Chapter 10
She heard his voice from the back of the house. Annelise hated admitting she was pretty sure she already knew the layout. Whether it was her gift and something she'd actually seen, or just her imagination running away with her, she wouldn't know until she paced through the place herself.
"Shoes there," Indie pointed to a pile already forming in the corner of the mudroom, then to the open washer and dryer. "If there's anything you're willing to peel already, you can toss it in. We'll run a load."
They weren’t the first ones who’d turned up on the Velascos’ doorstep. Sighing, Annelise wondered if she’d be asked to strip down to her underwear here before she'd even walked into the house. She wasn’t ready.
This family wasn’t like that, but Indie was only four the last time Annelise spent any time around her.
Then Annelise—who’d functioned like a big sister—simply disappeared.
Luckily, she didn’t detect any feelings of revenge or animosity.
She had enough to deal with given the people in the house.
He was here. She hated that she could just feel him.
Rowan waited in the other room, and she wondered if he could sense that she was here, too.
Mama Velasco. Annelise placed the other sensation fighting for her attention.
Rowan’s mother had been a second mom to her as Annelise had grown up.
The big, mostly male, Velasco family had been in sharp contrast to her own small, female one.
Despite having seven kids of her own, and the cramped, tiny space they’d all been in at the time, her door had always been open.
She'd folded Annelise into the group, fed her dinner, offered her advice when school got rough or the tears fell, and she hadn’t felt like going to her own mother. Vienna had been a safe place to land.
She wanted to both run through the house and throw her arms around the woman, and yell at her for all the pain and havoc she’d caused.
So she did neither. Instead, she toed off her wet and dirty shoes, peeled her sodden socks, and looked at her wrinkled feet.
It had been quite the hike to get from the bottom of the hill to the top, and she tried not to think of it as an allegorical climb.
As Story did the same, Indie moved through the bright and cheery, fully outfitted kitchen. This house not only wasn't getting washed away, it maintained power and heat, and Annelise almost wished something would flicker—just so something wouldn't be perfect.
Indie was telling them they'd already set up two of the back rooms, one for women and one for men. Obviously, everyone was arriving soaked and dirty. They seemed to be expecting a full house, and she could smell something in the kitchen already on the boil. Jasper must be here.
Annelise hoped there were enough other people already taking shelter here to serve as buffers and she wouldn't have to see him or talk to him or deal with him, because she couldn’t imagine a scenario where they said more than three civil words.
She would have to bite her tongue hard enough to not unleash all the old and very angry feelings.
Whatever the Velascos had done, whoever they'd hurt in the past, right now they were helping, and they offered some of the only shelter.
She could not make this a tumble-dry for the dirty laundry of her past.
Though Annelise had pushed Story to stop at the small neighborhood of houses along the way—the ones halfway up the hill—Story argued they couldn't stay there.
They certainly checked in, but kept moving, even when they were invited to huddle up with each of the families.
Astoria Lockheart was welcome everywhere.
But she argued the houses weren't big enough to support the extra guests, their power would flicker, and besides, the flood was bringing needed change.
Like hell it was, Annelise thought. It was bringing the kind of change that a simple homeowner's insurance payment could have taken care of.
The policy was literally just a few days lapsed.
Of course, that meant it was already overdue before they'd canceled it, and it made Annelise want to tell her grandmother that she'd brought this on herself, and she could deal with it herself.
But Annelise couldn't quite do that to the old woman, no matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much she thought it would be fitting.
It didn't matter anyway. Even if she wanted to turn and flee, she was soaked, exhausted, and starving—and trapped here in this house with the one man she swore she'd never see again, let alone need.
There was nothing to do but follow Indie into the back room, where the woman pointed to piles of what must have been several of her brothers’ sweatshirts and sweatpants.
Some of Alder's scrubs already lay out in pairs.
She'd be swimming in them, Annelise thought, but they'd be tall enough for her. She grabbed a bright blue pair, thinking how she’d once been told the color brought out her eyes.
Now was not the time for pettiness, but Annelise embraced it anyway.
Once the door clicked closed, affording them some privacy, she stripped down to almost nothing. The water was running in the adjacent bathroom, so someone was in there washing off or warming up. Annelise wondered who. It wasn’t anyone whose presence tugged at her gut and announced itself.
Using the towel Indie gave her, she blotted her hair so she didn't just drip directly onto the floor. Then she climbed commando into the bright blue scrubs, cinching the stretchy green shoelace at the waist until at last it held.
Of course, she'd overshot. The short built-in sleeves came almost to her elbows. And she had to lean over to roll up the cuffs because, while she was certainly tall for a woman, she wasn't as tall as Alder Velasco.
When Story was ready, Annelise padded barefoot over the plush carpet back into the living room.
Mama Velasco was in the middle of pointing out all the bowls and dishes of snacks she'd laid out across the breakfast counter.
There was even a pie that would last about five minutes with this crowd, but the food was plentiful at least. Moving as if needing to keep busy, Vienna set out a pile of gleaming white plates.
For a moment, Annelise thought the woman might be rubbing all their faces in it.
She had beautiful dinnerware while the others huddled here, waiting for their homes and everything in them to wash away—homes that, for most of them, hadn't ever contained matching white china.
But Mama Velasco wasn't like that, and Annelise should know better than to think the mean thoughts.
She was chastising herself for it when the woman looked up and saw her there. The dishes landed with a dangerous thunk on the counter as she excitedly called out, "Lise, my Lise!"
In moments, she’d run across the room, engulfing the girl she’d once helped raise in a tight bear hug.
It spoke of late nights and solid advice.
Of huddling by the fire when the heater was out and there wasn’t quite enough money to fix it.
Of finding her in Rowan’s room well past curfew and having a few words to say to both of them.
She held on for long enough that Annelise knew it was just relief.
Like Indie, she wasn’t holding a grudge against her for leaving so abruptly and never seeing anyone in the Velasco family again.
Until now. And Annelise tried to let go of her own grudges; she didn’t think the woman had caused the trouble out of malice.
But she found she wasn’t yet ready to forgive.
It seemed Vienna was just grateful that she was safe and alive.
More grateful that she was here, where she could be rolled into this tight bear hug.
Holding on for dear life, Annelise realized she’d needed this desperately, for a long time.
She told herself what Story had told her all the way up the side of the mountain.
It would be okay. Nothing was lost yet. They were alive.
They were safe. Now they had a place to stay, though she wondered for how long that would be true.
She fought back the memories of the last flood, of being homeless until the small house had been rebuilt, of sleeping in tents.
Her mom and Gram called it ‘camping’ and hadn’t quite been able to pull that off on the nights when the weather had gotten too severe, and they'd packed it all up and slept in the car—the only thing left at the time.
Now Annelise wasn't even sure her car would survive this.
She lied to herself and told herself they would all come out stronger and better on the other side.
"I'm glad you're here."
She froze as the deep voice resonated something buried in her soul, and her eyes snapped up as she stepped back from his mother.
Seeing Rowan Velasco across the room—closer than they'd been in fifteen years—shouldn’t have been a shock to her system.
But it was. She fought the urge to throw herself into his arms, too.
And she hated herself for wanting it to be okay.
But Indie, seeming oblivious to the tension buzzing in the room, stepped right into the middle. She turned to Annelise, looked over her shoulder at Story, and said, "Is there any chance either of you has seen Ford?"
Rowan turned away, crossing his arms and looking out the window.
In a flash of memory, Annelise felt the pang of recognition.
She'd seen exactly this. It was a real vision, then—not her wild imagination running away. Why had she seen him like this? She’d believed she’d severed all connection to him.
She was starting to shake her head. They'd passed by two of the houses, Grandma Story knocking on the door and making sure the people inside were safe. They should have stayed there! But Story insisted they were headed up the mountain. Annelise wanted to think she’d only come along because her grandmother was too old to make it safely up the mountain without her.
As mad as she was, she couldn’t handle them fishing Story’s body out of the creek miles downriver because she hadn't gone along to keep her grandmother safe.
She’d been right, too. There were more than a few times when Gram had slipped, the years between then and now becoming more obvious. For that, Annelise was glad she was there, even if she wasn't glad about where they'd ended up.
"He's okay," she murmured, reaching out and searching and realizing more. "He's almost home."
“Close?” Mama Velasco gushed, relief pouring from the single word as her hands finally let go of the charm that she clutched at her neck. Annelise saw it then—gold and interlocked, the five-pointed star sat in the little circle. She tried not to let her surprise show.
Over his mother’s shoulder, Rowan’s eyes met hers. He’d had the same thought. Oh no.
"He's close," she said, holding Vienna’s fingers tight, reassuring her. “He’s . . . here!”
They all heard it then—the basement door clicking open, slamming shut, and not one but two pairs of feet climbing the steps.
"Mom," he called out—Ford's voice, unmistakable. "Mom, it's a mess out there."
He announced it as if he had no clue the upstairs was full of all their refugee neighbors, as if no one else could see or hear the rain hitting the house at high speed.
But Ford cleared the top of the steps, appearing like a very charming and good-looking drowned rat.
A young woman was with him, dark hair plastered to her head, her demeanor shy as she stepped up beside Ford.
There was a clear moment where the guest breathed a sigh of relief—though Annelise couldn't tell why the young woman was so grateful to see the room full of people stuck here, too.
"This is Jenna," Ford announced, lifting their clasped hands. "I found her down by the river, stuck where the road had washed away."
She offered only the slightest of shrugs before finally lifting a hand and brushing the dark hair out of her face. As they saw her, a collective gasp lifted from the women in the room.
It was unmistakable. Annelise stood frozen.
Behind her, it was Story who whispered, stunned, "Monica."