Chapter Eleven #2
The sight across the island is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Rain is pounding against the soil, wind gusting sideways, throwing white caps against the rocks, surging high up onto the shoreline like it’s reaching for the house.
This is not a simple rainstorm. This is something else.
I want to escape back inside, but the banging shutters are too loud, and I know they will break the windows if left as they are. Barefoot, I hurry down the steps and out into the storm. I glance toward the garden, looking for Clay, but he’s not there.
A spiraling fear sinks through me. Did something happen to him? Did he get too close to the shore? Was he pulled into the sea by one of the thundering waves?
The thought is paralyzing, my mind tunneling into darkness—if something happened to him, I’d be alone. On the island.
Without him, I won’t survive. Without him, I won’t want to.
The wind shrieks, and I pull in two deep breaths, forcing the thought down.
Forcing myself to move around the side of the house.
I grab the loose, swinging shutters one by one and slam them closed against the windows, latching them in place.
I’m soaked within minutes. I secure the three kitchen windows, and the windows at the back beside the chimney, when something whips past my head.
I turn but can’t make it out before it’s swallowed up by the dark.
Only two more windows to go.
The wind gusts around me, swirling in a chaotic, blinding blur.
Still, I reach the next window—higher than the others—and I have to stand on tiptoes to reach it.
My fingers shake as I latch it closed, then feel the whoosh of something else ripping past me, just behind my head.
I flinch away but feel the sting at my temple.
I touch my face, blood coming away on my fingertips. More debris tumbles through the air, ripped out to sea. I can’t tell what it is—maybe tiles from the roof.
I only have one more window to secure, when I feel a hand on my arm. I wince back instinctively, but Clay is there, grabbing me. He says something I can’t make out. He’s soaked, hair slicked against his forehead, hands muddied.
“Get inside!” he shouts again, and this time I understand.
But I shake my head, pointing to the window.
He steps around me, grabs the shutter forcefully and slams it into place, locking it closed.
In the next motion, his hand reaches for me, and he’s pulling me toward the house.
We scramble up the porch, ducking inside, the door banging shut behind us.
I sink to the floor, rainwater dripping around me.
But the house is not silent. There are still shutters clattering against the walls on the second floor.
Clay makes for the stairs. I listen to his rushed footsteps across the floor, and then the clapping of windows being pulled open, followed by the thud of shutters secured into place. Everything goes dark.
A moment later, I feel his arms around me, lifting me up and placing me on the couch. “Yer bleeding.” He brings a damp cloth from the kitchen, presses it to my temple.
“I’m all right,” I assure him. The wind roars against the house, the walls rattle, the floor vibrates beneath us, like the whole thing is about to splinter apart. “Have you ever seen a storm this bad?” I ask, trembling beneath his hands.
He shakes his head. “This is no storm. It’s a hurricane.”
I remember watching news reports when tropical storms tore through the Caribbean, then made their way up the eastern seaboard. But I’ve never lived through one.
I imagine the warnings blaring across TVs back on the mainland, urging residents to evacuate their homes or to shelter in place, describing the carnage locals could expect to see.
They’ve surely named this storm something like Bernadette or Rhonda, as if it were an angry woman, thrashing across the sea, seeking revenge.
But without these reports, we have no idea how bad the storm will get. Is it a Category 2 or 5? How dangerous are the gusts currently tearing against the house?
We stay in the living room, in the darkness, close to the front door, listening to the storm throw itself against the island, until the rattling groan from the walls changes pitch—becomes a deep splintering sound, as if the farmhouse is about to break apart under the weight of the wind.
Clay shakes his head, looks resolute, then takes my hand and leads me down into the cellar, where the air is musty and cold and ancient.
The force of the storm is muted, but in an unnatural way.
And it’s almost worse than the creaking and snapping of the house.
A narrow window faces the back of the island, but it’s dusty, never opened, and it only allows in the faintest light—a watery grayness that makes the cellar even more unsettling.
“How long will it last?” I ask, perched on a wood bench against the cold stone wall lined with mason jars.
“No telling.”
He sits, pulling me into his arms. Still, I shiver, not just from the dampness of my skin, but from fear. Clay tries to appear steady, composed, but I know him too well, and I can see the strain in him.
He’s never endured a storm like this before, and he has no idea if the house will hold, or even the island. The whole thing might crack apart—rock and clotted soil, separating under the force of the wind and violent waves.
If the house tears away from the foundation, will we be ripped out with it? Two human forms, arms and legs flapping, sent out into the deep of the ocean. Even if we survived the storm, we wouldn’t survive bobbing alone in the sea, defenseless, without land, without water. Without a life raft.
I sink my forehead into his chest, absorbing his warmth. The broad weight of his arms is a cocoon protecting me from it all. As if he were strong enough to stop a hurricane.
We stay like this, silent, listening to the wind.
Occasionally he stands up, leaving me on the bench, and walks to the little window, looking out into the gray, trying to see something. But there is only the rain and the wet sky, and debris gusting past.
“If we don’t make it—” I start to say, but he pulls me against his chest, a hand at the back of my skull. He doesn’t let the thought materialize.
But he also doesn’t assure me that we will make it. He doesn’t say a thing.
I think about my funeral. Nana and James standing over an empty grave.
She surely died out there, people will say.
In the cold, hostile Atlantic, no one could survive for more than a few minutes.
They won’t know that I died much farther south, in the warm Caribbean Sea, caught in a hurricane, in the arms of a man who should have perished decades ago.
A tombstone will mark my name, my birth, but the exact date of my death will be unknown.
Tears make soft trails down my cheeks until the fear in my chest is so heavy it pulls me into an awful, fitful sleep.
I dream of a blue heron, perched on the highest peak of the house.
I run outside, screaming at it, shouting for it to leave us alone.
I’m not sure why I’m so angry. Why I’m so afraid of the bird.
My eyes snap open, and Clay is sliding his arms out from under me. “Tried not to wake ye,” he whispers.
I sit upright. At the window, a dull wash of light filters through the dust. Sunrise, I think.
The air smells of mud, heavy and earthen. Like it’s packed into my nostrils.
Water drips through the wood slats above us.
But the wind is gone, leaving a quiet that feels preternatural.
Clay walks up the steep set of stairs, touches the door.
“Clay,” I say, afraid for some reason, not wanting him to open it.
Afraid of what we’ll find on the other side.
But he turns the knob, pushing against the wooden door with one hand.
It refuses to open. He tries again, more forceful this time.
Still nothing. He swallows, angles himself, then rams his shoulder against the door.
It gives way a couple inches. He does this again, using his full weight to muscle the door back.
Light spills into the cellar, and I feel hesitant to breathe.
Clay steps up into the kitchen, then holds down a hand to help me up.
The old farmhouse is still standing. The kitchen is still intact. Mostly.
The back door was blown in, broken free from its hinges, water and sand soaking the wood floor. The kitchen table was thrown back against the cellar door—blocking our way free. Plates and mugs are shattered across the floor.
We walk into the living room. The front door is still on its hinges, but it’s wide open, resting back against the wall, allowing the same rain and seawater to spill into the house.
Only one of the windows is broken, shards littering the floor; the wood shutters protected the rest of them.
Even on the second floor. Thankfully, our bedroom looks strangely untouched. Not a thing out of place.
The farmhouse held up somehow.
But when we step outside, the landscape of the island is unrecognizable.
I nearly drop to my knees.
Clay stops only a few paces from the front porch, running his palms over his head. I stand beside him, my body shaking.
Everything he has built—the garden, the greenhouse, the barn for the sheep, the chicken coop, even the tiny tool shed… it’s all gone.
Splintered apart and sent out to the sea.
And now, the land is scarred and torn, leaving a wet, muddy wasteland. Not even a tomato vine or cabbage remains in the soil.
I leave Clay where he stands, and I walk out toward where the barn once stood. I’m hoping to find a chicken still alive, the herd of sheep, the lamb who’s now grown. But there are only a few fragments of wood, a nail or two. The storm took the rest.
I feel the tears coming. The hollow opening in my chest, grief and loss taking up residence. Gone. All gone. I want to scream.
I look back at Clay, at the battered house standing tall behind him.
How did the house survive, while the winds took everything else?