Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Eliot had gone back to the hotel, but he knew he wouldn't sleep. He pulled up the Montana regional data. It had accelerated.
The cold air mass pushing down from Canada had found the gap in the Rockies faster than any of the regional models had predicted. Faster than he'd predicted. The pressure gradient had steepened. The temperature differential was wider than the extended forecast had suggested forty-eight hours ago.
He pulled up the Valor Valley News broadcast. They were reporting thunderstorms. He closed his eyes.
He opened them and looked at the data again.
Wind shear increasing through the afternoon.
Precipitation onset earlier than any current forecast was showing.
Temperature drop steeper and faster than the regional models were tracking.
By Saturday evening this was not a thunderstorm situation.
By Saturday evening this was a significant weather event for a valley that had not been told to prepare for one.
Eliot called Dalene. The call went straight to voicemail. That made his decision for him.
He pulled up the rideshare app. Forty minutes later, he was at Reagan National Airport. He would tell Dalene the news face to face. He would stop by and warn the farmers directly.
He wanted to be in Valor where the data was real and the farmers trusted him and the woman with the constellation freckles who smelled like lavender that he was finding more and more palatable every day resided.
He walked out of the NWS leaving an unsigned contract on a desk he wasn't sure he'd return to.
Reagan National was Friday-afternoon busy.
Eliot found the Montana flights on the departures board.
One connection through Denver. Departure in two hours.
He bought the ticket at the counter because he had not planned this and had not booked ahead.
The ticket cost considerably more than his monthly rent, but he did not care at all.
The woman at the counter looked at his ticket. Then at the departures board. Then back at him.
"You're aware there may be weather delays," she said. "There's a significant system moving into the Montana region. Some flights are being flagged for possible cancellation."
"I'm aware of the system," he said.
He went through security. He found his gate. He sat down and looked at his phone. He tried Dalene again. Voicemail again.
He didn't leave a message.
He sat back in the chair and looked at the departures board. His flight was still showing on time with a small orange flag next to it that meant weather advisory, subject to change.
He looked at the Montana system on his phone radar. It was moving faster than even his revised estimate.
He thought about Dalene out in that storm.
His stomach twisted and his fingers flexed, as though they could expel the nervous energy building inside of him.
It was just a storm. She would be safe. But he wanted to be the one making certain she was safe.
He wanted to be there to hold the umbrella for her and protect her from the rain.
He wanted to be the one to pull a warm blanket around her and provide her warmth.
He wanted to bring her hot tea and then taste the sugar on her lips because he was in love with her.
He was in love with Dalene Austen.
Not falling. Not in the process of. Not trending in that direction.
In love. Present tense. Fully, completely, with no qualifications and no expiration date and no clean stop at the end of anything.
He loved her and he had not slept in three nights and he was not going to sleep until he had her back in his arms. And once he had her back in his arms, he was not letting go.
He looked at the departures board. The orange flag remained.
"Come on," he said quietly, to no one, to the storm, to the atmosphere that he had spent his entire life learning to read. "Give me this one."
He thought about calling her again, leaving a message this time, and decided against it.
What he had to say was not a voicemail. It was a conversation that required him to be standing in front of her, close enough to see the freckles, close enough to smell the lavender, close enough that he could tell whether or not she was actually fine.
He would tell her when he got there.
If this flight took off.
He looked at the departures board. The flag next to his flight was still orange.
The gate agent picked up the intercom.
Eliot sat forward in his chair, preparing to listen to the garbled message come across the intercom that would determine his immediate future.