Chapter 10
Ten
brOOKS
Twenty-four hours after the storm, there's still plenty of people who are damned and determined to find new ways to kill themselves. I stand in the parking lot of The Funnel Cloud watching a man holding a chainsaw and dancing too close with the grim reaper.
“Kill the engine,” I call across the street.
A man in a feed store cap looks up from the fallen pecan limb he has been trying to cut away from a crushed porch railing. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Then you see that hot line that's tangled up with those branches you're about to cut."
His gaze jumps to the power line tangled in the tree he's about to cut.
The color drains out of his face.
I nod toward Hershel, who is already waving two linemen over like he’s directing traffic at a rock concert. “Nobody touches that tree until they clear it.”
The man shuts the chainsaw off.
Around us, Muncie looks like the storm took a fist to it and dragged its knuckles down Main Street. Roof shingles glitter in the gutter. A stop sign leans sideways. Every few minutes, somebody calls for something they've just discovered they need. Water, a tarp, a hand.
And Sam knows where every single thing should go.
She stands outside The Funnel Cloud with a notebook in one hand and a pencil tucked behind her ear. A deputy asks her about the west side of town. A lineman asks about generators. An older woman with a bleeding scrape on her cheek grips Sam’s arm and says she can’t find her brother.
And not once does Sam break.
“Carl’s checking Oak Street now,” she says. “Go inside and get you some water and a snack, sweetie. We'll make sure we have everyone looking for him, okay?”
The woman only hesitates for a moment, then she heads in.
Sam turns before anyone else says her name, like she can feel the next problem coming.
I stand there with my injured arm throbbing and the stupid, useless urge to put myself between her and the whole town.
Except that's not what she needs. The reality is, she's never really needed me. At least not in the way I wanted myself to be needed.
She needs people who believe she can take care of herself. Someone who'll be there when she comes down from it all, but not someone who stops her from climbing the hill to begin with.
She needs a partner. I tried to be a wall that nothing could penetrate. Not even love. The realization is enough to make me sick.
“You planning on holding that box all day?” Petra asks.
I look down. I’m holding a case of bottled water against my chest like I've got nothing better to do than stand here and look pretty.
“No, ma’am.”
“Good. Inside, by the jukebox. And if your pretty blonde shadow knocks into one more table, I’m making her mop.”
I don’t ask which pretty blonde shadow she means. The urge to correct Petra and tell her she's not mine is right there at the tip of my tongue, but even I know better than to correct Petra. Especially now.
Luci has been circling too close since we got here. Every time I turn, she’s nearby with a bottle of water, a question, a hand hovering near my elbow like I might need steadying. Two weeks ago, I might have registered it as eagerness. Maybe even loyalty.
Now, there's something about it that feels manufactured. I tell myself it's the fact that Sam has now told me how replaced she's been feeling.
But even as I tell myself that, I can feel Luci's stare on me.
I carry the water inside.
The Funnel Cloud has become part bar, part triage, part town hall. Somehow, Petra has made the math work. People sit in booths charging phones off power strips. A couple of kids sleep under jackets near the pool table. Someone has taped a handwritten list of checked-in residents to the wall.
Near the front window, Tom Harbor is bent over a tablet, his finger moving across a radar loop.
“You’re looking at velocity?” I ask.
He startles, then looks up at me through his lashes. “Base velocity. Reflectivity is messy after debris gets lofted. Sometimes people only look at the big colorful blob.”
“Most people do.”
"Most people aren't me."
I bite back the first real smile I’ve felt all day. “Can’t argue with that.”
He glances toward the door, where Sam is talking to a lineman. “You were wrong when she said to cut south.”
I freeze my smile in place. Not because I think that I'd hurt Tom's feelings. He's too astute for that. But because it's perhaps my feelings that are hurt.
Luckily Tom doesn't seem to notice or care. He's too involved with the tablet. His finger taps the screen. “The outflow boundary was obvious. She saw it first.”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice rough. “She usually does.”
“She’s better than the apps.”
"She's better than most people and most things on the planet."
Tom considers that, serious as a judge. “Then why doesn’t she ride in the truck anymore?”
The room keeps moving around us. Someone laughs too loudly near the bar. A chair scrapes. Rainwater drips steadily from someone’s coat onto the floor.
I look at Sam again.
She's watching the people in the bar, no doubt assessing who needs the next steady hand or guidance. She looks tired, but she also looks like the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. She's exactly where she needs to be: in the middle of everything. Not a world away from it.
“Because I was scared,” I say.
Tom’s gaze cuts back to me. “Of her?”
“No.” My throat tightens. “For her.”
He thinks that over. “She’s sad when people say your name.”
The thing about Tom is that he doesn't say things for effect. He notices patterns, inconsistencies, and things worth noticing. And he never once thinks about whether those things might bother someone when he does because what he's noticing are facts. He's a brilliant kid.
“She tries not to look sad,” he adds. “But she does.”
My hand closes around the back of the chair beside me.
There are a hundred things I could say. Adult things. Complicated things. Lies dressed up as privacy.
"I made her sad," I say, watching her. She's looking down at her notebook, the one she's been writing in since I got here. "I was an idiot, and she paid for it."
Tom looks back at his tablet. “You should probably fix that.”
There's nothing that can stop the laugh that barks out of me. Sam looks up briefly our way, then away quickly, embarrassed that she gave me even that much of her attention.
“Yes,” I say. “Hopefully I still can."
It takes me until after dark to get her alone.
Not truly alone. There are people ten yards away in every direction, trucks grinding past, voices carrying from the bar, generators humming like angry insects. But Sam steps into the narrow alley beside The Funnel Cloud with a crate of empty glasses, and for once, no one follows her.
I do.
“Sam.”
She stops with her back to me.
The alley light catches the loose strands of her hair. She’s still wearing her ring. I see it when she shifts the crate against her hip, one small flash against all that grime and exhaustion.
The fact that she hasn't removed it even after that last night at the house gives me hope.
She turns. “If you’re here to ask where Petra keeps the trash bags, they’re by the back door.”
“I’m not.”
Her chin lifts a little. She's bracing for something, and I hate that she feels like she has to do that with me now.
My mouth goes dry.
I had speeches in my head while I hauled debris and checked roads and answered Tom’s questions. Things that likely sounded more like movie dialogue than something I should be saying to the one woman in the world who wouldn't appreciate theatrics like that.
Now she's standing in front of me, and the only thing I can think of is the word please.
“I found your notes,” I say.
Her face changes so quickly I almost miss it. A flicker. Pain first, then embarrassment, then a wall coming down.
"I wasn't trying to pry," I add quickly. "I was looking for maps."
She sighs. "Maps are in the second drawer on the right. You must have looked in the big drawer where I usually keep my handbag."
I almost want to laugh at how perfectly she guessed that, but the last thing I feel like doing right now is laughing.
"Sounds about right," she continues. "You went looking for maps and found the one thing I never meant for you to find."
As much as she can try to hide it, I can see it. I know her well enough to see the embarrassment coloring her cheeks. Funny how I still know her so well and managed to mess this up so perfectly.
"I found the picture, too. The…ultrasound picture."
She looks away, but not before the pain crosses her face. I hate it. I hate everything about it. The only thing I wanted to do is keep her from getting hurt and the only thing I can ever seem to do these days is hurt her.
I risk taking a step closer. "I should have talked to you about all this a long time ago. I should have told you what was going on in my head, and I should have listened to you. Instead, I just let it all come out sideways."
She laughs, sharp. "Sideways? Brooks, sideways is what happens when you forget my favorite color or forget milk when you go to the grocery store. This is so far beyond sideways.
"You took me out of the field. Stopped trusting me. And then, as if that wasn't enough, you replaced me with another woman. A blonder, younger woman. You do the math."
"Sam, that's never?—"
"I know. That's never what you intended.
It just happened spontaneously, magically, bit by bit, until I was gone and she was right there beside you.
And even now, she's following you around like a little lost puppy dog.
I heard someone refer to her as your 'young wife' right in front of me, Brooks. "
Fuck. I wipe my hand over my face. Of all the ridiculous ways for this to go…
No. Not sideways. Sam was right. She always is. This is far beyond sideways. This is upside down and turned inside out.
The back door swings open.
Luci stumbles out with a laugh too loud for the space. “There you are."
As if this night can get any worse.