Meet Me in the Orchard (Paradise #1)

Chapter 1

The sound of a freight train coming right at him was so loud that Brodie could barely hear his brothers, Tripp and Knox, yelling from the cellar door.

A chunk of ragged wood stabbed the ground right in front of him.

He dodged it, and a hog spun through the air above his head so close that he could smell it.

When pigs fly, he thought as he ran toward the storm shelter.

“Get in here!” Tripp’s voice came through the noise.

A violent wind pushed him hard from behind, and suddenly he was being thrown forward with such force that his feet left the ground.

He groped for balance, and then Tripp hugged him like a bear.

The next thing he knew, he was sitting on the bench that lined the back wall.

An oil lamp on an old wooden table dimly lit up the room.

Brodie clasped his hands together to keep them from shaking.

“Pigs were flying,” he whispered.

“What did you say?” Knox hollered above the noise. “With all the pounding out there, you’ve got to speak up.”

“I saw a full-sized hog flying through the air,” Brodie answered between bouts of catching his breath.

“Everything was flying.” Tripp raised his voice. “Even you. If I hadn’t caught you when I did, you’d be halfway to Arkansas by now. Thank God we’ve got a storm cellar.”

“Thank Ira,” Brodie said. “He’s the one that built this storm shelter.”

Brodie’s heart was still pounding, and he wasn’t sure his legs would support him if he tried to stand up.

From the sound of things, the cellar door was taking a severe beating.

Knox, the carpenter in the family, might need to build a new one next week.

Audrey Tucker and her ninety-year-old aunt were his neighbors who had shown him nothing but disgust because he wouldn’t sell his farm to them, but he hoped they were safe.

“Oh, no!” he whispered, but evidently neither of his brothers heard him. “What if this storm blows the Paradise away or hurts one of my seven half sisters, or my biological father?”

“I can see your lips moving, but I have no idea what you are saying,” Knox shouted.

“Nothing,” Brodie said loudly and shook his head.

Would his heart ever stop pounding, or was this his new norm?

Did the force of the wind cause a problem in his internal organs?

Brodie was no stranger to destruction. He had done a couple of tours in countries with bombed-out buildings.

He had seen—up close and personal—what an IED could do.

He’d served on the Bandera, Texas, Volunteer Fire Department and seen and been through atrocities that gave him nightmares.

But coming so close to being swept away in a tornado affected him worse than anything he had ever experienced before.

If he had been a child, and not thirty years old, he would have definitely needed years of therapy.

“Are you alright?” Knox asked.

Brodie glanced over at his brother. “Why do you ask?”

“You’ve been staring at the lamp with a blank stare on your face,” Knox answered.

“I thought I was a goner,” Brodie admitted.

“So did I when that piece of wood flew out of the air and stuck in the ground right in front of you,” Tripp yelled.

Suddenly an eerie silence filled the place.

The lamplight flickered a couple of times before it went out completely, leaving the cellar in darkness so heavy that made Brodie shiver.

He stood up and felt his way around the shelving to his right.

He moved slowly toward the thin streak of light on the steps, possibly coming through a broken board on the weathered old wooden door.

A sticker in the palm of his hand was payment when he searched for the rusty bolt that would unlock the door.

He ignored the stinging pain and slid the bolt to the side.

Then he pushed hard with his shoulder, but it did not budge.

“Need some help?” Knox asked.

“Only if y’all want to get out of here,” Brodie answered.

Even with three strong men giving it all they had, the door would not open. Brodie was so winded on the third try that he sat down on the step and groaned. “We are stuck until someone comes along to help us from the outside.”

“Everyone may just drive by and think that we were blown away like you nearly were,” Tripp groaned.

“Brodie! Tripp! Knox!” Voices blended together, but in among all of them, Brodie recognized Joe Clay’s.

“In here. In the cellar,” he yelled.

“Hush! Everyone be quiet!” Mary Jane’s voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a barrel.

“We are trapped,” Brodie shouted.

Shadows covered up the tiny streak of light, and the scraping sounds of something being dragged off the wooden door filled the cellar. Brodie didn’t realize how tight his chest had been until he could actually take a deep breath without pain.

“Anyone got a chain in their truck?” Joe Clay’s voice came through plain and clear.

“I do,” Shane answered. “I’ll get it so we can drag this tree away. Looks like the tornado ripped away the electrical wires to the house, but they’re not lying around anywhere. Remy is calling the power company now to get them out here to fix things.”

Brodie sat down on the top step. “I hope that’s not one of the apple trees on the door.”

“We’re working on things out here,” Mary Jane yelled. “Are y’all safe?”

“We are fine,” Tripp called out.

“That’s good,” Joe Clay said. “We’re wrapping a chain around the tree and using my old work truck to pull it off the doors. Y’all might want to stand back away from everything in case the wood splinters and flies. If this don’t work, we’ll go back to the Paradise and get chain saws.”

“We’ll get you out of there,” Mary Jane assured them in a worried voice.

The crunching sound of the tree being dragged away was deafening, but immediately a beam of light flowed into the cellar. Joe Clay’s face appeared first when he opened up what was left of the splinters and shattered doors.

“Are y’all sure you are all right?” he asked.

Brodie was the first one out, and Joe Clay grabbed him in a fierce bear hug. “When we saw that the house was gone, I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m fine except for a splinter in my hand,” Brodie assured him.

When the other two brothers came out of the cellar, Joe Clay left Brodie and wrapped them up in a three-way hug. “We are so lucky that you made it to shelter on time.”

“Brodie just about didn’t,” Tripp said and then pointed toward where their house used to be.

Disaster lay all around the place. The roof, all except for shingles scattered around the yard, was gone.

Three walls of the house, along with everything but the bathroom fixtures, had been blown away.

The water hose, hooked up to the well house, was still coiled up like a sleeping snake.

How could a storm so violent that it picked him right up off the ground not even disturb a lightweight hose?

Brodie closed his hazel eyes, but when he opened them nothing had changed. He stood to the side of the cellar steps, looked out across the farm, and stared at broken boards and shingles scattered every which way.

“What do we do now?” Tripp asked.

His brother’s voice sounded as if it was coming from a mile away.

Lightning lit up the sky behind Brodie and thunder rolled. The tornado had left a chilly wind, drizzling rain, and shock in its wake. Now it was traveling north toward the Red River, most likely destroying whatever got in its way.

“We will rebuild.” Knox’s statement seemed flat and unsure.

“That will take months,” Tripp said.

“I’ve already got the plans drawn up,” Knox said. “We were going to build a bigger house this summer, anyway. Until we get it ready to move into, we can live in my travel trailer.”

“We don’t have anything but the clothes on our backs,” Tripp snapped.

“We’ll go to Nocona this evening and get whatever we need—toothbrushes, soap, and that kind of thing. We’ll figure this out,” Knox said.

“Thirty minutes?” Brodie whispered.

“I can’t build a house in half an hour,” Knox declared.

“I know,” Brodie said, “but half an hour ago Tripp was…” he paused and glanced over to see if the grill was still there—it wasn’t. “Tripp was grilling T-bones.”

“We can buy more steaks,” Knox barked. “We can buy anything we need or want. Three pieces of meat are the least of our worries right now.”

“And what are we going to do for supper tonight?” Tripp asked.

“We’ll eat at the Dairy Queen, buy what we need, stay in that little hotel east of town, and figure things out tomorrow,” Knox answered.

“We need to see if we still have a truck that will take us to Nocona,” Brodie finally got the words out, but his feet wouldn’t move.

A cardinal lit on a bare pecan tree branch above him and began to sing.

His mother Jolene always said that when a cardinal lands close by, it means that someone who has passed away is thinking of you.

If that was true and his mother was thinking of him, then why would there be a song in her heart?

She should be weeping, not putting out a joyful sound.

Somewhere off in the distance the sound of more vehicles coming down the dirt lane drowned out the bird’s happiness. Dark clouds covered the sky to the northeast, but to the southwest, the sky was clear blue, and the sun was slowly making its way toward the western horizon.

None of it made any sense.

The noise of lots of trucks and cars took his attention toward the road, where they lined up like a funeral procession, which seemed fitting to Brodie at that time. Family members were hurrying out of seven more trucks and coming toward him.

“Family,” he muttered.

“Are you guys hurt?” Parker asked as he and Endora ignored the rain and ran across the yard, sidestepping all the debris.

“We’re fine, but we don’t have a home anymore.” Brodie could talk, but his feet didn’t work anymore. “Did the tornado hit any of y’all’s places?”

“We are all safe and our homes are still standing. Houses can be replaced,” Mary Jane told him. “Sons can’t.”