Sealed In (2 page)

“Then why’d you come in here screaming my name?”

“I’m excited.”

“For?”

“I went shopping. I got so many bargains.” She nodded proudly. There was a childlike aura to her, an innocence, even if she was beyond her teens.

“Good for you. Are you hungry?”

“Very. I need a menu.” She peered around.

“No, you don’t,” Stew said. “It’s breakfast, who the hell needs to look at a breakfast menu?”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Where’s the baby?” Stew asked, referencing Heather’s two-year-old.

“With Mom.” She was antsy with excitement, almost childlike.

“Your mom took her shopping?” Stew asked. But before he could get his answer, Bonnie came over and Stew ordered for Heather. He then double questioned. “She took her out on Black Friday.”

Heather giggled. “No.
Jeez. Mom’s not shopping. She’s …” she stopped speaking and shook her head.

“What?” Stew asked. “She’s what?”

“She’s in the hole.”

Stew cringed. “Damn it, she has the baby down there?”

“Well, yeah, she says she wants her to get used to being there.”

Stew sat back and closed his eyes. “Why do you let your mother do those things with the baby?”

“Because Mommy loves Cody. It makes Mommy smile and Cody likes it too. Besides, Pap,” Heather sat up straight. “The seismologist guy called the other day. Said levels were rising. How do we know? We don’t.”

“You sound like your mother.” Stew rubbed his eyes “Do I have to call the doctor again?”

Heather shook her head. “No, she seems pretty stable. Just doing inventory and playing with the baby down there. No worries.”

No worries.

Stew would try not to worry, but then again, his granddaughter saw nothing wrong with her mother’s behavior. It drove Stew nuts. His daughter Emma had such an unnatural obsession with and fears of Yellowstone erupting that her only hobby was preparing for the event. When Cody was three months old, Emma had locked herself in what she called the hole, convinced Yellowstone was going to erupt. It took four deputies and a doctor to get her out of that hole.

In her defense, activity
had
increased in the park, but not enough to cause her to scurry and seal herself in her protective hole.

Medication for a spell and a week away at
a medical resort got Emma back on track. She still worked on her hobby, but she didn’t obsess as much.

At least she didn’t do so in front of Stew.

He just wanted a nice, sane family.

Most of them were. He just wished his daughter would stop worrying about the end of the world. One day Stew hoped to get her to see that the chances of civilization ending in her lifetime were slim.

Very slim.

Ask anyone in town; they’d say that Emma Burton was as crazy as they come.

A nice woman just lacking in reality, as folks would say, odd, and at times, over the top eccentric.

None of that came from her father. Emma’s mother nurtured creativity and expressiveness, where Stew was constantly battling Emma to be ‘normal’. Emma was, at one time, pretty much normal. She was working for her father when she got pregnant with Heather. There was no college to leave and she didn’t have to worry about losing her job. And as close as possible to a shotgun wedding, she married Del before Heather was even born.

Despite the fact that Stew gave them a piece of land and funds to build a home there, Del didn’t want to live off of her father, so they lived in an apartment above Bonnie’s diner.

Del wanted to take care of his family. Well, that and be a rock star.

He didn’t really have a job; he played gigs a lot, but they didn’t pay much, and the money to build the house dwindled away, used to pay bills, get musical equipment for Del, and a van for him to haul it in.

Emma was supportive. She believed in Del. He was good.

She kept working for her father, except for when she quit and went to work for Mr. Bowman because he paid better at his flannel shirt company.

Of course, Stew wasn’t crazy about that and reluctantly matched and beat that extra quarter an hour that Emma was making from Bowman.

Then just about three months before her son, Richie, was due, Del had what he called the opportunity of a lifetime. He went on the road with his band and never came back.

Six months after Richie was born, Del finally called, said he wasn’t returning, and he’d do what he could to take care of his family.

That was fifteen years earlier.

She never got in any arguments over child support, because Del didn’t pay it. He’d stop by once in a while; the last visit was when Richie turned nine.

Although she did keep up with him and his success on the internet and videos.

Emma kept rolling despite it all. She moved in with her parents right away, and her father paid to build her and the kids a house on that piece of land.

It was during those first few months after Del had left when Emma started searching for a hobby to keep her mind occupied. That’s when she discovered about the super volcano in Yellowstone. From there on, knowing it was fifty thousand years overdue for an eruption, she became obsessed with how she would beat it.

She ended up going to college, night school, studying agriculture. Stew was thrilled. Then he found out her motive was to become an expert in hydroponics.

Which she was.

In a room of the hole, she had a huge hydroponics field set up.

In twelve years, Emma had put over thirty thousand dollars into her ‘hole’ and other survival extensions to the house. She learned all that she could of what would occur if the eruption took place, and in her mind, she was going to survive.

And so were her children, and now, especially, Cody. She was Emma’s primary focus.

She had taken Cody down in the hole to do an inventory of supplies, to see what needed to be rotated. After noticing she’d been down there for several hours, and not wanting to have the police force show up again to haul her out, Emma took the lift up top, her two-year-old granddaughter on her hip.

She sealed up the entrance, using Cody’s tiny fingers to turn the lock.

“Good girl. Now, we have to go inside. Gam’s gonna see if Uncle Richie will watch you so I can get my hair all cut off.”

Cody’s hair was wavy and brown, but when the sun hit it, little bits of blonde sho
ne through. She looked a lot like her father, Roman. Despite the fact that her father lived in Hartworth, forty miles away, she actually saw him often.

“Think I’ll go short.” Emma grabbed Cody’s hand and walked with her. “Yeah, short hair will be much eas
ier to keep in the apocalypse. Don’t you think?”

Cody nodded. Not that she knew exactly what she was agreeing to.

Once inside, it was quiet, and Emma spotted Richie on the couch playing a handheld game. She tapped him on the head to get his attention. When he turned around, Emma signed to him, “Can you watch Cody for a little bit?”

He signed in return, “Where’s
Heather?”

“She isn’t back yet. I have to get my hair cut. I won’t be long.”

Richie nodded.

“I mean it.” Emma gave a stern expression then brought her fingers to her eyes. “Watch her. Do not get distracted.”

“Ok.” Richie nodded “Ok.”

Richie wasn’t born deaf. He passed the infant hearing test. And even when he wasn’t speaking by two, he passed a second hearing test. It wasn’t until he was almost four that they discovered that an undetected ear infection years earlier ruined what he could hear, not the ability to hear. He could hear some, mainly sounds and tones. But they weren’t distinguishable. It was once described to Emma by the audiologist that when she spoke to Richie she sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher. Hence why he was speaking like that.

Other than a hearing disability, Richie was a normal teenager. This was why Emma reiterated for him to keep an eye out on Cody. Watch her.

After kissing Cody and Richie, Emma walked to the door. She opened it to find Heather getting ready to enter. “Oh, good, you’re home. I was just leaving.”

“Where you headed?” Heather asked.

“Hair cut. You know, wanna go short again in case the volcano blows. Easier for me if that happens.”

Heather nodded. “Sensible decision.”

Emma smiled. “Thanks! I won’t be long.”

“Oh, Mom,” Heather called out as Emma readied to leave. “I accidently told Pap that you had Cody in the hole. So, stay away from the diner. He’s down there people watching.”

“Thanks for the heads up, I’ll avoid him.” And Emma would, or at least would try. She was having a pretty good day, and the last thing she wanted was to deal with an interrogation from her father who seemed to think every time she worked on her project, she had to be institutionalized.

Really that was only once, and Emma was smart enough to know she couldn’t let that happen again.

<><><><>

Roman smiled when he opened the message from Heather and saw the picture of his daughter, Cody. His phone was full of pictures, and it wasn’t as if he didn’t see Cody; he did, all the time, even though she was a good distance away. He would have preferred to live in the same town as Heather and Cody, but it wasn’t feasible. He grew up in Lincoln, and when the Hartworth town doctor passed away three years earlier, Roman moved there with his father. His father became the new town doctor. His father was all he had, his only family. Roman’s mother passed away when he was young. Any other relatives didn’t live in America.

At the time of the move, Heather was pregnant and Roman worked for his father at the clinic. He had to keep his job. It was a means of support
for his daughter; plus, he and Heather had no plans on marrying or even breaking up. Their relationship was fine with the distance between them. She didn’t want to leave her mom. Roman understood that. Heather’s mother wasn’t always the sanest of human beings.

Emma and Roman’s father, Val, didn’t get along. Not at all. Emma never trusted his father, and Val believed Emma judged him on the fact that he was an immigrant to America. That she was prejudiced.

They went back and forth all the time. So keeping peace between Heather and Roman entailed keeping distance between Emma and Val.

Another picture came through, and as Roman chuckled at it, he heard a ‘thump’ in the basement of the clinic. The clinic was the first floor of a big old house, and Roman and his father lived above it.

Roman set his phone down on the counter. He was the only one in the clinic; there were a few emergency appointments in the morning, but he was mainly manning the phones.

He walked to the basement door and hollered down. “Dad, that you?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.” His father spoke with a Russian accent.

Roman descended the steps. He stopped near the bottom when he saw the boxes; the oddest were two old big, metal trunks. His father, not a young man, was half bent over, catching his breath. “What’s all this?”

“Oh.” Val waved out his hand. “The storage facility I have been using for twenty years has closed and I just viewed the notice two days ago. I should check my post office box more frequently.”

“Why not get another?”

“I will. I will. But for now, for a few weeks, these will be fine here.” Val dusted off his hands and walked to the stairs.

“What is it? I never saw this stuff.”

“Some things I brought from Russia, no concern. Just things.”

Roman paused in walking up the steps. “Anything cool in there that I can see?”

“Nothing. Just ... just junk.” Val looked over his shoulder at the items, reached up, and pulled the string on the light.

She was beautiful, and Andy watched her walk into the beauty shop on Main Street. How long had he carried a torch for Emma Burton, since the eighth grade, maybe?

Andy was pretty certain that no matter what she did, Emma would always look beautiful. It wasn’t a creeper or stalker type of ‘torch’; they were friends. They often went to see movies together, had a drink. Andy worked for her father as well as for the town. But even though Emma was basically single for a decade, he never got the nerve to ask her for a real date.

Several factors played into that. He was afraid she’d say no. After all, Andy was viewed as the town idiot because of the way he talked. He wasn’t an idiot, not at all. He knew what he wanted to say, he heard it in his mind, but as it came from his head to his mouth, somehow it got lost, and he stuttered. Sometimes horribly. It was so frustrating for him that he wanted to hit his head to maybe jar it, but then he’d look even more dopey.

He heard people talk as if he didn’t understand what they were saying. When they made fun of him
, calling him a ‘retard’ or Lenny from
Of Mice and Men
, Andy was still polite, despite how many times he wanted to haul off and deck someone and say, “Heck with you, I’m not an idiot.’ But he knew darn well that his mouth would stumble on the ‘H’ and it would make matters worse. So, he just smiled and nodded.