“The dog,” Fancy answered easily. “The one that sat on Adam’s front stoop every morning.”
A huge grin bloomed on Meg’s face. “Oh, that’s going to be fodder for Joanna and her folklore history of Tuckers Bluff and the ranch.”
“Excuse me?” Fancy asked.
Meg waved her hands. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“You saw a dog camped out at Adam’s every morning?” Ethan asked.
Fancy nodded. “I guess he slept on the porch, then he’d do his perimeter walk around just before the staff arrived. Eventually I’d spot him nearby under a tree or a shrub. Just keeping an eye on the place.”
Ethan and Allison shared a sideways glance. They were telling each other something, but Fancy didn’t have a clue what.
“I’ll tell you one thing, he’s a pretty smart dog. A couple of days in he noticed I was watching the clinic and began following me around, kept his distance. When he finally came up close, he’d always park himself close to Brittany. Whether I was keeping an eye on your brothers, or the cafe, didn’t matter. Lassie stayed by my side.”
“Lassie?” Meg asked.
Fancy smiled. “He reminded me of how Lassie always took care of Timmy. It just fit.”
“Hmm,” Ethan mumbled.
“Once I made up my mind, I went back to Butler Springs and arranged for all the paperwork so my baby girl could have a good life. Like I said, at the time it never occurred to me I would ever be able to get out of the vicious cycle I’d created for my life. Then I waited for your brother to go into the police station. Made sure everyone was busy enough not to see me through the doors and placed Brittany safely in the entry with Lassie at her side.”
Allison’s gaze narrowed. “But you left her. In a box.”
“Technically yes, but not until I’d seen Declan pick her up and take her inside. I’d had to pawn the car seat and a few other things later that morning for the cash I needed to keep going. I knew her family would take care of everything she needed.”
“And the allergies. Why didn’t you tell us?” Ethan asked.
That made no sense. “What allergies?”
“She was allergic to the formula DJ bought for her.”
“I didn’t know.”
“How could you not know?”
“I’d nursed her until I left her with your family. The woman at the store who helped me get the formula told me the brand I got was best for babies. It was pricey, but she was worth it.”
“It was in a plastic bag.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’d set it down at the motel on the wet counter. The box was ruined but I put the salvaged formula in a bag. I, uh, didn’t have money for a new box.”
For a few seconds, her chest tightened at the thought of putting her little girl in harm’s way. She could feel Ethan’s gaze boring into her, studying her, evaluating, and finally she saw acceptance brush across his face. He believed her.
“What do you want now?” he asked.
Three sharp siren blasts signaled the all clear, but no one moved. All eyes were intent on Fancy, waiting for her response.
Meg and Allison’s phones sounded with a text notification, but Ethan’s actually rang. Glancing at the number, he swiped at the phone. “What’s up?” The muffled sound of a voice on the other end had Ethan springing to his feet and nodding. “On my way.”
From the wide-eyed look on Meg and Allison’s face, their texts had nothing to do with weather alerts. Or maybe it did.
Already on her feet, Fancy inched closer to Ethan. “What’s wrong?”
“At least two tornadoes touched down. One of them at the Brady’s, another at the ranch.”
“Oh my God.” Fancy’s heart nearly stopped. “Brittany?”
Ethan shook his head. “No one’s answering their phones.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The sound of a thundering freight train had all the adults in the shelter hovering more closely over the two little girls. Old enough to understand what was going on, Stacey did her best to keep Brittany entertained and smiling. The doors rattled, Sean leaned even closer between the door and his family, and Eileen said a silent prayer.
More than once she’d heard someone describe a tornado like a train, but she hadn’t imagined the impact of the sounds and sensations that came barreling overhead would have on the human body. Terror being the first thing to cross her mind. Visions of every twister movie she’d ever seen with cows and tractors and houses sucked up and tossed through the air like a football on a Saturday afternoon pick up game had her moving even closer to her youngest family members.
The doors were the first to settle into place as the roar of the wind ebbed to near silence. The peaceful quiet was broken by Connor’s cell.
“Hello?”
“Is everyone okay?” Desperation laced Adam’s tone.
“Yes. So far, so good.”
“Who’s with you?”
“Catherine, Dad, Aunt Eileen and the girls. We came over when Brady called. Our house doesn’t have a storm cellar.”
She could almost hear Adam nodding on the other end. “Good. The thing passed the town by. We’re all fine.”
Sean threw the cellar doors open and carefully climbed up, Connor on his heels. The two men whistled.
“What about the Brady’s?” Connor scanned the area. “If the twister they spotted is the same one that blew through here…”
Carrying Brittany in her arms, Eileen popped her head out at the top of the stairs. What a mess. The fencing between theirs and Connor’s place was uprooted and tossed around the back field like a childhood game of pickup sticks. Depending on the rest of the pasture fences, they might have their hands full the next few days rounding up stray cattle. Following the edge of their land, the few trees that lined the property were blown over or completely gone. In the distance a vehicle was upside down, wheels up. Connor’s truck. Eileen’s heart stuttered at the sight.
“It must have blown between us,” Sean mumbled softly.
“Has everyone checked in?” Connor asked his brother.
“You guys were the last ones. Your phones weren’t working.”
“I’m the only one with a cell on me and while the tornado was whizzing by I must not have had a signal.”
Adam scoffed on the other end of the line. “No sh…kidding.”
“I’ll spread the word.”
Eileen reached the back door of the house first and rushed to answer the ringing phone. No doubt the entire town would be calling each other to make sure everyone was safe. “Hello?”
“Oh, thank heaven you’re all right.” It took Eileen a moment to recognize the frantic voice as Sally Mae. “I just drove up the road to check for damage. Oh, lord Eileen. The house is almost gone.”
Eileen’s heart stopped. She could hear Sally Mae’s dog barking and the pounding of footsteps.
“I think they’re still inside. We need help. Fast. Y’all are the closest. Bring whoever’s home. I’ll call DJ next.”
“Who’s still inside?” All of Eileen’s family stood frozen beside her, waiting for word.
“The Bradys. The twister must have buzzed right over their house!”
****
Having filled the back of his pickup with water, blankets, shovels, and any other items needed to dig a family out of a damaged home, Sean Farraday pressed on the gas and practically flew out of the drive, spitting gravel behind him.
“Oh, I hope it’s not as bad as Sally Mae made it sound.” Eileen sat in the passenger side of the truck. Connor had taken his wife and the two girls back to their house in one of the ranch vehicles and would be loading up and joining the group.
Sean sucked in a deep breath. Mother Nature could be vicious. It had been decades since any serious damage had struck Tuckers Bluff. When he’d pulled Eileen into his arms and swayed to the rhythms of a song long forgotten, of all the possibilities for what would have happened next, digging a friend’s family out of their home hadn’t been on the list any
where.
The nearest neighbor, they were still almost a twenty minute drive away. Fifteen at the current speed. When they came over the slight rise in the road that allowed for the first views of the original Brady ranch, Sean felt his heart nearly stop. The beautiful three-story wood siding home was barely a single floor high.
“Oh, no.” Eileen breathed from the seat beside him. “They don’t have a cellar.”
There was no need to answer. They both knew the family would be huddled somewhere under all that mess. Now he had a new dilemma – how to go about freeing his neighbors and keeping Eileen away from crawling all over the dangerous mound of a house in search of the Bradys. Once upon a time Eileen was very much a city girl, but now she could do most anything on the ranch he or any of his sons could do. She was a formidable woman. And going to serve him his backside on a platter when he told her to stay the hell off that house.
****
From the moment Fancy hopped into Adam’s truck heading toward the ranch, her heart was thickly lodged in her throat. If she’d thought she’d known fear before, she was dead wrong. Not since the day Brittany was born had Fancy felt the elation that came half way to the family homestead, hearing that all the Farradays had survived the tornado unscathed. Only the following news of a family neighbor in trouble robbed her from smiling like a loon.
“How much farther?” Glenn asked.
“Just around the bend.” Adam pointed ahead with his chin.
From what Fancy remembered, just about every road from Dallas to New Mexico was straight and boring. This little corner of the county had to have the only bend in the road for the entire state.
Meg gasped, her hand slowly rising to cover her mouth. Fancy had seen lots of tornado damage photos splashed across the news stations through the years, but the sight of this house that appeared to have been crushed under the foot of a very heavy giant was enough to leave anyone stunned.
Meg, Glenn, and Fancy came with Adam in his truck. Garrett, Jamie, Rick and Brooks led the way in his suburban. From the one-sided conversations she’d heard, she suspected they weren’t the only ones on their way.
Sure enough, when they’d turned off the main road, trucks were already parked helter skelter across the front of the property. Brooks came to a screeching halt dead center of what was once a front door and bag in hand, ran to the crowd of people gathered. Adam pulled in behind him. Doors clicked open and slammed shut, and folks jogged toward the house. She hadn’t any idea what she could do, but she couldn’t sit around and wait.
Rick at his side, Garrett came up behind her. “You okay?”
She nodded. About as okay as anyone could be staring at a squashed home, knowing people were trapped inside. From atop what Fancy was pretty sure used to be the front porch, a man she didn’t recognized let out a yell. “Over here.”
Immediately people took off in his direction, only a few men daring to climb up.
Aunt Eileen came walking past her. “I’m unloading water from the truck. Want to help?”
“Absolutely.” Fancy fell into step beside her. Glenn and Rick hurried in the opposite direction toward the house where a human chain had formed, receiving and hauling debris away from the house where folks hoped to find the family tucked safely below.
“This is my niece. Grace.” Aunt Eileen waved from one woman to the other.
The niece. The one that brought Aunt Eileen into the family. In many ways the adult version of her Brittany. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Grace answered. Stopping at the open tailgate she stared blankly at the stacked cases of water and other goods brought from the ranch.
“Grace?”
“Oh.” She smiled at her aunt. “Sorry, just contemplating the immortality of the crab.”
“Yeah.” Eileen’s smile seemed rather wistful. “Me too.”
Grace let out a soft sigh and turned to her aunt. “Where do you want these?”
“I’ve set up a table out of the high traffic zone.” Eileen handed off a case of water. “Your father wouldn’t let me near the building.”
“Can’t imagine why.” Grace bit back a chuckle.
Eileen straightened, her gaze leveling with her niece’s, and Fancy would swear the woman was suddenly two inches taller. “Don’t you start with me.”
“Never crossed my mind.” Arms weighed down, Grace leaned into her aunt, planting a sweet kiss on her forehead. “Love you just the way you are. If you folks can handle the rest of this alone, I’d like to lend a hand to the clean up crew.”
“Go.” Eileen turned from her niece to Fancy and crawled up to push the water cases closer to the edge.
“Immortality of the crab?” Fancy asked.
The smile on Eileen’s face seemed to rise more easily to her eyes. “It’s an expression her mama used all the time. Helen was a fountain of my grandmother’s sayings. The ones she said most often were ‘walking quickly no one will notice’, ‘anyone can keep a secret as long as two of them are dead’, but the most often repeated fondly by her children is when someone is lost in thought, a person will ask what are you thinking and in remembrance of their mom they’ll answer—”
“The immortality of the crab,” Fancy finished for her. “But didn’t her mom pass away when she was just a baby?”
“She did.”
Fancy gave the situation some thought. “And you said you were thinking the same.”
“Betty Sue is pregnant. Knowing she, Paul, and their little boy are trapped in that house, and that if one thing goes wrong we could lose either one of them, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me remember when Helen got sick and we had to face losing her.” Eileen cast her gaze to the wind-tossed house. “I’m praying with all that’s in me for that family.”
It hadn’t occurred to Fancy that any of the Farradays would be taken back to the day they’d lost their mom. She should have been more sensitive. And looking at this smart, brave woman, Fancy should have realized sooner how much of today’s world held in common with the past. Eileen had raised her sister’s daughter, and so far so was Allison.
More cars arrived. Fancy recognized some of the faces. Declan and his wife popped out of a police car and hurried to what was left of the house. The two sisters from the town general store came rushing toward Eileen. The tall one spoke first. “We have fixings for sandwiches and some energy bars in case this goes longer than we’d like.”
Aunt Eileen nodded. “They have to be so very careful not to make things worse poking around to find them that digging them out could take a good long while. The building is so unstable only folks with fire department or police training are part of the rescue team scaling what’s left of the house.”
Or military, Fancy thought. Ethan was right in the thick of things. A small smile teased at one side of her mouth. Rick had joined the reverse bucket brigade passing debris along and away from the house, but Garrett had joined the inner circle of the rescue team doing something with ropes. She’d almost forgotten he’d grown up in a construction family. He really was one of the good guys.
“Great,” Eileen answered the two women. “I’ve set up a couple of tables off to the left. You can work there.”
Both sisters bobbed their heads and waddled back to their vehicle.
“They really are sisters?”
Eileen nodded. “Yep. No predicting genetics.”
“Suppose not.” Another similarity between past and present struck her. Fancy stood face to face with a woman who could sing like an angel and gave up her dream of stage and stardom to raise her sister’s children. How wrong was it of Fancy to want both? She hefted a case of water from the car. “You have a great family.”
Aunt Eileen hopped off the truck, lifted a case of water, and started back toward the tables. “Thank you. I think so.”
“And you never married yourself?”
Eileen’s gaze shifted to where Glenn stood with Rick and a few others then shook her head. “Raising seven kids has a way of sucki
ng up all your spare time.”
“I bet it does.” She looked around at the brothers working side by side. At Ethan’s father as strong and handsome and involved as his sons. “Grace is the only girl. The baby.”
“Don’t let her hear you say that. She’ll box anyone’s ears who calls her the baby. She doesn’t even take well to being described as the youngest.”
“No. I bet she doesn’t.” Fancy set the case of water down and noticed Eileen already had a washtub with ice under the table. “Shall I put these in there?”
“Yes, please.”
A loud creaking noise shattered the otherwise quiet evening, followed by a voice yelling “Heads up” and several people freezing in place, balancing, the wood shifting underneath. The house remained still once again and another voice hollered, “We’ve got to hurry before this whole thing gives way.”
“Oh, God,” Fancy whispered.
“Yes. Prayers help.” Eileen looked up at the sudden burst of activity, her gaze steady and focused and unwavering.
Grace came running back beside her aunt, her expression lighter, and rested an arm across her shoulders. “They found Betty Sue. She should be out very soon.”
“Any idea of her condition?” Eileen reached up and squeezed the hand draped over her shoulder.
“Good enough to be talking and directing the rescue team toward her.” Grace hesitated, her smile slipped. “They’re under a lot of debris.”
“Don’t you worry. They’ll be fine.”
That lost in thought gleam appeared again in Grace’s eyes, and then squeezing her aunt tightly, Grace mumbled against her aunt’s temple, “Love you. I’d better rejoin the debris line.”
“Go,” Eileen encouraged.
With another nod and a strong shot of the respect Fancy had seen flowing from one member of the family to the other, Grace turned on her heel and hurried back to the crew.
Together Fancy and Eileen went back to the truck for more supplies. Hauling another case from the bed, Fancy turned to the family matriarch. “She turned out to be quite a woman, didn’t she?”
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