Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (37 page)

“Come on, then,” Chief said, “before the storm picks up again, which it’s going to.” I thought I heard a smile. “I don’t want to sound sexist, but you and Flannery could keep us fed while we work outside.”

“That doesn’t sound sexist; it sounds absurd. Nobody eats my cooking.”

“Hank and Joe are coming.”

“I’ll get the kids up. Do you have an evacuation plan if it really gets ugly?”

“On it, Classic.”

I hung up feeling like I’d just been hugged. Maybe we could actually get that in sometime during this day. That and the conversation we never got to finish.

The scene at Kade’s was grimmer than Chief had described it. The water had surged past the dunes and into the edges of the sea grass, and the way the ocean rose and crashed, the guys would be lucky to have the sandbags in before whatever was heating up in its dark waters boiled it over onto the path. The scrubby foliage trembled; it was the first time I had ever felt sorry for a palmetto.

Desmond went outside with the crew, after Chief ordered him into his rain gear and told him he’d be staying on the high side. Flannery and I joined Hank and her husband, Joe, in the kitchen. We were immediately shooed to the counter to chop vegetables.

“I want to get this cooked before we lose power,” Hank said.

The lights had already flickered several times, and we all paused again as the refrigerator groaned off and then back on.

Hank gave it a dubious look. “If that thing makes it through the storm—”

“We’re buying him a new one anyway,” Joe said. “And a stove. I can’t work under these conditions.”

I grinned. We didn’t get to see enough of Joe at our fun get-togethers. Come to think of it, we hadn’t had a fun anything since the last time we were at Kade’s, two weeks ago. We were going to have to fix that.

I stirred restlessly. Or could we? Wasn’t there always a death or an injustice or a sociopath coming around the next corner, heading off our attempts at joy? Just as Chief said, we stayed in the middle of it.

But I never just stayed there. I went another mile into it. And another one. And another one.

When were we going to get there?

“You chop one tomato and you’re done?” Hank said.

Flannery hopped off the stool beside me. “I would way rather be out there.” She peered between the strips of tape on the glass door that faced the ocean, apparently heedless of the rain that tried to slap her from the other side. “It’s kind of cool.”

“You didn’t grow up with storms?” Joe said. Evidently Hank hadn’t told him about Flannery’s history because the question came out as if he were chatting her up on a plane. “You’re not a Floridian?”

“We never lived on the water. Every time we get a hurricane, we go to the storm shelter at the nursing home. My mom sure isn’t going to take me to the beach to watch …”

Her voice trailed off. I was poised to go to her if the tears came, but she just pressed her forehead to the glass until the mistake passed.

“I want to go out and help,” she said.

“You’ll get blown away,” I said. “Come on, this knife is calling your name.”

“We’ll sing while we work,” Joe said. “How about—”

“No, really, I’ll do it,” Flannery said. “Just, please. Don’t sing.”

The attitude was back for now. I could do for now.

Chief, Stan, Kade, and Desmond came in just as the horizon disappeared completely. Between the fall of night and the final blast of the storm, everything was black and fierce. The power went out just as Hank set the fifth of six steaming casserole dishes on the table.

“Where are your candles, Kade?” I said.

Dead silence.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t get any—”

“They’re here someplace. I just don’t remember—”

“Flashlight? Anybody?”

I was bordering on strange, hysterical laughter by the time the Maglites came out and Joe discovered a box of candles in the back of the refrigerator.

“Oh, yeah,” Kade said. “I heard they kept better in this heat if you stored them in the fridge.”

“Not in that one,” Hank said. “You’re lucky your butter doesn’t melt. Speaking of which, Joe, would you get it out for the bread—”

“Kade.”

We all turned to Chief, who stood in the entrance to the narrow hall leading back to the two bedrooms, flashlight in hand.

“Did you leave the door open in the master bathroom, the one that goes out on the deck? Did anybody?”

There was a chorus of nos.

“It was open?” Kade said.

“Where is Desmond?”

“In the other john?” Stan said.

“No.”

We made an automatic path as Chief charged across the living room. Before he got to the glass doors, I made another discovery.

“Flannery,” I said. “She’s not here either.” I pushed Stan aside and flew to Chief. “Are they on the deck? I’m going to throttle them both.”

Chief shook his head. The lines in his face were deepening. “Stan, check the street side. Kade, out back.”

The wind swept the life out of both candles as doors opened and Kade and Stan ran out into the storm, still shoving their arms into already soaked jackets. When Chief pulled open the sliding door to the side deck I pushed past him.

“Classic!”

I didn’t answer him. Several inches of water raced across the decking as I slid across it and flung myself at the railing, already screaming my children’s names.

Chief’s hands gripped my arms.

“Get back inside, Classic!”

“No—Chief—dearGoddearGoddearGod—”

“Listen to me!”

Chief whipped me around to face him. Even with his face directly in mine he had to shout to be heard over the roar of the storm.

“They couldn’t have gone that far yet.”

“Desmond can’t swim! You know that!”

“Kade and I will find them. Stay here—”

Call it adrenaline, or mother-love, call it God himself. Whatever it was, it exploded, and I wrenched myself away from Chief and headed, half-running, half-careening to the back deck and down the steps until I reached the path. Immediately I was knee deep in roiling sea, but I pushed through it until a low wall of it knocked me to the bottom.

I fought for the surface, only to be smacked down again by another wave, more determined than its predecessor to slam me into what just a day before had been the beach.

The second time I came up I knew Chief was right. I was going to drown if I didn’t get out of this, and I was a strong swimmer.

Desmond wasn’t.

PleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod.

Somehow I got off the sandbar and past the dune, into the thicket of palmettos beside Kade’s house. It clawed back at me as frantically as I clawed at it, but I thrashed through its panic-stricken midst screaming, “Desmond! Flannery!”

The wind snatched my voice away. I thought I could hear it being carried off toward the road beyond. When it came again, I froze and strained to hear. Again. It was someone else’s voice.

I crashed toward it through the brush, slogging in the water that rose even as I pushed my way forward. The voice wavered on the wind, off to my left, toward the house next door. I turned, shouting “Who is it?” and “PleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod!” until words came back at me.

“Allison! Help me!”

I was within a few yards of the house. Water rushed like a mountain fall from the upper deck, curtaining the empty storage area below, and on the other side of it a tiny figure clung to the piling as the water surged around her waist.

“Flannery!”

I plunged through the waterfall and reached out for her, but the storage area was below the level of the ground and I lost my footing and fell headfirst. When I came up sputtering, Flannery was groping for my back.

“Let me carry you, Flannery!” I shouted at her. “Stop fighting me!”

“Where’s Desmond! Did you find him?”

I didn’t answer as I flung her onto my back, fireman style, and pushed through the water to the low wall that I now knew separated the storage area from the ground above. If I didn’t keep moving, panic would take control—because she didn’t know where Desmond was.

I managed to get us both back up to the palmetto thicket, but an angry gust threw us sideways and Flannery slid off my back. When I grabbed for her, another pair of hands got to her first, and Stan hoisted her onto his shoulders and reached down to take hold of my arm.

“I’m okay!” I shouted to him. “Is Desmond back?”

“I don’t know—”

“Take her in. I have to keep looking.”

Once again the storm ripped through me and I was blown sideways toward Kade’s. Just as my back rammed into the side of the steps, I was pulled to my feet and held against a chest I knew well. With the breath knocked out of me and lost in the wind, all I could do was let Chief lift me into his arms and carry me up the steps.

As soon as the glass door was forced closed behind us, the roar ceased. But the candlelit quiet inside was more unbearable. Joe sat on the sagging couch, eyes closed, hands clasped, lips moving without sound. Hank and Stan were engulfing Flannery in a blanket, and Kade stood at the other glass door, shaking his cell phone and swearing under his breath.

I looked at Chief and even in the weak light I saw the lines drawing deeper in his face.

“You haven’t found him.”

“We’re still looking.”

I pushed away the blanket Hank offered me. “I’m going with you. I can’t just leave him out there.”

“Nobody’s leaving him out there. Let’s find out what happened so we’re not just running around blind.”

Chief nodded at Flannery, who, despite the blanket that wrapped everything but her face, was shivering on the floor between the chair and the coffee table. Still shedding water, I half-flung myself at her and yanked her out to face me.

“Why did you go out there? I
told
you not to—”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“Then what was it like?” My fingers tightened on the blanket. “The lights went out and you sneaked out the back door. You knew Desmond would come after you. You knew that so
why
did you do it?”

“Al.” Hank’s hand was on my shoulder. “I think she’s trying to tell you something.”

“I am!” Flannery’s voice was shrill with fear. “I was in the guest bedroom looking for candles, and Desmond was in Kade’s room. I heard him say he found one and I started to go in there and I saw this light like he’d lit it. And then there was this pounding, like on the back door from the bathroom out onto the deck and a big
whoosh
like he opened it. I was, like, ‘Desi, don’t be a moron,’ but by the time I got in there it was dark again and the door blew back open. I thought I saw him going down the steps so I went after him.” Flannery clawed her way out of the blanket and pulled at the soaked front of my T-shirt. “I went after
him,
Allison, only I got knocked down and ended up over there.”

She pointed to the side between Kade’s and the neighbor’s, where I’d found her in the storage area. I knew it was the truth. I’d had the same experience.

“I found this on the floor in the bathroom.” Kade stood in the opening to the hallway, shining his flashlight on a soot-stained votive candle. I’d seen it there before on the back of the toilet.

“I’m sorry, Flannery,” I said.

I tried to get my arms around her, but she stiffened and looked around the room. “Who went for help?”

“Nobody, Flan,” Kade said.

“But I saw a car leave. When I was trying to get under the house next door, I saw it pull out of the driveway and go that way.”

She pointed south, back toward St. Augustine. Chief crouched beside us.

“Could you see what it looked like?”

Flannery closed her eyes. I watched her struggle to hold tight to her mind while everything else in her threatened to rattle apart.

“It was a car, not a truck or a van or anything. And it was big, but I couldn’t see a color. I just thought somebody went to get help.”

Chief nodded at me. “All right, Plan B,” he said.

He stood up and motioned to Stan, Kade and me.

“I believe you, Flannery,” I said. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Find him,” she said.

I kissed her forehead and followed Chief and the others back to Kade’s bedroom. I heard Hank taking over with a sobbing Flannery. I felt like I was being ripped in half.