In the Midnight Rain (37 page)

"She's in my lap. Hurry up!"

To keep the dog in, Blue closed the door to the basement, and without bothering to grab a coat or umbrella, he slammed outside—into a storm that had suddenly grown very loud and fierce. The wind nearly took him off his feet, but he staggered and leaned down hard into it, his clothes and hair soaked in seconds as he ran down the hill. He cried her name before he was on the porch, "Ellie!"

Inside, April barked, and Blue opened the door without worrying about a knock. Agitated and nervous, April barked and whined and licked his fingers, as Blue cried out Ellie's name again. She must really be exhausted.

But she wasn't there. He looked in the bedroom and saw only the rumpled bed. He even looked in the bathroom, thinking in his panic that she might have hidden in the shower when she heard the sirens that were bleating their warning into the roar of the storm.

On the counter was a pregnancy test, and he reached for it when April barked, sharply, urgently, and he raced back out. Be stupid to get himself killed in all this over something he could just ask her about.

"Come on, baby," he said to April, and they raced back up the hill to the house, and down into the basement, just as the hail roared into the clearing, unbearably loud, banging and crashing. He and April ran into the small, heavily fortified room that was used as a storm shelter, and closed the heavy door. Lanie sat calmly in her chair, crocheting by the light of a lamp at her elbow. She lifted her chin. "Towels right there behind you."

Shivering in reaction, Blue wiped his face and hair and grabbed April before she could shake herself, rubbing her back. The smell of wet dog filled the small space. "She wasn't there," he said, and let the dread fill him. "God, I hope she's somewhere safe."

April whined. Lanie kept crocheting. "You said she was raised around here, and she's not a stupid woman. She'll know what to do."

He jumped up and paced to the wall. Back again, ears straining for the sound of the storm. Even here, it was loud, a roar of rain and wind and hail. He perched on the edge of the cot, April on his foot, shivering, and listened to the metallic sound of hail striking things. Impossible to tell what things. Or how big the hail.

"Doesn't sound loud enough for a tornado, does it?" he said to Lanie.

"Hard to tell from here, son." She peered at him. "Nothing you can do. Don't get yourself all worked up."

But somehow, he knew: Here was the other shoe.

Not Ellie, he begged the heavens. Just not Ellie.

Outside, the storm roared and pounded. A sudden crack, and then a series of smaller cracks and bangs and roars, made even Lanie turn pale, but they only looked at each other and didn't say a word.

April whined. Blue prayed.

* * *

Ellie panicked. Gwen opened a trap door in the kitchen and pointed for her to go down first. She took one look at that dark, spidery hole and just shook her head. "I can't!

Gwen took the broom and went first, her movements urgent as the sound of the storm intensified around them. Then she grabbed Ellie's ankle and said, "Come down here now."

Ellie went, shuddering. Squeezed into a small shelter with Gwen, she kept her knees to her chest, her hands over her ears, rocking back and forth, her heart pounding with terror. Every few seconds, she was sure she felt a spider crawling on her back, and slapped at the imaginary creature with a little screech.

"I hate this, I hate this, I hate this," she said. She couldn't stop thinking about April, who would be frantic by now, barking and whining. Ellie tried to tell herself that dogs were smart, that April would have dived right under that heavy desk when the hail started, and would do her whining from beneath it, so she'd be safe enough even if the walls came down around her.

"Don't fret too much," Gwen said. "We get the warnings all the time, but almost never have the real thing. Think about that cabin you're living in. Been standing there for more than a hundred and fifty years."

Finally, finally, the sound of the storm lessened, and it was only a soft, pattering rain. The siren shut off, leaving the world almost preternaturally quiet. By the time they crawled out of the shelter, covered with dust and trailing spider webs, even the soft rain had stopped. In silence, they walked to the door to look outside.

"Will you look at that!" Gwen cried, like a girl, and pushed by Ellie to open the screen door and pick up a ball of hail the size of a baseball. She laughed. "You ever see hail this big before?"

Ellie shook her head, following more slowly. There were hundreds of the ice balls on the ground. Not all were the enormous size of the first, but many of them were at least as big as golf balls. They covered the ground like snow, mixed with piles of shredded leaves, broken branches, and even—Ellie stared in sick surprise—a whole complete tree, uprooted and flung across the back garden like a twig. "Was it a tornado, then?"

"I don't know." Gwen bent and picked up another giant ball of hail. "I'm going to stick these in the freezer." She straightened. "You can run on and see about your dog. Come back later and we'll have ourselves a real talk."

Ellie looked at her, and remembered all over again . . . remembered everything. Too much. Feeling a little winded, she nodded. "I will."

"Look out, now. Gonna be lots of tree branches loose."

"I'll be careful."

She started at a careful walk over the soggy, littered ground, leaping over the smaller branches, going around the bigger ones. Lots of tree branches. Thick mud sucked at her shoes. Puddles soaked her to the knee. Water dripped from the branches overhead. Everywhere was pulverized greenery and muddy debris, the exhaust trail of the storm.

Ellie couldn't run. It was impossible. But the need to run, the anxiety over April, the need to see what lay beyond the thick trees in that clearing where the cabin and greenhouses and big house stood, made her heart hurt. She found she was stumbling, and realized she'd had only three or four hours' sleep in the past thirty-six hours, and in that thirty-six hours, she'd been slammed with one revelation after another.

At least she was too far gone for hysteria.

Finally she came close to the end of the woods, and leaped over the last hurdle in her path, and ran, stumbling, toward the clearing. The house on the hill showed first—looking sound and stable and eternal against the heavy gray sky. Some of the windows were broken on this side, and there was a confetti of pink and purple petals scattered over the grass, but it looked fine otherwise. As she stared at it, hurrying, she tripped on a tangle of cardboard, flung there by the winds, and nearly went down on her face.

"Get it together, Connor," she breathed, and straightened.

A sharp, glad bark reached her ears, and Ellie looked up to see April hurtling down the road, her tail high. She barked, and barked again, and rushed to shove her nose against Ellie's hand. Her fur was wet, and she stunk like wet dogs the world over, but Ellie was so relieved she fell to the road on her knees and put her arms around her, gladly accepting the return kisses and licks and dog-nose nudgings. "Oh, I'm so glad you're okay."

Everything would be all right. The house showed no real damage, so Blue was okay, and April was fine. Anything else was manageable.

Or so she thought until she came around the bend fully and saw Blue. He stood on the edge of the grass, his arms loose at his sides, his face a pure, even gray, as he looked in the direction of the greenhouses.

She felt a lump in her throat and looked. But it didn't look as bad as she expected after seeing his face. There were broken panes, but not nearly as many as she would have expected from half of that size. "Blue!" she cried, and rushed over to him. "Is it destroyed? Are your experiments ruined?"

He shook his head. "No. Maybe some. I'm amazed."

He sounded like he was in shock. Dull voice. Looked it, too. His hair was wet, and his clothes, and his mouth was strangely slack. "Your color is kind of bad. Is Lanie all right?"

"Yeah. She's fine."

She put a hand on his arm, leaning close in concern. "Were you hurt?"

"No." He swallowed. Pointed toward the cabin. "Look."

She turned. A tree, the tree that had given shade to that porch, and kept the roof cool for probably thirty years, had come down sideways, catching the northwest corner of the building. The whole cabin had simply caved in under the weight. She could see the bed, the coverlet soaked, showing beneath the trunk of the tree.

A wave of nausea struck her. "I was sleeping there."

"Yeah." He sounded so casual.

"How did April get out of there alive?"

"I got her earlier."

And one more thing. "Oh my God, Blue!" she started at a run. "My notes! All that work!" She slipped in the wet grass, and landed on her rear end, hard. It was the last straw. She burst into tears.

But her distress seemed to wake up Blue, because he was suddenly there, his arms around her, his head in her shoulder. He picked her up. "You're exhausted, Ellie," he said. "I'm going to put you to bed."

"But my notes! My computer!"

"I'll take care of it. You made hard copies of everything. It'll all be okay."

Miserably, she closed her eyes. She hadn't made a copy of the work overnight. Not a single tiny bit of a copy. But there was no more room in her for a single new shred of emotion or revelation or anything else. Like a child, she let herself be carried to bed, her clothes stripped off and her body dried with a fluffy towel. He tucked her in and kissed her forehead. "Don't worry, Ellie, I'll find your stuff. Just sleep."

And then she remembered all the things she hadn't told him—about Mabel and Peaches and about James and about herself. And...

Sleep sucked her under.

20

B
lue went back outside, intending to see what he could get out of the cabin or at least look inside the greenhouses and see how much damage had been done. But when Marcus drove up fifteen minutes later, Blue was still standing in the grass, conscious of the cold garnering down his back, somehow unable to decide which task to tackle first. Greenhouse, he'd think, then think about taking a step that way, and then decide, no—cabin first.

"Hey," was all he managed when Marcus came up the hill. He thought about asking if everybody was okay, but Marcus wouldn't be here if they weren't.

"Everybody okay here?"

Blue nodded.

"Been down to check the damage?"

He shook his head.

Marcus spied the cabin. "Jesus! Was Ellie in there?"

"No. She went down to see Gwen."

"Is she in the house?"

"Yeah."

Marcus stood there another minute, then walked up to the house. Blue didn't turn. Didn't move. Went back to trying to decide between the greenhouse and the cabin.

Marcus reappeared, a bottle of bourbon in his hand. "I know you been giving it up, but trust me, you need a drink." He took a swig straight from the mouth and gave it to Blue. "You look like shit, no offense."

Blue took the bottle and drank. Liquor burned his tongue, his throat, settled hard in his belly. It gave him room to breathe, which he did, then drank again, deep. He gave the bottle back to Marcus so he wouldn't be tempted to more. "Ellie's worried about her book. I gotta see what I can dig out of there."

"All right, man." He screwed the lid on the bourbon. "Let's do it. Been in the greenhouse yet?"

He shook his head. "Not yet."

"Doesn't look too bad." He whistled. "Tornado did touch down over in Hector. Took out the grocery store, I heard."

They walked down the hill. Blue stopped in the yard of the cabin, and stared at the crushed bed beneath the beams of the roof. Abruptly, he turned and threw up the bourbon he'd just drunk.

It didn't help. His body roiled with nausea, and he stayed bent, his hands on his knees, his eyes closed, waiting for it to go away. "She stayed up all night. I don't know what made her go to Gwen's." The rest was unspoken. What if she hadn't? Marcus was silent for long moments. Slowly, the nausea faded and Blue straightened. He looked at the bed, the muddy quilt, to test himself, but the illness had passed.

"You all right now?"

"Yeah. Let's see what we can get out of here. She's worked her ass off on that book."

It turned out to be a fairly uncomplicated procedure. Because the tree had come down on the northwest corner, the bulk of the damage was on that side. The front window over the desk was broken, and held jagged teeth of glass, but a beam had landed on the edge of the heavy desk and had offered some protection. The laptop was cracked, and the pile of papers were damp, some smeared, but they were able to get them without much trouble. A box of index cards and spare disks had been protected by plastic cases. "Well, I don't know if anything is coming off the laptop, but the rest is all right."

"Hold on," Marcus said, and reached one more time through the jagged glass, straining to reach a folder at the edge. He pulled it out and nipped it open. "Pictures."

Blue nodded. "Let's take these to the house and go on over to the greenhouse, see what we can do." His mind was clearing a little now. "You sure Alisha's all right with the children?"