The Best of Us (32 page)

“Nah,” Gio said. “That plywood’s thick. The wind probably
carried something to the patio and smashed it against the stone. We’re going to find all sorts of stuff when we go out after the storm.”

“I hope people got enough notice to get off the beach,” Tina said. “They were saying on the Weather Channel that most deaths come from the storm surge . . .”

“They’ll go inland,” Gio assured her. “Jamaicans are savvy about hurricanes. They won’t mess around.”

Tina tried to ignore the horrible sounds coming from outside, but she couldn’t. It was as if the hurricane had targeted their house specifically and was focusing all her rage on trying to tear it loose from its foundations, although Tina logically knew that wasn’t true. She couldn’t believe how violent and angry Betty sounded. She moaned and shrieked and thrashed and shook the house, like a giant in the middle of a tantrum.

Anxiety began to creep back into Tina’s body. Could the house really withstand hours of this? Maybe Pauline was wrong; the contractors might’ve cut corners while building this place. Inferior materials could’ve been substituted for more costly ones to increase profits. That sort of thing happened all the time, according to Gio.

The house shook, and a bookcase in the corner crashed to the floor, its contents scattering. Tina couldn’t help releasing a little scream at the sound.

I want to go home,
she thought suddenly. Her heart jackhammered in her chest. She looked around, but the others had gone suddenly silent. Even Gio looked tense, which scared her more than anything else.

She closed her eyes, and the faces of her four children swam into her mind: Paolo, their oldest, named after Gio’s deceased father. He was only eight, but his feet were almost as big as Gio’s. Puppy feet, Tina called them. Angela was six, and she loved dogs and doing somersaults and shampoo that smelled
of strawberries. She had big brown eyes and at night, just before falling asleep, she made the little cooing noises of a dove. Jessica was feisty and smart, and once she’d passed through the terrible twos, she’d developed a fantastic sense of humor—the kid could do a very credible Brooklyn accent. And sweet Sammy, with his skinny arms and big belly and soft kisses in the morning . . .

I miss you all so much,
Tina thought.

She remembered how on the anniversary of her mother’s death last year, she’d driven past a field of wildflowers and recalled how much her mother had loved flowers. She’d had to pull the minivan to the side of the road because she couldn’t see through her tears. And then the high, worried voices began asking why she was sad . . . She’d told them the truth, that she missed her mom and the flowers had made Tina think of her. Then Angela had suggested they go smell the flowers and say a prayer for Grandma. Tina remembered the feel of their soft, small hands in her own, and the way Angela had danced in the field while Paolo had picked her a bouquet to take home . . . Oh, she loved those four small people so much it felt like a physical ache.

Her eyes snapped open.

Something had just happened to her, something important. She’d desperately needed something to cling to, and the thought of her children was what had given her solace.

She blinked back tears—again!—but this time they sprang from relief: She missed her babies. She couldn’t wait to see them again. Her deepest fear—that something was wrong with her, that some vital mothering bone was broken inside of her—wasn’t true. She had only needed a break. It was really that simple.

They’d get through tonight, and then on Friday they’d spend one last full day in Jamaica, taking in the aftermath of the storm
and getting ready to leave. She’d be home Saturday night in time for pizza and pajamas and a family cuddle on the couch.

Betty shook the house again and roared, but this time, Tina didn’t flinch. All week long, she’d felt as if she was back in college—and she’d jealously clung to that sensation, dreading the moment it would slip away. But right now she was a mother again, which also meant she was a warrior.

*   *   *

“Has it stopped?” Allie overheard Savannah ask.

Allie was on her way back from the bathroom, but she paused in the hallway. For the first time in almost two hours, she couldn’t hear any noise from outside. Curious to see if there was any damage to the house, she turned and began walking in the other direction, then stopped short.

The living room, which had faced the brunt of the storm, looked like it had been ransacked. Knickknacks had fallen off shelves, smaller pieces of furniture had been shifted, and a glass statue lay on the wooden floor, broken into dozens of pieces. She stepped gingerly through the mess, moving toward the coffee table books that had slid onto the floor. She found the one with the pictures of waterfalls on the cover and opened it, holding her breath. Her gift to Dwight was still there, hidden between the pages.

Allie reached for the slim rectangular package, which was wrapped in a sheet of newspaper comic strips—the only thing she could find that resembled wrapping paper. But she knew Dwight would love it; he’d once told her he still read the comics first, before the business page and main news section.

It wasn’t the most elaborate present she’d ever given anyone, but it might be the most meaningful. She’d taken photos of Dwight on the catamaran on the second day of the trip, and, after she’d discovered a little nook of an office in the house containing
a computer and printer and fax, had managed to print out a decent copy of the best one. It wasn’t framed yet, but she’d sandwiched it between two pieces of cardboard to keep it from becoming creased. She’d left it here because she didn’t want Ryan to find it in their bedroom.

Allie wanted to give it to Dwight tonight so he’d know how he looked through her eyes: In the photo, he was leaning against the rail of the boat, the breeze blowing back his dark brown hair. He wasn’t smiling, but he looked thoughtful and a little mysterious, and the blue-green water mirrored the tints in his hazel eyes. It was a wonderful picture.

Allie could hear Ryan’s voice calling her name as he came toward the room. She clutched the package to her chest. Where could she hide it? If the others began putting the room back together, they might discover her gift, and it was for Dwight’s eyes alone.

She could hear Ryan’s footsteps. He was almost here. She glanced wildly around, realizing she’d be trapped if she went into the kitchen; then she unlocked the front door and slipped out, closing it silently behind her.

The air felt clean, and it was light enough that Allie could see the pool area was remarkably unscathed. A lot of tree limbs had blown into the area—mostly small ones, but a few that were thicker than her wrist—but since all of the furniture had been put into storage, there wasn’t any real damage.

Allie cast a glance behind her to make sure no one was coming, then walked around to the copse of palm trees on the far side of the pool, thinking she could tuck her gift there, then hurry back inside. Later, she could bring Dwight back to the place she now thought of as theirs. She knelt by the trees and found the perfect hiding spot between two close-together trunks. She was reaching for a rock to anchor the package when the world exploded.

There was a long, loud shriek—the only warning Betty gave—then wind smacked into her like a brick wall, wrenching the package out of her hands and sending it swirling upward.

“No!” Allie shouted. She reached up, trying to catch it, but it swooped farther away as a dark gray fog rushed in to envelop her.

The rain pelted down and up and sideways, and her wet hair slapped into her eyes. She pushed it out of her face just in time to see a branch fly by, far too close to her head.

The hurricane wasn’t over, she suddenly remembered. Every elementary school student learned about the structure of storms, and she was no exception. But she’d completely forgotten that every hurricane had a brief window of calm called an eye.

Get back to the house,
she told herself. She staggered a few feet forward, but the wind was gaining strength as fast as Allie was losing it. It kept pushing her over, like a playground bully. The house was about twenty yards ahead and a bit to her right, Allie thought as she dropped to her knees. But what if she was wrong? She couldn’t see that far in front of her. She reached around the base of a tree and locked her fingers together.

“Help!” she yelled, even though she knew no one could hear her over Betty’s howling. Already, she could feel the strength in her arms ebbing away. Another branch smacked down a half dozen yards away, and she began to cry.

She’d been so consumed by her possible ALS diagnosis that she’d never considered the fact that there were so many other ways to die. Hurricanes routinely killed people in Jamaica. Maybe she’d become another statistic, the foolish tourist who’d forgotten about the eye of the storm and had ventured outside at the worst possible moment.

She bowed her head and cried harder, feeling the bark of the tree scratch her arms and cheek as the wind clawed at her. When her hands finally lost their grip, Betty would lift her up
and throw her into something—another tree, one of the huge concrete pots by the pool, the house itself. She’d break bones, probably hit her head. She’d lose consciousness, and then it would truly be all over; she’d be a rag doll in a washing machine.

She lifted her head and gathered all the strength she had left, funneling it into a yell that seemed to emerge from her core: “Ryan!”

He couldn’t possibly hear her, but calling his name released something inside of Allie that had been tightly clenched. The anger she’d felt toward her husband was ripping away, revealing the abyss of terror that had always lain just beneath.

Maybe she hadn’t ever been angry at Ryan after all; maybe he was just a safe target for the fury she felt at everything else: her jerk of a birth father and his crappy genes, her birth mother and the thoughtless way she’d unleashed the news like a bomb into Allie’s life, ALS itself. The unfairness of it all.

Her fingers were almost completely numb. The wind was pulling at them, trying to wrench them loose. She couldn’t last much longer.

“Allie!”

Somehow she heard his yell—or maybe she’d just sensed it, the way her mother, Louise, always said she’d sensed Allie’s cry the moment Allie was born.

She tried to call out to Ryan again as he stood in the doorway, holding a lantern that seemed like the only spot of light in the world, but her voice was gone. Then the light disappeared.

Ryan probably hadn’t been able to see her, or if he had, by some miracle, then he’d gone to get help. But Allie couldn’t help feeling as if he’d deserted her. She deserved it, though. She’d deserted him first.

Hold on,
she ordered herself, clenching her teeth and steeling her body. Enduring this was harder than making it through
the wall she’d hit during the twenty-third mile of the marathon she’d run last year, harder than the pain of childbirth, harder than anything she’d ever known. Her muscles screamed and her skin felt raw. She prayed for Ryan to . . . to what? Not to come out here; he’d be risking his own life!

Earlier on this trip, she’d wanted him to become a different kind of man. But now, amid her terror, she saw not her own life but Ryan’s flash before her eyes, and she realized how wrong she’d been. She saw her husband reaching for her hand and slow-dancing with her, to no music, in their hotel room on their wedding night; then Ryan was feeding her ice chips with his fingertips and strength with his eyes while she panted through labor. She saw him as a father, straining his back as he carried their sleeping children out of the minivan and up two flights of stairs because he didn’t want to wake them; she saw him making up silly jingles to get their daughters to put on their shoes when they were defiant two-year-olds.

She needed Ryan to be safe, to stay around to raise their girls. No one could do as good a job.

She lifted her head to whisper a prayer and saw the light again. Ryan had attached the lantern to his belt and was down on his belly, inching toward her, hooking his fingers around the ridges of the stones on the patio to gain traction. He looked like a rock climber who was moving horizontally instead of vertically as he felt around for the next crack between the rocks.

Somehow, he’d known where to find her. Renewed strength flooded into her arms.

She lost sight of him for a few agonizing minutes, then he reappeared just yards away, rounding the edge of the pool.

“Here!” she screamed. “I’m here!”

Thank God for those huge concrete pots—he was bracing his feet against them, then using them to push off, like a swimmer doing a flip turn. His feet were bare, and she could see blood
on them, but he kept relentlessly inching forward in a small circle of light.

She could see all the tendons in his arm stand out as he battled the wind. He must be exhausted; Allie knew she was, and she was only kneeling in place and had the tree for support.

“I’m sorry!” Allie cried when he finally reached her and collapsed on top of her, wrapping his arms around both her and the tree. He was violently shaking. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Either he didn’t hear her or he couldn’t spare the effort it would take to answer. Their tree was bending now, yielding to the wind, and Allie was terrified it would snap.

Ryan was signaling for her to lie flat on the ground, and then he pointed in the direction of the house—or at least what Allie assumed was the direction of the house. She squinted and realized he was fumbling with something tied around his belt, next to the lantern. He’d gotten all the stretchy resistance bands from the gym and had linked them together to form a makeshift rope, she realized. He must have attached one end to the house so they’d be able to find it in the darkness.

Ryan’s lips moved, but his words were lost in the wind.

Was he telling her to start for the house? It wasn’t far away, but they’d have to take a circuitous route around the pool, which doubled the length.

Allie began to crawl, but Ryan stopped her by putting a hand on her shoulder. He wrapped his legs around the tree to anchor himself, then pulled off his T-shirt and twisted it around Allie’s left arm and his right one, tying the ends into a knot. The fleeting thought crossed Allie’s mind that it was good Ryan had been a Boy Scout. He took off his watch and fastened it around the knot, securing it even tighter. Linking their fates together.