Chapter 5 Willa
WILLA
The storm was still there.
She could hear it in the spaces between the fire’s crackle and the slow, steadying rhythm of breathing around her.
The wind found the edges of the tarpaulin they had weighted across the cave entrance.
Rain somewhere beyond the limestone drummed against rock and earth and the battered canopy of the nature reserve.
The occasional deep, resonant boom of a wave breaking on the island’s eastern shore, far enough away to be background noise but close enough to remind her that the water was still doing what it had been doing since the storm began.
But the violence of it had eased.
Not gone or died down to a safe level but just eased, the way a fever sometimes dropped in the small hours without breaking entirely. But just enough to let the body believe it might survive after all.
Willa stood at the edge of the firelight and looked at the people in the cave.
A small group of teenagers and four adults huddled around the fire.
The teenagers were clustered in varying degrees of wet and cold and shaken.
Some of them had already wrapped in whatever dry layers they had managed to pull from the emergency packs, while some of them were still in their damp clothes.
All of them were watching the fire with the particular, wide-eyed stillness of people who had been very frightened and were now in the fragile, exhausted space on the other side of it.
Grace sat closest to the fire with Katey to her one side. Andy was cross-legged on Grace’s other side and just slightly behind them with Tyler beside him as they chatted. The rest of the teens were gathered in smaller groups.
Willa looked at all of them. Not just her own children. All of them.
Every single one of them was her responsibility right now, and the weight of that wasn’t frightening. It was clarifying. It pulled everything else back and left only what mattered, which was this room, these people, this fire, and the next few hours.
Ace was at the far side of the cave, checking the structural points where the tarpaulin met the rock, pressing his palm flat against the limestone to feel for water seeping through.
He moved without urgency, systematically and quietly, the way he always moved when he was being useful without making it a performance.
Rad was near the entrance doing something similar on the other side, his head bent, checking the weighted base of the tarpaulin where the wind kept trying to find a gap.
Margo was already crouching in front of the nearest cluster of teenagers.
“Okay,” Margo said. Her voice was pitched low and warm in the way she had of making even ordinary words sound like something you could lean on. “Let’s take two sleeping bags and make a section at the back of the cave where those who haven’t changed out of wet clothes do so now.”
“I agree with Margo,” Willa moved forward, knowing she had to change out of her wet clothes as well, and was so grateful that Andy had grabbed her pack for her. “We don’t need anyone getting a fever.” She moved to her sleeping bag and pulled it out. “I’ll hold one of the covers.”
“I’ll hold the other,” Margo said.
“Then we’ll do the same for the guys,” Ace and Rad chimed in.
The next twenty minutes were spent with the girls first putting on something dry and then the boys. After that was done, Willa went through her own pack and pulled out a spare set of clothes, which she handed to Margo.
“Here,” Willa said. “We need to get dry as well.”
“Right,” Margo agreed.
Grace and Katey held up the sleeping bags so they could get changed. Tyler and Andy did the same for Rad and Ace.
Once that was done, the teens once again huddled around the fire, this time on their sleeping bags they had each unrolled.
While Margo and Rad saw to the fire and engaged the teenagers in conversation to distract them from the storm outside, Willa and Ace went to take inventory of the supplies the teens managed to grab from the initial camp they’d set up.
“What are we working with here?” Willa asked as they sorted through the items. “We need to feed everyone.”
Ace nodded and helped Willa pull things out and set them in order on the flat section of rock that served as a table-type surface.
There were six emergency blankets. Another three partial sets of dry clothes.
Two small first aid kits. A few waterproof flashlights.
The second satellite phone. Four energy bar packets, each with six bars.
Four large sealed bags of trail mix. Ten medium water bottles and two large ones.
“That’s not bad,” Ace said. “Plus, there are the cans of tuna, beans, tea, milk powder, some sugar, and rice.”
“It’s okay,” Willa said. “But we’ll need to be careful with the food.”
“The fire’s going to be the main heat source, and we need to ensure there’s enough wood,” Ace said.
“We need to keep it fed but not burn through what we have for it too fast.” He glanced at the pile next to one of the cave walls.
“The teens did an amazing job of getting this set up while we were having a swim in the sea.” He gave a grin.
“Yes, that was loads of fun,” Willa drawled sarcastically, glad of Ace’s soft humor that always diffused tense or stressful situations. She looked at the pile of wood. “Andy, Tyler, and the other teen boys collected it while the girls set up, apparently.”
Willa looked at her son.
He glanced up and met her eyes briefly, giving her a smile before turning back to talk to Tyler.
“Let’s get this mob fed,” Willa suggested, and Ace agreed.
They spent the next hour cooking, then had to share plates and eat in shifts.
When they’d finished a meal of beans and rice, Willa offered water and an energy bar each for dessert.
“These are actually not bad,” Katey said, looking at the energy bar in her hand with mild surprise. “I expected them to taste like cardboard.”
“These are my favorite ones,” Grace told Katey, smiling. “I’ve been telling you for years to try one.”
“They always just looked so…” Katey eyed the bar. “Not so appetizing.”
“I used to think the same as you did, Katey,” Margo told Katey. “But then Willa made me try one when we went to Gainesville shopping, and I was starving. It’s all she had in her purse, so I ate it and was as surprised as you were at the taste.”
Willa smiled and moved to where Ace was once again fiddling with the tarpaulin keeping the cave covered.
“You keep fiddling with our make-shift door,” Willa observed.
“I just don’t want it to blow down,” Ace told her. “The teens did really well.” He glanced at them, now engrossed in something Rad was telling them. “I think we need to tell them that, as they’ve had a tough day.”
Willa nodded. “Come on then and stop fiddling with our door.”
Willa and Ace sat around the fire, and the conversation stopped as all eyes fell on them.
“I’m going to say something, and I need everyone to hear it before we get some sleep,” Willa said. She kept her voice level and unhurried. “You all did well today. Every single one of you in this cave. I need you to know that.”
Nobody spoke. They were listening.
“What happened out there wasn’t something anyone could’ve predicted or prevented,” Ace continued.
“The storm moved faster than the models said it would, and we made the right calls with the information we had. You all managed to get to the shelter after grabbing items we needed from the original camp.”
“Then you set up the cave while you waited for us,” Willa took over again. “You lit a fire. Found a way to close off the cave, and stayed calm until we got here.” She paused. “Well done, all of you.”
“I think we need to give ourselves a round of applause,” Margo added, and the cave erupted.
“Okay, now settle down and try to get some sleep,” Willa ordered. “I’ll wake you as soon as I hear anything.”
The fire crackled, and the storm pressed at the edges of the cave while sleeping bags were unrolled and spread across the flattest sections of rock.
Emergency blankets went over the top for extra insulation.
Rad organized the space efficiently and without fuss, moving quietly between the teenagers with the calm, steady authority of someone who made it easy to trust him.
Margo had found a small section of the cave wall that curved outward enough to break the draft, and she directed the youngest and most obviously tired of the group toward it and helped them settle.
Willa moved to where Grace and Andy were arranging their sleeping bags side by side.
She crouched between them.
“How are you both really?” Willa asked, low enough that it was just for them.
Grace looked at her steadily. “Better than I was an hour ago.”
“And before that?”
“Terrified,” Grace said, without flinching from it. “Completely terrified. But I knew what to do, and that helped.”
“It helped me, too,” Willa told her. “Knowing you were doing it. It helped me in the water.”
Grace’s composure bent slightly at that, just at the edges, and she reached out and gripped Willa’s hand for a second before releasing it. It lasted no longer than a breath, but it was real, and it was enough.
She turned to Andy.
He was lying on his side already, his head on his rolled jacket, his eyes on her. “I’m okay,” he said, before she could ask.
“I know you are,” Willa said. She reached out and smoothed his hair back from his forehead, the way she had since he was small, and would probably do until she was very old and he was too polite to tell her to stop.
“But I will still always ask, especially after what you and your sister went through today.”
She stayed crouched between them until his breathing deepened and Grace’s eyes closed, and then she rose slowly and looked across the cave.