Chapter 61
WILLIAM
When the electricity went out, a woman screamed and the children followed.
A part of William expected the lights to turn back on in that instant, illuminating a dead body on the ground, but there was nothing that dramatic.
There was only the complete darkness, not like the rain but like the ocean, making everyone feel as though they were floating at its bottom.
“All right, all right.” Mr. Pruitt’s stern voice carried over the children, who were no longer screaming but crying. “No need for a big fuss.”
“It’s good luck, isn’t it?” Mrs. Pruitt said. She was closer to William on the porch than he had realized, but she wasn’t speaking to him, or anyone in particular. She sounded on the verge of tears. “Rain on a wedding day?”
The initial downpour seemed to have weakened, though forks of lightning still scorched the air, so bright they burned his eyes.
Katherine handed his jacket back, heavy with water.
The jolt of fear that had electrified the guests seemed to be weakening as well.
There was nervous laughter, the frisson of novelty, of a situation completely out of anyone’s control.
He wondered where Joel was in the house—if he’d been able to take cover first—and whether he’d found Andrew on his own.
William knew that them speaking alone was not a good idea.
He’d seen enough fights on the playground, in school hallways and alleys, to sense when there was the potential for violence between two men.
“I’m going to try and find some of my family,” he told Katherine.
“Good luck,” she said.
A young woman in an apron was lighting long, tapered candles in the living room.
The air smelled like wet soil. There were clumps of guests on sofas and armchairs, and others spread across the first floor’s maze of rooms, like the dark had given them permission to make the house their own.
He heard Oscar call out to him, but William only waved his hand in acknowledgment—he still could not see Andrew, Joel, or Shay.
His heart stopped at the figure of Aunt Eleanor in a wingback chair, her body rigid with death but her eyes wide open, finding his in the inky blackness, but then there was another flash of lightning, and the woman was a stranger—a relative of Andrew’s who had complained about the noisy floorboards of the church.
“William.” His name again, though this time it was his mother, calling to him from the hallway.
Her hair was slicked behind her ears, her face grave.
For a moment, he wondered if she’d seen Eleanor too, but no, that had not been Eleanor, though his heart did not seem to believe this, unable to resume its normal beat.
“Have you seen Andrew?” he asked.
“No, but I just saw Shay. I think she’s out in the rain.”
Her fingers were at the fabric between his shirt buttons, and the urgency of her touch chilled him. “She never came into the house?”
“No, she was in the house. I saw her go into the library, and it was odd—she didn’t look wet at all.”
“Was she with anyone?”
“I don’t know—the electricity went out, and your stupid aunt screamed like she’d been shot, and by the time I calmed her down and went into the study, Shay wasn’t there. But it has a door that leads outside.”
“She’s gone?”
“I couldn’t see her in the rain . . .”
She continued speaking, almost more to herself than him, about how maybe she should have run out, but she wasn’t even sure if Shay had ventured into the storm, because why would she have left the house in this weather?
His mother’s hand was still at his shirt placket, and he remembered something that his father had said once.
That in a family, you have to take turns feeling fear or despair, because if all of you succumb, the boat will take on water.
And what? Shay had asked at their kitchen table. We’ll all drown?
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll find her.”
The air had cooled, and the rain was lighter but steady enough that it was difficult to see farther than the stretch of wet grass below his feet.
The French doors of the study opened to a small garden of crimson rosebushes and stone benches, the side of the house that led not to the tent but to the cliff.
He could hear the ocean, but he could not tell where the water began on the horizon. It was all a morass of gray.
He’d left his jacket behind, and within a few seconds, his entire body was soaked, as if he had jumped into the bay. He yelled Shay’s name, but the rain and the crashing waves swallowed the sound.
There was a crackle of lightning over the water. At the cliff’s edge, two figures were illuminated in its white flare.
He began to run. It was arduous, the ground slick and muddied, and he pitched forward, his hands streaked with dirt.
His whole body was seizing in fear, but he scrambled back to his feet.
He hit an unsteady stride, and as he got closer, the silhouettes became more distinct.
They were facing each other, their bodies angled in confrontation, and though he’d hoped maybe it was someone else, that his mother was mistaken and Shay was resting upstairs, too many people and too much sun, the white of the woman’s dress was undeniable, and the man loomed larger and larger, the size of a god.