Chapter Sixteen #2
Once they were all inside the vehicle—Helen’s tulle skirt a fluffy bundle in her lap—Tyler shifted the gear into drive, then
paused. He looked toward the inn and shook his head.
“Dad,” Tyler said, and he glanced at Gracie in the back seat.
“Do you want to check on him?” Helen asked. She didn’t want to be driftwood, but could they really leave someone behind?
“There’s no time. It’s been over ten minutes. We need to go.”
“Maybe I should run inside real quick?” Gracie said.
“No, Dad knows he needs to get out of here. There’s more than one parking lot. They could have left from the back, and we
didn’t see it,” Tyler said, but the worry was plain on his face. “We have to go.”
Just as Tyler let his foot off the brake, Helen shouted, “There they are, there they are!”
Gary escorted Evelyn out of the inn. Her hand was tucked in his arm, and they weren’t walking with much urgency. Evelyn was
apparently too elegant for urgency.
In a flash, Tyler was out of the SUV, opening the back hatch, and Helen heard him say, “Get in.” She spun around in her seat
in time to see him shove aside a box and some sports gear as Gary climbed into the cargo space.
“The luggage compartment?” Evelyn said, incredulous.
Tyler took Evelyn’s arm, and she made a little huffing sound but didn’t protest further as she let him help her into the back.
Moments later, Tyler accelerated out of the parking lot, racing toward the nearest bluff where the red and white lighthouse
stood tall. To Helen, who calculated everything in her head by how long it would take to jog there, it looked like it was
about three miles away.
“Hold tight, Evelyn!” Tyler said, and if Helen wasn’t feeling a sense of mounting fear, she would have found the whole thing
amusing.
The road to safety paralleled the coast for what felt like an endless stretch. It wouldn’t turn to higher ground until just
before the lighthouse. Several cars in front of them were speeding down the coastline too.
Helen stared out the window at the expanse of blue. How ironic that something as beautiful as the ocean could bring such a
feeling of tranquility on its best day and be so destructive on its worst.
“Really, wouldn’t the sirens be going off if a tsunami was coming?” Evelyn said, implying that Tyler could slow down.
“Do you really just want to hope the emergency systems are working today?” Tyler said.
Evelyn sniffed. “I guess not.”
“Corner!” Helen called out just before Tyler rounded a bend.
Evelyn let out an undignified squeal, and Gary murmured something to her in a soothing tone.
“No news yet,” Gracie announced. She was looking down at her phone. “I’m trying to see if the epicenter was in the ocean.”
“How long has it been?” Helen peered ahead—When would the land start to rise in elevation?!—but it was still flat all the way to the next bend.
“We’re good,” Tyler said.
“Twelve, thirteen minutes, you think?” Gracie said.
Suddenly, the car in front of them slowed to a stop.
Helen’s mom leaned forward. “What’s happening?”
“There’s some people leaving a driveway up ahead,” Tyler said. “They’re letting them in.”
“Go around in the other lane,” Gracie said.
“No, it’s a blind corner,” Helen said. “We don’t want a head-on collision when we don’t even know if there is a tsunami.”
It was true, they didn’t know. But there might be one, and now they were stalled in the danger zone. So she turned to Tyler and took his face in her hands. She planted her
lips on his mouth and kissed him deeply. She felt him melt into her, and then she released him.
“Just in case we die,” she said. “I wanted our last moment to be kissing.”
“Helen!” her dad said, exasperated. “We’re not dying.”
The car in front of them finally pulled forward, and they started to move again too. “But if we did,” Tyler said with a smile,
“I’d now die happy.”
And Helen smiled too.
“Heavens, Gary,” Evelyn said. “Why don’t we ever kiss like that?”
The whole car erupted in laughter. When Evelyn wasn’t being annoying, she could be quite funny.
Around the bend, the land rose steeply, and the road led them to the bluff. As the SUV climbed higher, Helen felt her body
relaxing. They were running from a tsunami that might not exist, but if it did, they had now outrun it.
Then Tyler’s phone rang.
He answered it on the SUV’s speakerphone, and his mother’s panicked voice filled the space: “Where are you?”
“We’re safe, Mom,” Tyler said in a soothing tone. “I have Gracie. We’ll be there in thirty seconds.”
“Do you have Leo?”
“Leo?” Tyler leaned closer to the dashboard speaker. “I thought you said Leo left first.”
“That’s what everyone said. But he’s not here,” his mother said, her voice rising. “Something must have happened to him!”
Tyler’s face paled as his gaze met Helen’s. She could tell they were having the same thought.
“The Mustang,” Helen said quietly. It had been restored, but the starter had given Leo issues more than once.
Tyler nodded gravely at her and said, “Mom, did you call him?”
“He’s not answering.”
They pulled into the parking lot of the lighthouse, and Tyler stopped the SUV right inside the entrance. The lighthouse stood
tall and proud on the bluff. The people that Helen had expected to see at the wedding were beneath it, clustered on the grass.
“I’ll go back for him,” Tyler said, loud enough for the entire car to hear, but he was looking only at Helen.
She shook her head. “It’s been too long.”
Tyler’s face crumpled at her pleading tone.
She reached for his hand. “If you’re going, I’m going.”
Nobody else was moving to exit the car. Helen could feel everyone’s eyes on them, worried and waiting. Tyler blinked hard, his jaw tightening. There was no talking Helen out of it, so either he stayed here, or he went back for Leo with her.
Evelyn broke the silence. “Would you please open the hatch? I can’t breathe back here.”
Tyler pushed the button to pop the hatch and said, “Can everyone get out, please? We need to hurry.”
Helen gave her parents in the back seat a brave smile. “I love you. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Helen,” her mom said. “Just let Tyler go get him.”
“It’s my wedding, Mom. This is what I’m doing.”
Gracie burst into tears and opened the back door. She practically tumbled onto the pavement and into her mother’s arms, who
was rushing up to meet the SUV.
Gary, who hadn’t yet moved from the luggage area, spoke up. “Son, there’s no way I’m letting you go back. You and Helen stay
here. I’ll get Leo.”
Tyler spun around in his seat and looked at his own dad as Helen’s dad chimed in, “We’ll go too.”
“There’s no reason for everyone to go back down there,” Tyler said.
Suddenly, they all froze as a loud sound exploded outside: a drawn-out, brassy screech.
“What is that?” Helen gasped. “Is that the sirens?”
As she looked at Tyler, she pressed a shocked hand over her mouth. If the tsunami sirens were going off, did that mean it
was already too late?
Tyler threw open his door and stepped out, listening. His face changed as he realized what he was hearing. Helen craned her
ear and recognized it for what it was too. An approaching car was laying on its horn, and it didn’t sound like a regular car
horn. It sounded like a vintage muscle car. Tyler and Helen locked eyes, hopeful.
A moment later, Leo’s Mustang peeled around the corner and screeched into the parking lot, stopping several feet from Tyler.
“Thank God!” Tyler said.
Helen jumped out of the passenger seat and reached the Mustang in time to see Tyler give Leo a little shove, then pull him
in for a hug.
“Where were you?!” Tyler said.
Leo was in his best man suit, and the sight of the two brothers fiercely embracing in their formal wear made Helen’s heart
trip. As Tyler released the hug, Leo gestured to the passenger side. Through the windshield, Helen saw a cute blond woman
sitting inside the Mustang.
“I saw this girl down on the beach.” Leo grinned. “I felt it was my duty to inform her of tsunami protocol and whisk her away
to safety.”
Leo threw his arm over Helen’s shoulder and apologized for scaring her. “Did you think you lost me?”
“We did lose you!” Helen said. “No one could find you!”
“Only for a minute. And it was for a good cause.”
After Leo let go of Helen, she wrapped her arms around Tyler’s neck. “Your brother kills me!” she murmured in Tyler’s ear,
and he put his head on her shoulder and laughed.
Gracie punched Leo in the arm, then hugged the blond woman from the beach as she climbed out of the Mustang. The rest of the
family and the wedding guests began to gather around Helen and Tyler. Everyone was still flushed and worried about a tsunami,
but now that they were all together and safe, there was a special aliveness among the group.
As they moved to the edge of the bluff and stared out at the water expectantly, Tyler stood behind Helen and pulled her against
him. His body, the sturdy frame. Hers, the perfect painting. With the others, they watched and they waited.
In the end, the earthquake was farther inland, not out in the ocean. There was no tsunami. There was just a bunch of their
loved ones gathered at the lighthouse. The wedding photographer was there as well, and the photographs from the lighthouse
ended up being some of Helen’s and Tyler’s favorites of the day. Every shot was full of so much love and laughter and relief.
When Helen later sent out the thank you cards, the front of them read: We survived a tsunami that didn’t happen.
She planned to do something funny with a tsunami theme for their tenth wedding anniversary.
Sadly, Helen and Tyler weren’t destined to make it to their tenth anniversary, but together, they shared eight and a half
years of inside jokes. And when they hit a rocky patch in the middle of their marriage, when Helen felt lonely and adrift
for the better part of a year, in many ways it was their inside jokes that saved them.
Laughter was the lighthouse that always led Helen home.
She never anticipated the lighthouse would one day burn out.