Before the Storm (48 page)

about Maggie touching him, touching that bare chest.

“No, they’re not home,” Marcus said. “Maggie took him

away, hoping to keep him from the hearing tomorrow.”

“Shit.” Ben ran a hand through his hair. I suddenly hated him.

“How dare you take advantage of her!” I smacked his bare

shoulder with my flashlight, creepily aware of his manliness.

My assault barely made him flinch. “She’s in high school!”

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I felt Marcus’s hand against my back again. “Time for that

later,” he said. “Did Maggie tell you anything about her plans?”

“Who’s here, Benny?” Dawn came into the room, tying a

short robe closed over her legs and carrying a lantern. She

stopped short when she saw us.

“Maggie and Andy are missing,” I said.

“Missing?” she asked.“What do you mean? Like kidnapped?”

“Maggie took Andy somewhere to keep him from the

hearing in the morning,” I said.

Dawn looked at Ben. “Do you know anything about this?”

she asked.

Ben shook his head. “Nothing.” He was avoiding my gaze.

“I bet I know where they are,” Dawn said. She looked at Ben.

“You do, too.”

“Where?” Ben said, then shut his eyes. “Oh, no. The Sea

Tender.”

“The Sea Tender?
” Marcus and I spoke in unison.

“But it’s condemned,” I said.

“That’s where Ben was meeting Maggie,” Dawn said with

disgust.

That was too much reality for Marcus. “You son of a bitch!”

He threw a punch at Ben’s jaw, snapping his head back and

knocking him halfway to the floor.

I grabbed his arm before he could lash out again. Now that

I knew where my children were, I wanted to get to them. Hold

them in my arms. “Let’s go,” I said.

“I cared about her!” Ben held his hand to his jaw as he

regained his balance. “It’s not like I didn’t have any feel—”

“Shut up, Ben!” Dawn said.

Marcus flexed the fingers of the hand he’d struck Ben with.

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“I’m not done with you, Trippett,” he growled to Ben as he

flung open the front door. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

“The Sea Tender,” I said as we drove through the darkness.

I wanted Marcus to drive faster, but knew he didn’t dare.

“How would Maggie even think of that?”

“That place is dangerous,” Marcus said. “It was condemned

for a reason. It should have been torn down long ago.”

“I thought Maggie had a good head on her shoulders,” I

said, knotting my hands in my lap. “I thought she didn’t need

my guidance. My
mothering.
I don’t know her, Marcus.”

“Yes, you do.” Marcus let go of the steering wheel to hunt

for my hand in the darkness. He found it, squeezed it. “You

know she’d do anything for Andy,” he said. “Same as you.”

I OPENED MY EYES, BUT COULDN’T SEE anything. I blinked and

blinked to be sure my eyes were really open. I thought I was

going to barf. My brain was rolling around inside my head. The

only other time I felt that way was on a boat. I could go in a

boat on the sound, but not in the ocean. Last time I went on

a boat in the ocean was with Emily and my brain rolled around

inside my head the whole trip. I threw up three times and one

almost time. Mom said I never had to go on a boat in the ocean

again. Mom didn’t like boats, anyway.

I knew I wasn’t on a boat, though. I was in the house where

I was a baby. I was on the couch. It was dark but I could see

some things and it was kind of cold. And loud. Under me and

over me I heard popping noises and screeching noises and

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creaking noises. I was afraid if I sat up, I’d throw up. But finally

I did and there was no glass in the window. The sky was pink

by the ocean. I couldn’t see Maggie, but I heard her call my

name.

All of a sudden I fell off the couch and my brain rolled and

rolled and I couldn’t remember where the bathroom was to

run to throw up. Maggie said the bathroom didn’t work

anyway. I could hardly stand up. I had to hold on to a wood

thing. And then I saw that I wasn’t in the cottage anymore. I

was on a kind of boat and big chunks of wood and things

floated around me. Water went over my feet. The beach was

far away. I forgot about throwing up. I started thinking about

how to save our lives, because I knew we were in trouble and

it wasn’t like the fire where I could climb out a window.

“Maggie!” I hollered, and I ran across the floor trying to find

her, as it bounced and broke apart beneath my feet.

THE PREDAWN LIGHT HAD CHANGED FROM coal to pale

gray by the time we turned off Sea Gull Lane onto the continuation of New River Inlet Road. Marcus’s pickup rolled

forward slowly in a foot of water. Between the oceanfront

cottages, I could see the wash of pink above the horizon. Then

I spotted the first of the condemned cottages behind those

lining the street and heard Marcus suck in his breath.

“What?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I rolled down my window and saw what had caused his

reaction. I knew where the second condemned house should

be, but a pile of rubble stood in its place. The sliver of sun

resting on the horizon glinted off shards of glass and metal.

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“Oh, no.” My heart kicked into gear.

“Is that Maggie’s car?” Marcus braked the pickup so quickly,

I flew forward a couple of inches before my seat belt caught.

Parked on the opposite side of the street was the only other

vehicle in sight—Maggie’s white Jetta.

“Maybe they’re in the car!” I jumped out of the pickup into

water up to my knees and sloshed across the street. I shone

my flashlight through the car windows. Empty.

“Anything?” Marcus called through his open window.

“No.” I waded back to his pickup. “But Dawn must be right.

Why else would Maggie park here, a block from The Sea

Tender?”

We inched forward, passing another of the old condemned

cottages that had been reduced to a pile of rubble. Had The

Sea Tender—had my
children
—stood a chance?

“Let me out!” I said, pulling open the door. “I can’t stand

it!”

“Laurel—”

I didn’t hear the rest of his sentence as I lost my footing and

fell into the water. I got quickly to my feet, not bothering to

close the pickup’s door as I waded toward the space between

two of the front row of houses. I needed to get to the beach.

Please, God, let my babies be okay.

I was barely aware of Marcus catching up to me as we

slogged through the water between the houses.

“Where’s the little dune?” I searched the gray light ahead of

me, thoroughly disoriented. The water was only up to our

ankles here but I couldn’t see the little rise of sand that marked

the boundary between the front row of houses and those on the

beach.

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“I think it’s gone,” Marcus said.

We ran forward now that the water wasn’t holding us back,

and what I saw turned my knees to jelly. “Oh God, Marcus!”

I grabbed the back of his shirt to keep myself from keeling

over.

“Ah, no,” Marcus said with such quiet resignation that I

wanted to shake him.

In front of us, the beach looked like a war zone. None of

the condemned houses were still standing; they’d been reduced

to mountains of debris covering acres of sand, although many

of the pilings still poked from the rubble, like totem poles

against the lightening sky. The Sea Tender had been the last

house in the row and I needed to get to it. Although I felt weak

and nauseated, I started running north.

“Be careful!” Marcus called from somewhere near me.

“There’s glass everywhere.”

It was hard to tell one demolished house from another and

when we reached the final pile of rubble, panic gripped me.

“I’m turned around!” I said, searching the strange, unrecognizable beach for something familiar. The explosion of boards

and glass and metal in front of me simply couldn’t be The Sea

Tender.

“Maggie!” Marcus called into the massive pile of debris as

he circled it. “Andy!”

I stood frozen, my hands covering my face, afraid of seeing

a lifeless arm or leg poking from the rubble. I peeked between

my fingers to the deceptively calm ocean, littered with the

remains of the cottages, and my eyes were suddenly drawn to

the splashes of peach and purple above the horizon.

“Marcus, look!” I pointed toward the sunrise.

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“Where?” He straightened up from the ruins.“What are you

looking at?”

“There!” I kicked off my sodden shoes and started to run

into the chilly water.

“Laurel, don’t go out there!” He caught up to me, grabbing

my arm. Then he saw what I’d seen. On a floating piece of

debris, far in the distance, were two tiny silhouettes.

My children.

AT FIRST I THOUGHT WE COULD SWIM, BUT AS WE psyched

ourselves up to jump from the floating wreckage, I caught

Andy around his waist.

“We’re too far, Andy,” I said. The current was pulling us

away from the beach more quickly than I’d realized, sucking

us toward a blinding orange sun. The beach, lit up like pink

gold, looked very far away. “We won’t make it.”

We lost our balance for the fourth or fifth time, dropping

to our knees. I stared again at the beach. What choice did we

have but to swim?

I had to think. I wasn’t sure what part of the house we were

kneeling on. It had been a bigger surface at first, but it had

morphed into a Huck Finn–type raft, with a chunk of built434

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in bookshelf jutting up from one side of it. The floor of the

living room, maybe. It didn’t matter. Whatever it was, it kept

breaking apart, leaving us with a smaller and smaller barrier

between life and death. It wouldn’t float forever.

“We can swim,” Andy said. “We can pretend it’s laps.”

“But it’s not,” I said. “It’s much colder than the pool, and a

pool doesn’t have a riptide. See how we’re being pulled out to

sea? That’s what would happen to us if we tried to swim.”

I was so scared. What if instead of saving my baby brother,

I was killing him?

Another piece of our creaky raft broke away and Andy

yelped as I pulled him tight against me. I watched the part of

the flooring with the bookcase float away from us, then buckle

and slip underwater. I was watching our fate.

“Are we going to drown?” Andy asked.

The pink beach seemed farther away than only a few seconds

earlier. I grabbed Andy’s shoulders and looked him in the eyes.

“Listen to me,” I said. “We’ll have to try to swim, but we

have to stay together as much as we can. Don’t lose sight of

me and I won’t lose sight of you. And listen! We can’t swim

straight toward the beach! Okay? Swim
parallel
to the beach.”

“What’s ‘parell’?” He looked scared. He was picking up my

own fear.

I let out a sob, surprising both of us. I brushed tears away

with the back of my hand. “It means we’ll swim in this direction.” I pointed north.

“How will we get to the beach then?” His voice was so tiny.

What have I done?
“Panda.” I hugged him quickly. “I promise.

We swim in that direction for a little bit and then we’ll be able

to swim to the beach. But you have to stay calm. Don’t panic.”

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“You’re not calm.” His lower lip trembled.

“You know how you’re supposed to pace yourself during a

race?” I asked.

He nodded, even though I’d never once seen him pace

himself.

“You’ve
got
to pace yourself this time, Andy.” My voice

cracked. “Please, Panda. Don’t swim all-out, okay? Slow and

steady, in that direction—” I pointed again “—and we can do

it.”

Andy’s gaze had drifted from my face, and I suddenly saw

the whole of the sun reflected in his brown eyes.

“Look!” He pointed behind me.

I turned in time to see a wall of water headed for us, rising

out of a sea that was totally calm. I clutched Andy’s arm,

letting out a scream as the wave bore down on us. It tore us

from our flimsy deck and ripped my brother from my hands.

I tumbled underwater like a gymnast through the air. I held

my breath, my eyes open, searching the frothy, swirling water

for Andy as the wave turned me in corkscrews. I couldn’t see

him. Panicking, I batted at the water as if I could clear it away

from my face like a curtain.

“Andy!” I shouted into the ocean, water filling my mouth,

my lungs.

I rose in slow motion to the crest of the wave. It felt like

someone was lifting me up, carrying me. My lungs hurt as they

sucked in the amazing pink air, and when I plummeted into

the water again, I gave in. Gave up. Gave myself over to the

sea.