.
Stan nodded. “But if she’s not there, there’s no time to run around the island looking for her. We don’t have long before this hurricane goes full-blast on us. I’ve seen it happen before.”
He slammed his foot on the gas, and the busted truck cranked forward. The radio was nothing but white noise. Stan seemed not to notice and made no adjustment.
“But where are you going to take shelter?” Janine finally asked from the back.
Stan arched an eyebrow. He grunted, then said, “Just tell me where to turn off.”
Nobody spoke for another few minutes. The experience felt like going to the car wash— pushing your car through a sort of torrential nightmare. The world was that nightmare, and there was no reprieve at the other end.
“Here. I think it’s here,” Elsa said, pointing to a little driveway.
Cody’s house was nothing to write home about. He had probably just as many pennies to rub together as Carmella, and already, the waterline had rushed toward the backyard and rippled around the fence. And toward the left of that fence was a familiar, beautiful sight.
Carmella had parked her car there.
“She must be here!” Elsa cried.
Stan parked the truck at the far end of the driveway, only ten or so feet in front of the encroaching waterline. He kept the motor running, explaining that sometimes when he turned off the engine of his truck, it took a while to start back up again.
“Not a good time to tell us that,” Janine said as she jumped out from the truck and headed for Cody’s door.
Nancy and Elsa rushed behind her. Nancy’s hair ripped behind her as she staggered through the growing puddles. She prayed with everything she had that Carmella was there.
Janine pounded her fist over and over again as Elsa and Nancy howled Carmella and Cody’s names. They sounded half-drunk and half-out of their minds. Janine’s pounds grew more chaotic. Finally, Elsa suggested that probably, Cody and Carmella had taken refuge in one of the inner rooms and attributed every noise to the sound of the storm outside.
“How can we sound different?” Janine cried.
That’s when Nancy noticed a bell. The bell seemed to have been hung on the porch, a little trinket from a previous era; probably, Carmella or Cody had removed it when the winds had begun and placed it off to the side. It was quite heavy, probably nothing that could be whipped away with the storm.
Now, Nancy lifted the bell and began to jingle it as loudly as she could. Each jangle of the bell took so much from her; she felt her strength depleting as she thrust it forward and back again.
Meanwhile, Janine banged away at the door as Elsa screamed. They were the worst kind of girl band.
“Please,” Nancy breathed, her voice growing lost to the storm. “Please. Hear us.”
Finally, the door slowly opened to reveal Cody. He looked frightened and perturbed all at once. Then, when he realized who was on his porch, he whipped open the door still wider and hollered back toward Carmella, who held Cody’s three-year-old, Gretchen, across her chest and over her shoulder.
“It’s your family!”
Nancy’s heart shattered at the sight of Carmella. She hadn’t seen her since she’d stormed away that night. Now, Nancy realized the stupidity of what had happened. How childish she’d been, even at fifty-nine years old.
“Carmella!” Nancy tore past Cody and headed straight for her darling stepdaughter. She placed a tender hand over Gretchen’s curly hair and wrapped her other arm around Carmella, holding onto her as the house threatened to fall apart. “I was so worried about you. So, so worried.”
When Nancy stepped back, Carmella’s eyes were filled with tears. She adjusted Gretchen across her shoulder as her cheeks brightened to pink.
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to say anything. I was out of line, and I’m so sorry,” Nancy tried to apologize. “Whatever happens next, I want us all to be together in everything. No secrets. And no hiding away!”
Gretchen howled again as tears spilled from her eyes. Cody bucked back from the front door and said, “We have to get back in the bathroom. It’s the safest place.”
“We have that safe house,” Nancy told him. “And Stan has offered to drive us up. But, we only have a little more time, and the water outside this house is threatening to rise even higher. I’m not convinced it will hold.”
Cody and Carmella locked eyes. You could feel the immensity of their love for one another, something they’d only just recently acknowledged.
“We have to go,” Carmella said softly. “The storm could go on for hours. This house might not make it.”
Cody’s face was stern. He ran a strong hand through his hair and then rubbed the back of his neck, contemplating their next move. “Okay. Okay. Is the truck big enough?”
“It’s going to have to be,” Janine said. “Let’s go.”
They re-entered the exterior hall and rushed through the rain, back toward Stan Ellis. Carmella looked at the older man with disbelief. She only really knew him as “Anna Sheridan’s murderer,” or whatever it was, people called him even though they didn’t know the entire story. But right then, he was their ticket to freedom.
Cody and Carmella sat tightly together toward the left of the back seat. Gretchen wrapped herself around Carmella like a monkey to a tree. Nancy piled in alongside them while Janine and Elsa shared the passenger seat.
“Everyone, hold on tight!” Stan hollered as though he was the patriarch in a large family, and these words were typical for him.
While staring at him, Nancy thought to herself, had he ever wanted to build a family with Anna Sheridan? Had he wanted the sort of love the Sheridans had?
For the first time, Nancy drew comparisons to her previous self and this current version of Stan Ellis. Had she not met Neal, she would have been just as alone and sad as the man before them.
“Let’s get to safety,” Stan said as he cut out toward the main road and headed away from the torrential seas. “Nothing out here for us, now. Sometimes, I tell myself I’ll move to the plains— Kansas or something like that. I don’t know that the ocean has ever been particularly kind to me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Far down the road, they encountered another uprooted tree. It had stripped itself across the full span of the road, completely splayed out, blocking everything in its path. Rivers from the Bay now swam around it as Stan hovered his truck about fifteen feet from the wreck. He muttered to himself, then steered the truck back quickly. “We have to find another way.”
Nancy’s heart pounded wildly in her throat. The clouds were thicker, monstrously dark and hovering so close to the treetops. As the truck moved back down the road, one of the tires dropped into an enormous pothole, and Carmella nearly lost her grip on Gretchen. Gretchen flung up slightly from her lap before Carmella could fully latch her down again. Frightened, Gretchen began to wail. The sound filled the tight space in the truck. Stan muttered even more, louder and more aggressively, mostly to himself.
“Shhh, Gretch. It’s okay.” Carmella’s words were tender yet edged with her sorrow and pain. She splayed her hand over Gretchen’s hair and stroked it as her eyes grew wider.
“It’s okay, Bean,” Cody breathed to his daughter. “You’re just scared, but you’re not hurt. See? Carmella has you safe. We have you safe.”
But Gretchen wasn’t convinced, not completely. She wailed again and clenched her eyes shut. Nancy placed her hand on Gretchen’s back and smoothed down her little dress, which was ruffled up in back from all the chaos.
“It’s okay, Gretchen. Really.”
Even against the howl of the wind, the sound of someone else's voice was surprising to Gretchen. She turned to find Nancy’s eyes and furrowed her eyebrows almost angrily, as though she couldn’t believe someone else, someone she hardly knew, was in her space.<
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“Hi, Gretchen. You remember me, right? You’ve been to my house before.” Nancy spoke gently, with the slightest of smiles. “Do you know that your friend, Carmella, is my stepdaughter?”
Gretchen shook her head as hard as she could, but she didn’t turn away from Nancy. Instead, her eyes tore into Nancy’s, as though she tried to read the language of her soul.
“That’s right. She’s my stepdaughter, and I love her very, very much,” Nancy said.
Carmella’s face was difficult to read. It had loosened a lot since they’d discovered them at Cody’s house; her eyes shone with tears that she still refused to let fall.
“I love her so much, and I hope she knows that I would never stay mad at her. No matter what,” Nancy continued to say, directing the words to Gretchen.
Stan drove the truck back down another side road, switched gears, and then flung them up a hill, further and further from the growing rivers and streams and puddles-turned-lakes. He whipped his head back and whistled. “That’s right, Hurricane Janine. You won’t take us. Not today!”
Carmella’s smile broke out in disbelief, then. “They called it Hurricane Janine?”
“That’s right. What a year, huh? Maybe my ex-husband knows the guy in charge of that,” Janine said from the front seat.
Carmella cackled. “That would be a new blow, wouldn’t it?”
“Come on. You saw Jack Potter at Maggie’s wedding. He’s capable of evil things,” Elsa said then.
“Unfortunately, that’s very true,” Janine breathed. “I only just realized recently how abusive that marriage was.”
Carmella adjusted Gretchen against her chest. “Here’s to all the years of therapy we need for all the people who wronged us in our lives. Like Karen and Jack, and all the others.”
“Here’s to that,” Janine affirmed with a crooked smile.
Nancy’s heart darkened just a little. After all, wasn’t she one of those people who’d wronged Janine so greatly? But then again, this is what humans did to other humans: they hurt one another, even in their love. “We’re all a collection of emotions, feelings, and beliefs— and we try to throw ourselves together in love and harmony and don’t always make the best of it.” Nancy had written this once in her diary when she had tried to digest her faults in Janine’s life.
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