Chapter 3
Three
SAM
Tony’s fingers are calloused. That’s the weird thought that runs through my mind as Brooks walks into command.
He’s fixing the strap on my headset because it keeps catching on my hair. After cursing it for the tenth time, he stopped me, trying to fix it in a way that I wasn’t able to, given that I couldn’t see the back of my own head.
Still, I realize how it must look. Tony leaning over my shoulder with one hand braced against the back of my chair, it almost looks like…
Nothing that Brooks would in a million years think I was capable of.
“There,” Tony says, snapping the clip into place. “Told you I’d take care of you.”
He means the headset, of course. But I can't deny that the phrase sounds weird. Still, I shrug it off.
“Thanks,” I say, easing away from Tony’s hand. “My scalp will forever be grateful for your contribution to the workplace.”
Brooks stands near the door in a dark jacket, his eyes jumping between Tony and me. Behind him, Luci is looking between Brooks and me.
“You ready?” I ask Brooks, hoping to ease the awkwardness of the moment.
“Yeah,” Brooks says, and for a second, I’m certain that he’s going to say something else. Anything.
Then the radar blares behind me, reminding us why we’re all here. The hook forming west of Cedar Vale is tightening. I see it, and when I look back at Brooks, I see that he’s thinking the same thing I am.
Amazing how I used to be able to read his mind about everything, but now it’s limited to storm predictions.
“I’ll see you when I get back?” I ask, needing something from him that isn’t this sudden wall of coldness.
“Yeah,” he says and then turns, Luci giving me a quick glance as she follows him.
The old Brooks would have walked over, put his hands on my waist, and kissed me.
No. That’s not true. The old Brooks would have taken my hand and pulled me along with him.
This Brooks walks out with Luci tagging along behind him.
Tony makes a noise behind me. Once again, I’ve forgotten he was there.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Fine,” I lie.
Nothing about this storm will be predictable. I can feel it in my bones, the way I always do.
I don’t let the fear creep into my voice. The fear gets louder when I can’t put eyes on the thing. My anxiety races ahead of me, fear twisting as I think about Brooks out there in it without me.
“Lead, you’ve got a strengthening couplet Southwest of Fairview. Stay north for now. Hershel, don’t let that second vehicle drift west.”
“Copy that,” Hershel says. “I got a few more concerts in me I wanna make.”
Brooks doesn’t laugh like he usually would. A peek at the feeds shows his jaw tight, lips pressed thin. Luci’s beside him, one hand on the grab handle, eyes bright, body ready. She says something I don’t catch, and Brooks gives her a tight smile. First one I’ve seen tonight.
My fingers move over the keyboard before my heart can make a meal out of it.
I own the one thing I’ve got left. The radars. The comms. The control of it while being completely out of control of anything real. It doesn’t diminish my knowing, though. I can still feel how this one is about to whip us all into shape.
Still, I know I’d be better out there with him. He’d drive, I’d track. We’d sometimes communicate with just a look.
“Left,” I’d say.
“You’re the boss, Sammy Girl.”
Or he’d point at something through the windshield and ask, “You see what I’m seeing?”
We fell in love before the wind had stopped blowing on that first storm we shared. Back then, I’d never wondered if there was room for me beside him.
Now, I wonder if there’s any place in the world for me near him.
“Command,” Brooks says, snapping me back. “Talk to me.”
I’m back to being command.
I swallow. “You’re good for another mile, but you need to keep ahead of that south option. This thing is cycling fast.”
“Luci?” he asks.
My hand stills on the mouse.
I look up at the feed. I don’t dare look at the chat.
“Visually, base still looks clean,” she says. “We’ve got space.”
I look at the velocity scan. They don’t have space.
“Brooks, listen to me. You need to cut south now. County Road 11 is your last clean option before the core wraps you.”
For a moment, all I hear is rain battering the windshield.
“Luce?” Brooks asks again.
I feel sick.
She hesitates. “I mean, I can still see east. If we keep moving, we might beat it and get a better angle.”
“No,” I say, and my voice is too sharp. I try to remember to breathe. “No, you won’t. That road floods at the low crossing. Take Eleven, Brooks. Now.”
Silence.
In that silence, I see Brooks that night two years ago. He went left when I’d said right. It was one of the few times that the storm had us both so out of sorts that we weren’t listening to each other.
“Brooks,” I say, trying to keep the pleading tone out of my voice. Pleading that he listens because I’m afraid of what will happen if he doesn’t. Pleading that he’ll listen because I’m afraid of what it means if he doesn’t.
“We’re going to push another half mile,” he says.
A headache begins to bloom behind my left eye.
“Do not push another half mile.”
“We’ve got visual.”
“You’ve got rain-wrapped rotation, and you’re about to lose your escape.”
Luci’s voice comes through, strained now. “Wind’s shifting.”
“Brooks,” I snap. “South. Now.”
The feed jolts as he turns the wheel.
For just a second, I feel relief so keenly that I’d swear the floor beneath me was lowering.
Then something slams into the side of the lead truck.
The sound through the headset is something I’ll never live long enough to forget. Metal screaming. Luci’s cry. Brooks swearing. The feed shows the camera tilting violently, the windshield nothing but gray rain and flying debris.
Then darkness.
“Lead? Brooks?”
Static.
“Hershel! Tell me you see something!”
“I’m trying, Sam,” Hershel barks. The usual humor is gone. “Visibility’s trash. But I saw debris hit them. They’re off the road.”
“Brooks, answer me. Please.”
Nothing.
“Brooks.”
I watch the radar as if it can pinpoint where my husband is now. As if it can show me a visual of his heart still beating.
“Hershel?”
“We’re pulling back around now,” he says. “Emergency services are en route.”
I’m standing with no recollection of when I stood.
“Brooks, if you can hear me, please answer.”
Nothing. Just static.
For a second, I’m in that truck two years ago. My body feels the pain, and I know, somehow I just know, that the baby’s gone. And I’m wondering if I am too. I can feel Brooks’s arms around me. I can hear his voice, but the pain is too much. I hear him saying my name over and over.
Stay with me, Sammy Girl. Just stay with me, okay?
I tear off the headset.
Tony grabs it in mid-air. “Sam.”
“Run command, Tony.”
“What?”
“You know what to do. Keep Hershel talking on channel two. Call Cedar Vale clinic and the county hospital. Find out where they’re taking them.”
“Sam, wait.”
I don’t wait.
The wind outside is vicious. I run to the SUV, determined to fight hell to get to Brooks.
Just one minute ago, I was so angry with him that I was planning out what I would say to him when he returned, how I would ream him out for taking Luci’s word over mine.
The hurt that bloomed through me in that moment pales in comparison to what I’m feeling now.
I thought we’d have later. I should know by now that later is never a guarantee.
At this point, I don’t know what’s blurring my vision: my tears or the rain on the windshield. I let neither stop me.
I grip the wheel harder. I can see Brooks at 27, on his knees in a motel parking lot, holding a ring that I know damned well he didn’t have money for.
“Yes,” I’d said before he’d had time to ask.
“Will you at least let me ask?”
“Maybe, but hurry up so we can kiss like they do in the movies.”
“Fine, brat. Marry me, Sammy Girl.”
“Yes, now kiss me before I grow old.”
He’d stood up then and looked down at me with that crooked grin. “I can’t wait to kiss you when you’re old. All gums and dentures. Smellin’ like Ben Gay.”
“I swear to G?—“
And then he’d kissed me so hard I’d sworn I’d seen the stars come up over that motel.
If you told me then that there would come a day when we wouldn’t find our way back to each other after the storm, I would never have believed you.
My phone buzzes in the cup holder. Tony. I put the phone on speaker.
“Where are they?”
“Cedar Vale clinic,” he says. “They’re taking Brooks and Luci there. Hershel’s following. Brooks is conscious.”
The sound I make sounds like a dying animal. Half sob, half something else.
“Conscious,” I repeat.
“Yeah. He’s hurt but appears to be talking. Don’t know more than that.”
I end the call because speech is beyond me at this point.
Brooks is alive.
Whatever wild thing is wrong with us, it can still be fixed if he’s alive.
I just have to get to him.
My shoes squeak on the clinic floor as I rush past the front desk. I hear someone say my name. I don’t stop.
I find them behind a half-drawn curtain in the urgent care bay.
Brooks is sitting on the edge of an exam bed.
Alive.
There’s blood dried at his hairline. One sleeve is cut open, and white gauze is wrapped around his forearm.
But he’s alive.
My hand flies to my mouth.
For a minute, that’s all I care about. Thanking God he’s alive. Telling myself it’s all going to be okay now.
Then I see Luci.
Suddenly, she’s in his arms.
Her face is pressed into his chest, her shoulders shaking. Brooks wraps his good arm around her, his hand spread wide against her back. He holds her carefully, as if she’s the one who is broken.
I grip the doorframe, stopping myself.
“I thought we were going over,” I hear Luci say.
“I did too,” Brooks says, his voice rough.
His fingers flex against her back.
I take one step closer. I’m his wife. He’s hurt. I belong next to him. I’m the one whose head should be pressed against his chest.
Then he lowers his head toward Luci’s hair. His lips don’t quite meet the crown of her head, but they’re so close.
“Thank God you were there.” His voice is barely audible, but I hear every word as if they’re being shouted across the room. “I don’t know that I would’ve made it through that without you.”
The pain in my chest blooms bright and hot.
I warned him.
I told him to turn sooner. I called out his name, and all but begged him to turn. Then I heard the crash. Drove here with memories chasing me down like a masked villain out of a horror movie.
And now I’m watching him hold her.
Brooks looks up.
Our eyes meet.
I wait for his hands to drop. For him to push her aside and come to me.
But his arm stays around Luci.
He doesn’t move her away.
He doesn’t reach for me.
Doesn’t even say my name.
Luci turns, seeing me. Her cheeks are wet. She looks so young and terrified that, for a split second, I hate myself for resenting the embrace my husband is giving her.
Brooks still doesn’t move.
I press my hand against my stomach. His eyes follow the movement, and I see when he swallows.
And still, he doesn’t move.
I shake my head, turning and walking out before I can take in any other sight that will stay with me forever.
The clinic is too bright. Breathing feels more difficult than I remember it being. I’m swallowing sobs that feel like rocks sliding down my throat.
“Sam.”
Hershel catches up with me near the curb. His long gray hair is wet and plastered to his forehead. He’s wearing a Zeppelin shirt that’s drenched.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were. You were going to tell me to go back in there.”
“Yeah, maybe I was. But whatever you saw?—“
“You mean my husband holding another woman and not even attempting to remove her from his person while I stood there and hurt?”
“That bad, huh?”
I laugh, an ugly, humorless thing. “I’m going home. He doesn’t need me.”
“You know that ain’t true, Sam.”
I turn to face him. His face has weathered since I first met him, back when Brooks and I were so stupidly in love we believed we could conquer anything.
Hershel has seen it all. Our wedding. Our fights.
He banged on motel room walls when we were too loud and swore the next morning he’d seen calmer rabbits in heat.
He was there when we came home without our baby.
He was there when Brooks stopped letting me back into the truck with him, one careful excuse at a time.
“He needs someone next to him,” I say. If you didn’t know better, you’d think I was calm.
You’d completely believe that my heart wasn’t split in half.
“He needs someone who can be beside him when the road goes bad. Someone who he can look at after it’s all over and tell her he couldn’t have made it through it without her. ”
I look back at the door.
“That person just isn’t me anymore.”
I turn, starting toward the SUV. Hershel reaches for me.
“Go back and make him talk to you, Sam.”
The door to the clinic remains closed. Behind it, my husband, the love of my life, is in another woman’s arms, telling her that she was the one he needed to get through the night.
“I can’t do it anymore, Hershel.”
I step off the curb and into whatever comes next.
As I reach the door, I hear the clinic doors open. I don’t look back.