Chapter 14
GWEN
Waiting for the county to issue a final evacuation order was a fool's gamble.
I had the boxes packed. The history of the lighthouse was secured in the cargo hold of my SUV. I wasn't going to stand in the falling ash and wait for permission to save my own life.
I knew the geography of this island. It was beautiful, but it was a trap.
There was only one gravel road leading away from the bluff.
It snaked through stands of timber before merging onto the paved highway that cut across the island toward the harbor.
If the wildfire crested the interior ridge and everyone panicked at once, that exit would become gridlocked.
Getting stuck in a line of stalled cars surrounded by burning Douglas firs was not something I wanted to experience.
I walked around to the driver's side of my vehicle and grabbed the door handle.
I paused, turning back to look at the property.
The lighthouse stood against the hazy sky.
The whitewashed brick looked jaundiced under the unnatural light.
This place had been my sanctuary. It was the only piece of solid ground I had left after Victoria Albright stood on my porch and dismantled my marriage.
Now the wind carried a shower of ash across the yard.
It fell like snow, settling on the porch stairs and melting into the dry grass.
I swallowed the knot forming in my throat. I refused to cry. I had shed enough tears for a husband who didn't want me. I wasn't going to waste any on wood and mortar.
I climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and put the transmission in drive.
The route toward town was an agonizing crawl. My tires crunched over the gravel as I navigated away from the bluff, but my momentum died the second I reached the paved highway. A line of taillights stretched out ahead of me. The evacuation was in full swing.
I kept my windows rolled up. The air conditioning was set to recirculate, but the smell of scorched timber seeped into the cabin.
It smelled like a campfire. The sky grew darker the further east we drove.
It was only mid-afternoon, but the smoke blotted out the sun entirely.
The island plunged into a sinister twilight.
I kept my hands firmly on the steering wheel.
I inched forward every time the brake lights ahead of me flared off, maintaining a creeping rhythm.
The local radio station broadcast a loop of emergency instructions.
The announcer directed residents to the high school gym and confirmed that commercial ferry service to the mainland was for evacuees and fire personnel only.
Sitting in the crawling traffic gave my mind far too much time to spin.
I stared at the bumper of the sedan in front of me, but all I saw was the interior of Reid's corner office.
I saw the look of shock on his face when I walked through his door.
He had looked like a starving man when he first saw me.
He actually thought I had returned to negotiate.
He thought a simple meeting could patch over the fact that he had allowed a consultant to manage his life.
He didn't understand that the foundation was gone.
Victoria hadn't just exposed a flaw in my marriage.
She had held up a mirror to the rot I had ignored.
I had spent my twenties cheering for his ambition.
I had supported him while he built his company from an apartment operation into a global entity.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped being his partner and became a fixture.
I became a convenience. He assumed I would always be waiting for him, tucked safely away in our penthouse, while he conquered the world.
The traffic lurched forward another ten feet. I hit the gas and then the brake.
My chest ached with a hollow grief. Leaving the lighthouse felt like a second divorce.
I was being uprooted again, forced out of the only space where I could breathe.
The unfairness of it burned hotter than the smoke outside my windshield.
I had played by the rules. I had been faithful, supportive, and patient.
And my reward was sitting in a line of evacuees with everything I valued shoved into the trunk of a car.
By the time I pulled into the parking lot of the island’s high school, the air was suffocating.
Ash collected on the windshields of the cars filling the lot.
I found a spot near the edge of the football field, killed the engine, and sat in the quiet cabin for a moment.
I took a breath, steeled myself for the crowd, and stepped out into the heat.
Inside the gymnasium, it was controlled chaos.
The glare of the fluorescent lights illuminated a massive room transformed into a holding area.
Rows of canvas cots were set up across the hardwood floor, forming a rigid grid of temporary survival.
The space echoed with a deafening hum of anxious conversations, crying toddlers, and the crackle of radios carried by local deputies.
I navigated through the aisles while keeping my head down. People sat on the edges of their cots. Some stared blankly at the cinderblock walls. Others scrolled frantically on their phones, desperate for updates on their neighborhoods.
I found an empty cot tucked away in a back corner near the wooden bleachers that had been pushed back and collapsed into a single wall of wood. It offered a fraction of privacy.
I sat on the edge of the cot.
I told myself I would sit there for exactly two minutes to catch my breath.
With the immediate threat paused, the adrenaline that had fueled my escape abruptly vanished. The crash was merciless. The weight of the last week slammed into my chest with enough force to make me gasp.
Reid. Victoria. The impending divorce. The fire.
My brain cycled violently through the trauma.
I had lost everything. The man I loved had carved me out of his life.
He had prioritized his corporate empire until there was nothing left of our foundation.
He had allowed his consultant to orchestrate my humiliation.
And now a wildfire was burning down the only physical space where I felt safe.
A heavy grief crawled up my throat. My vision blurred as tears threatened to spill over my lashes.
If I stayed seated on this cot, the grief was going to pull me under. I would curl into a ball, surrender to the pain, and drown in the reality of my shattered life. I blinked the moisture from my eyes and looked around the gym.
I saw an overwhelmed community.
Two cots down, an elderly couple sat holding hands.
The woman cried quietly. She was telling a passing volunteer that they left her husband’s heart medication on their bathroom counter during the rush to leave.
Near the center of the room, a group of tourists huddled together.
They had come to the island for whale watching.
But now they were awaiting someone who could help them get off the island and to an airport.
Along the bleachers, local families wrangled terrified pets.
They were scared. They were displaced. They were hurting.
Sitting still meant surrendering to my misery. It meant letting Reid's neglect define me as a victim.
I was not a victim.
I stood up. I wiped my dirty hands on the thighs of my jeans and walked away from the cot.
I headed toward the folding tables set up near the main entrance.
A few volunteers wearing safety vests were stationed there.
They looked exhausted. They were drowning in a backlog of arriving evacuees pressing against the tables for information, blankets, and water.
A woman with a clipboard was trying to shout instructions over the noise of the crowd, but her voice was hoarse.
I didn't ask for permission. I didn't wait for an invitation. I walked behind the table, reached out, and pulled a spare clipboard and a pen from a stack of supplies.
"Next family," I called out, pitching my voice to carry over the din.
A mother holding a crying toddler stepped forward. She looked terrified. Her eyes darted around the gymnasium as if searching for an exit that didn't exist.
"Names," I requested, clicking the pen. "And what neighborhood did you evacuate from?"
She gave me her information in a shaky voice. I wrote it down and pointed her toward an open area of cots and a stack of wool blankets.
I channeled every ounce of my heartbroken energy into action. The grief trying to hollow out my chest was repurposed into forward momentum. If I couldn't fix my marriage, I would fix the registration line.
I spent the next hour processing the influx of residents.
I wrote down names, addresses, and urgent medical needs.
I helped people find cots and handed out blankets.
When a panicked man approached the table asking for a doctor for his wife, I stepped out from behind the table.
I took his arm and walked him directly to the medical triage corner set up in the adjacent team room.
I worked with what efficiency I could muster.
I didn't think about Reid sitting in his pristine office in Seattle.
I didn't think about Victoria's smug smile.
I focused entirely on the spelling of last names and the distribution of resources.
My blistered hands throbbed every time I gripped the pen, but I welcomed the sensation.
It kept me grounded in the present moment.
"We're completely out of water at this station," the hoarse volunteer next to me muttered. She tapped an empty cooler with her knuckles. "Maintenance left a pallet on the loading dock out back, but I don't have the people to move it."
"I'll get it," I said.
I dropped the clipboard on the table and pushed through the double doors leading to the service hallway. I followed the hallway past the cafeteria and found the loading dock doors propped open.