Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Clementine
People are pouring into the high school now. Not just from Eaglevale, but anyone who didn’t have somewhere else to go in Coldwater or the other small, surrounding towns. They’re sitting in small groups in the gymnasium, in the cafeteria, collecting in the high school auditorium.
For the most part, people are calm and orderly. They mostly know each other, which isn’t surprising, and for much of the day, Ashlake High operates like a commercial for the best of humanity.
Outside, it gets darker. Trees are shaking in the wind, and when I glance out the windows that face west, I can see that the sky over there is nearly black.
He’s fine, I tell myself. The rain will help. He’s with two dozen other guys, all of whom will be perfectly fine.
I still wish I could hear from him, but the radios are for official business only.
I walk into the classroom where they’ve stored piles of blankets and grab an armful. There’s a woman with a week-old baby who had to evacuate, and while I don’t have most of what she needs, I can at least make myself useful somehow.
Outside the thick-paned school window, the wind starts to howl, and despite everything, the sound raises goosebumps on the back of my neck.
If something happened to the fire crew, they’d tell you, I remind myself, then head to deliver blankets.
The new mom looks tired and stressed, but she smiles and thanks me for the blankets and her husband takes them from me, even as the baby cries.
“If it helps, you’re taking this better than plenty of people who don’t have newborns,” I tell them.
They both look at the baby, who’s wrapped in a blanket, kicking her feet, wailing away. The mom pulls her blanket a little tighter, then looks at me and shrugs, a half-smile coming onto her face.
“We were in pure survival mode anyway,” she says. “I’ve barely noticed we’re not at our house.”
Yikes, I think, looking at the baby’s tiny, angry face.
“Well, good luck,” I say to them. “It can only get better from here.”
I close the door gently and leave.
Turning the corner, I nearly run head-on into another woman.
“Sorry!” I say, holding out my hands.
“Do you work here?” she asks, taking my shoulder firmly in her hand.
“I’m with the Forest Service,” I say.
She takes a deep breath, and my stomach tightens, because this woman is obviously just barely keeping it together.
“I can’t find my daughter,” she says.
I nod, and strangely, a sense of calm washes over me, now that I have a task, something to do besides trying to be useful and thinking about Hunter.
“What’s her name?” I ask.
“Delilah Clark,” the woman says. “I’m Kim Clark. She was spending the night at a friend’s house, and, you know, I’ve been so busy lately with the kids and work and school that I wasn’t watching the news or listening to the radio, and I didn’t know we were being evacuated...”
“Kim, I’m gonna take you to the gym, where we can sort this out,” I say, even as a flutter of anxiety ripples through my stomach for Delilah. “She’s gotta be somewhere, and we can sort of it out there.”
Kim just nods, her eyes lowering. She’s clearly about ten seconds away from total meltdown, and I lead her toward the gym where my bosses and the Red Cross volunteers are gathered.
The short version is that Kim didn’t realize they were under evacuation orders, and let Delilah spend the night at a friend’s house in Coldwater. The moment she realized, she tried to call Delilah, the friend, the friend’s parents, but couldn’t find any of them.
She drove over, but the house was empty, a red EVACUATED sticker on the front door.
“That means Delilah is safe,” I say, pushing open the door to the gym.
“From the fire,” Kim says. “I hope, anyway.”
I’d be willing to bet fifty bucks that Delilah is safe and sound somewhere, and hasn’t been kidnapped into an international sex trafficking ring.
I know better than to say the words international sex trafficking ring to Kim right now, though, even if I were trying to reassure her. We walk toward the knot of people gathered around folding tables in the corner.
“Jen, Mike,” I say. “This is....”
They both turn around and look at me, their faces so pale and stricken that the words die on my lips.
“Clementine,” Jennifer says, her voice a scratchy whisper. “There you are.”
Suddenly I feel like there’s a clamp on my chest, metal teeth bearing down. I forget all about Kim and Delilah, and I look from Jennifer to Mike and back.
“What?” I ask.