“You could hunker down here,” Reva offered. “We’ll be doing the storm watch together from here. We have the shelter’s security camera feed on Abby’s computer, so we’ll know how the animals there are doing. Abby and Quinn have dibs on the guest room, but the couch’s pullout bed is surprisingly comfy.”
Adrian looked at Quinn. “Y’all aren’t staying at the cabin?” They’d finally finished the cabin they’d been building on Reva’s property.
“The power’s bound to go out, and our new cabin doesn’t have a generator,” Quinn answered.
“This storm’s expected to spawn tornadoes,” Abby said. “Even the outer bands could be dangerous. You should stay here. Quinn and I can always stay at the shelter’s pool house.”
“I wish you’d stay,” Reva added, “so we don’t have to worry about you driving back to New Orleans.”
“Thanks, Reva. I’ll take you up on that offer.” The sense of camaraderie Adrian felt here was completely different from his experience of Katrina. “I’d rather blow away with y’all than be sucked up in a tornado all by myself on the road between here and New Orleans.”
***
After Heather fed the kids a quick dinner of soup and saltines, they worked together to bring in the potted plants and the hummingbird feeders from the back porch. Anything that might blow away from the barn aisle or the shelves got put in Charlie’s empty stall, along with the chairs that normally lived on the boat dock out back.
It was the third storm this season, and their storm preparations had become routine. Adrian had offered to help, but she’d turned him down because he had plans to go to Dallas the next day and she didn’t want to impose. He already did so much around here that he was in danger of earning his way out of the friend zone. She was tempted, but she knew that once she made that decision, there would be no going back.
When all the work was done, Heather sent the kids inside with instructions to take baths and get dressed in their pajamas. Afterward, she and the kids and Jasper gathered in the den. Winky was who-knew-where, as usual. Adrian was his favorite person; the rest of them he could take or leave, and he usually chose to leave them.
The first two storms of the season had been little more than heavy rainstorms, not worth staying up over. But this one promised to be a doozy, so Heather knew they’d probably be up late, paying attention.
She did wish that Adrian was here with them—and well aware that he would have been if she’d invited him. She could imagine that he would sit next to her in the middle of the couch and Josh would sit in Adrian’s lap. Caroline would sit next to Heather on the other side, and Erin would take the recliner and only halfway pay attention to the weather updates while she and her friends sent messages to one another. Jasper would curl up on the recliner’s footrest, and Erin would wage a constant battle to keep it from folding up under Jasper’s weight.
The reality differed from the dream.
Heather made popcorn, and the kids chose to watch Cinderella while the weather channel occupied a corner of the TV screen. All the humans sat on the couch, with Heather and Erin on the outside and the twins in the middle. Jasper took the recliner.
The kids focused on the movie while Heather watched the storm track closer to them without worrying too much. They’d slept right through worse storms than this one was predicted to be. It was only a Category 2, and though it was moving slowly, Heather knew that the house should stay high and dry and Charlie was safe at Bayside Barn.
Caroline sat next to Heather and held her hand, playing with her fingers. “I like your ring, Mommy.”
“I know you do.” Caroline not-so-secretly wanted Heather’s poison ring for herself. The telling part of that statement was the word Mommy. The kids only called her that when they were feeling unsure. The kids knew something was up because of the hype they’d heard at school and the fact that school was scheduled to be closed for the rest of the week.
That was why they’d started the hurricane party tradition when Erin was little. When tucking her into bed and instructing her not to worry hadn’t helped at all, Heather and Dale had made a fun evening of storm-watching instead. It had become a family tradition.
Caroline fiddled with the latch mechanism of Heather’s ring, and for the first time, she managed to pop it open. “There’s a secret compartment.” Caroline’s eyes shone bright. “What’s it for?”
“It’s a poison ring,” Erin said. “Back in the old days, women wore rings filled with poison in case they needed to protect themselves.”
“From what?” Caroline asked.
Heather gave Erin a shut up, please look.
Erin went back to watching the movie, but the damage was done. Heather patted Caroline’s hand. “Nobody needs poison to protect themselves nowadays. I just liked the ring because it’s pretty.”
“So you bought it?” Josh asked. Nobody had asked the question when she’d first shown off her ring the night she gave the kids the presents she’d bought for them in New Orleans. She had given the impression she’d bought it for herself instead of saying it explicitly. She could have avoided the question by taking the ring off, but she hadn’t been able to make herself do it. Now, she couldn’t bring herself to lie. And besides, it didn’t matter anymore. “Adrian bought it for me when we went to New Orleans.”
“It’s a magic ring,” Caroline breathed, probably inspired by the kiddie movie they were watching. “We should put a magic potion in it.”
“That’s a great idea, sweetie.” Heather brushed Caroline’s drying hair away from her face.
“I know what!” Caroline jumped up. “I’ll be right back.” She came back a minute later holding the glitter-filled fairy dust pendant that had come with her ballerina fairy doll. “You can put magic fairy dust in it.” Caroline pulled the cork out of the tiny vial. “But first, you have to make a wish.”
“Okay,” Heather promised, holding her hand out. “I will.” Heather closed her eyes and pretended to make a wish.
“You have to say it out loud,” Caroline insisted.
Heather closed her eyes again and thought of the wish she wanted more than anything. “I wish that our family will always be happy and safe.”
“Have you not been watching the movie?” Erin tossed a kernel of popcorn at Heather, but it landed in Caroline’s lap. “You have to be more specific than that.”
“I wish—”
“It has to be about true love,” Caroline said. “You have to wish for a true love that will make you happy ever after.”
“Wish for true love with Ade,” Josh yelled.
“You have to say it out loud.” Caroline held the vial of glitter over the poison ring’s empty chamber. “I wish for…”
Heather chuckled. “Okay, fine. I wish for a happy-ever-after love with…someone at some point. How’s that?”
Erin tossed more popcorn at Heather. “Be specific.”
“Well, what if I don’t know who my handsome prince should be?”
“He has to have a task,” Erin said, “and a deadline. Like how Sleeping Beauty’s prince had to hack through the thorny forest or—”
“Or how Cinderella’s coach would turn to a pumpkin at midnight,” Caroline added.
“I still think you should choose Ade,” Josh said. “He’s the best.”
“I wish for my handsome prince—who shall remain nameless until he reveals himself—to come to me before midnight tonight, even though he’ll have to hack through a forest to get here.”
Caroline sprinkled some glitter into the ring, then closed the compartment. “Now,” she proclaimed, “you’ll live happy ever after.”
Heather kissed the top of Caroline’s head. “I’m already happy ever after.”
When the movie ended, Heather sent the twins upstairs to brush their teeth, then tucked them into bed. She set a small flashlight on each of their bedside tables
in case the power went out. Jasper, as usual, slept on Josh’s bed. He always curled up at the foot of the bed at first, then moved up to the pillows after Heather had closed Josh’s bedroom door. In the morning, Josh and Jasper would be curled up together under the covers like two peas in a pod.
When Heather came back downstairs, Erin had moved to the recliner, and Winky was doing a good loaf-of-bread imitation in Erin’s lap. Erin stroked Winky’s fur. “He said he was ready to come out now that the heathens are all upstairs.”
Heather almost laughed. Reva must have given Heather’s kids a good dose of animal communication propaganda. Even before Reva confessed to Heather about the extent of her abilities, she had always made offhand comments about animals’ thoughts and feelings. Planting seeds.
Erin petted Winky’s head. “Can we watch another movie, since there’s no school tomorrow?”
“Sure.” Heather stood and gathered the popcorn bowl and the twins’ glasses. “You pick one while I clean the kitchen real quick and start a load of laundry.”
While Heather cleaned the kitchen and tossed the last of the dirty clothes into the washer, she reflected how storm preparation was a lot like nesting before the birth of a baby. Knowing that she—or the power—might be out of commission for a few days, Heather felt compelled to make sure that she caught up on all the chores beforehand. She put the clothes from the dryer into a laundry basket and brought them into the den for folding.
“I wish I could help,” Erin said with a smirk, “but I can’t because there’s a cat in my lap.”
“Awww,” Heather said with an indulgent smile, “that’s too bad for me, I guess.”
“Yep. Too bad for you.” Erin pointed the remote at the TV. “We’re watching 13 Going on 30.”
“Perfect.”
When the laundry was all folded and in baskets in front of the coffee table, Heather stretched out on the couch to finish watching the movie. She woke with a start at the jarring sound of the emergency alert on both cell phones going off at the same time.
“Dammit, cat,” Erin cursed when Winky leaped out of her lap.
“Watch your language, young lady,” Heather scolded. She picked up her phone to read the alert message: Tornado warning in your area. Take cover immediately.
“Winky scratched my legs.” Erin sat up, rubbing her thighs.
“He was scared. He couldn’t help it.” Heather took one of the flashlights off the table and pointed it out the den windows into the darkness. The electricity had gone out after she fell asleep, so the back porch lights were off. The flashlight against the window showed her own reflection and the room behind her more than it revealed what was going on outside. All she could see through the rain-slashed windows was the movement of the tall water oaks and willows between the house and the river, swaying in the stiff wind.
“I don’t know where Winky went,” Erin said. “Kitty, kitty?” She turned on the other flashlight and started searching for the errant cat.
“He’s hiding under something,” Heather said absently. “As usual.”
Heather wondered if she should do something, like maybe wake up the twins and have them come downstairs. “He’ll come out when he’s ready.”
“Okay, fine. I’m going up to—” A huge crash rattled the windows. “Shit, Mom!” Erin’s eyes went wide with panic. The crash had sounded like a bomb going off. The muted roar of rain pounding on the roof and windows stopped, replaced by the even louder roar of a high wind.
“Go get in my bathroom. Now.” Heather ran to the stairs, yelling for the twins. “Josh! Caroline! Get down here!”
Jasper barked, but neither of the kids’ bedroom doors opened. Heather ran up the stairs, opening Josh’s door, then rushing to open Caroline’s. She hauled Caroline out of her bed, dragging her by the arm to Josh’s room. Jasper had woken Josh up; he was sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes. “What?”
“Go downstairs. Take Jasper with you.” She dragged Josh out of bed and put his hand in Caroline’s, then pushed them both to the bedroom doorway. “Wait for me in my bathroom.” A windowless room in the center of the house, the master bathroom would be the safest place should a tornado hit the house. “Hurry.”
“Mommy,” Caroline whined. “What’s happening?”
“Go,” she yelled. “I’m right behind you.” She whipped the covers off Josh’s bed, then manhandled the twin-sized mattress to the door. Holding on to Jasper’s collar, Josh hesitated on the landing. Thunder boomed, followed closely by a burst of lightning. “Run,” Heather commanded. “Both of you. Do what I said.”
This time, they obeyed, and Heather struggled to pull the heavy mattress down the stairs and around the corner of the newel post toward the master bathroom. She would make the kids sit in the bathtub with the mattress on top of them so if the house came crashing down, they would be protected from falling debris.
Another crash sounded—something big hitting the house. “Mom,” Erin wailed, “I’m worried about Winky.”
“He’ll be fine. He’s a smart cat, and he’s hiding under something, I’m sure. And that’s exactly what I need y’all to do.” With Erin’s help, Heather wedged the mattress over the bathtub enclosure to make a padded roof several feet above the tub. “Get in the bathtub,” she ordered the kids.
They climbed in and sat, with Erin in the middle, her arms around each of the twins. Jasper hopped in and laid across their legs, panting with anxiety. Heather closed the toilet lid and sat beside them to check the weather app on her phone. The storm had made landfall, and they were just now experiencing the outer bands of it. Things would get much worse before they got better. She set her phone on the rim of the tub, dropped her face into her hands, and prayed.
The wind outside howled like a mad thing trying to break in.
Chapter 20
“Mom?” Erin’s voice sounded small and frightened. “Do you smell smoke?”
Heather sat up. She’d been so focused on the howling of the wind and the sounds of things battering the house that she hadn’t thought of much else. But she did smell a faint whiff of smoke. “Stay here,” she said to the kids. “I’ll be right back.”
Taking the flashlight, she went to the bathroom door and opened it a tiny crack. The smell of smoke was stronger but still not terrible. The sound of the howling wind was worse, and she could hear rain again.
“Stay here,” she repeated. If lightning had struck the house and caused a fire, the rain may have already put it out. The kids were safer from fire at the moment than they would be from the storm’s continuing fury. She crept out into the hallway, closing the bathroom door behind her.
A hard, driving rain slashed down on her, even though she stood in the middle of her house. Lightning flashed, illuminating the sky above her.
A huge chunk of the roof had been smashed in by a fallen tree.
Heather panned her flashlight over a hellish scene of destruction.
Whatever had been burning was burning no longer. Rain hissed and sizzled in the cracked-open center of a huge oak tree that rested against the stairs after smashing through Josh and Caroline’s upstairs rooms. Weak tendrils of smoke rose from a pile of rubble buried under the branches of the massive tree that had once dominated the front yard and had survived many storms worse than this one.
Heather took a breath to calm herself. She would assess the damage as best she could, then decide whether they were safer hunkering down or whether they should try to flee before the second half of the storm hit.
She took a few steps and shone the flashlight’s beam into the kitchen. That end of the house was still intact. She went back to the bathroom and opened the door just a crack. “There was a fire,” she said, surprised at how calm her voice sounded, “but it’s out now. I’m gonna go look for Winky, and I want y’all to stay in this bathroom with the door closed until I get back.”
Heather went back
out into the hallway, where leaves skittered along the wet, slippery floor tiles. She said a prayer of thanks that she hadn’t removed her tennis shoes before falling asleep in front of the television. Neither had Erin; if they had to, each of them could carry one the twins if they needed to get out of here.
For now, though, it seemed best to stay put. The biggest tree had already fallen, and it was probably the only one close enough to fall on the house.
“Winky,” she called, “Here, kitty, kitty.”
Winky meowed, a plaintive sound coming from the depths of the den. Heather stepped over broken glass and a scattering of small branches that had blown into the house, heading toward Winky’s meow, which seemed to be coming from under a bookcase that had come loose from the wall and fallen forward until it hit the back of the couch. Heather squatted down and shone the light into the cavelike hole where Winky’s one eye shone from the very back corner.
“Come here, kitty, kitty,” she called. Winky stared, unblinking, but refused to budge. He seemed unharmed, but he clearly didn’t trust Heather enough to come out.
The bookcase had fallen as far as it was going to fall. It was almost as good a shelter as the bathroom where Heather’s kids huddled under a mattress. And Heather wasn’t going to crawl on her knees through the broken picture frames and glass shards that littered the floor beneath the fallen shelves.
“Okay, buddy. You can stay there if that’s what you want.”
Heather went back through the kitchen. On impulse, she opened the refrigerator and took out a few sodas, then reached into the scattered contents of the pantry and found a full package of Oreos to take back to the kids. She even managed to find a box of dog biscuits for Jasper.
In the bathroom, she gave the kids and Jasper their treats, then sat back down and reached for her phone. It seemed that maybe they were in the eye of the storm, but she wanted to check the weather app.
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