Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Well, clearly she had a thing for heroic aviators.
Tisha blinked back tears as Ethan hurried toward the emergency-response vehicle sitting at the edge of the parking lot. “Come on, pumpkin. Let’s go inside.” She guided Sadie toward the line snaking out from the entrance to the high school.
“Sadie, hey!” Brody trotted over with his grandmother not far behind him.
“Brody, look.” Sadie held out her arm and pointed to an angry red cut stretching from her wrist to her elbow. “Cool, huh?”
“Sadie, what happened?” Tisha gently clasped Sadie’s arm for a closer look. “We need to get that cleaned out.”
“It’s gnarly,” Brody said. “Guess what?”
Sadie planted her hands on her hips. “What?”
“On the way up the hill, we saw a truck flipped over and floating in the water on its roof.”
Sadie gasped. “No way!”
Mrs. McGuire offered a kind smile as she draped her arm around Tisha’s shoulders and pulled her in for a side hug. “It’s hard to see him run toward danger, isn’t it?”
Nodding, she swiped at her damp cheeks with the back of her hand.
“It’s going to be all right,” she said. “We’re all going to pull together, and we’ll get through this. Just like you have hurricanes in North Carolina, we have earthquakes and tidal waves and landslides here.”
“Hey, Tom.” Mrs. McGuire waved at someone behind her. “See? Here’s your family.”
Tisha turned, and the knots between her shoulder blades loosened a fraction as Tom and Melinda approached. Their pants were sopping wet and caked with mud, but they appeared mostly okay.
“Oh, thank You, Jesus!” Melinda swept Tisha and Sadie into a hug. “All I could do was pray that you would find your way up the hill.”
Tisha exhaled, her body sagging into the embrace. “Thanks for telling me this is where we were supposed to go if there was ever an emergency. Somebody I recognized from church grabbed me and pretty much dragged me away from the community center.”
She cringed at the thought of what might’ve happened if she hadn’t listened.
“And somebody from church brought me,” Sadie echoed, her small voice filled with a mix of relief and confusion.
“Yeah, about that.” Tisha turned to Sadie and gently smoothed hair off her face. “The next time you’re upset, I need you to not run from me. Do you understand?”
Sadie’s lower lip trembled. “But I was angry with you for—”
“That doesn’t mean you get to run.” Tisha crouched, cupping Sadie’s cheeks with trembling hands. The fear of losing her—even briefly—still rattled in her bones. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to stay calm. “I need you safe, Sadie. No matter what.”
Sadie nodded. “Okay, Mama. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Tisha said, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
A few feet away, a young mother juggled a fussing baby and a preschooler tugging at her sweater.
Tisha didn’t hesitate. She stepped forward and touched the woman’s arm.
“Do you need a break? I can hold him for a few minutes if you want to use the restroom.”
The woman’s tired eyes flooded with gratitude. “Would you? I just—I don’t want to put him down, and my little girl really has to go.”
“Of course.” Tisha reached for the baby, cradling him against her chest. He settled almost immediately, his tiny fingers curling into her sweater.
Warmth spread through her, pushing aside the fatigue.
There was still so much uncertainty and so much fear lingering in the air, but helping—caring for someone, even in a small way—gave her something to focus on besides worrying about Ethan.
Tom watched her quietly. When the young mother returned and took her baby back, they moved closer to the high school doors. Sadie and Brody had already started a game of freeze tag with the other kids waiting under the portico.
“You know,” he said with a small smile, “you sure do have a soft spot for men who rush into danger.”
She let out a quiet laugh. “And pilots, right?”
“Maybe,” he said, his expression turning serious, “it’s because you see their brave, generous hearts.”
The words settled deep, wrapping around the aching parts of her soul.
She swallowed hard and turned her gaze back toward the crowd, where volunteers were passing out blankets. A man handed her one, and she draped it around her shoulders.
“Sometimes we do everything we can and suffering still visits us. It doesn’t mean we’re terrible people or we did anything wrong.
” Tom paused, holding the heavy metal door open.
“But we’ve been hit hard like this before.
And it’s out of our suffering that we figure out what we are made of.
Getting through the hard times is how we become what God wants us to be.
Even in the water and the mud and the broken things, He’s going to shape us and mold us. ”
“I know you’re right,” she said, waiting as the volunteer posted at the door logged each person’s name and contact information in her phone. “But I don’t want to be shaped and molded. I’ve had enough of that, thanks.”
“You sure have, sweetie.” He offered a tender smile. “And Melinda and I are proud of you. You’ve been so brave.”
“It’s because of Chase that I’ve learned to be brave,” she admitted.
“I know you and he didn’t always see eye to eye, but he really wanted you to be proud of him.
He felt like flying was his way of serving the Lord.
I hope you know that. He truly felt a passion for all the things that you and Melinda taught him. Y’all raised a good man, Tom.”
Tom’s eyes welled and his chin wobbled. He wrapped her in a gentle hug. “Thank you,” he whispered against the top of her head.
She smiled through her tears. “You’re welcome.”
He pulled a red bandanna from his pocket and dabbed at his face. Clearing his throat, he gave his name and address to the volunteer, then stepped through the double doors into the high school.
“As soon as we get the all clear, we can probably head back down the hill and check on the café,” Melinda said. “The sooner, the better. That mud won’t shovel itself.”
“Mud?” Sadie trotted over to join them. “Where?”
“When the water retreats back into the ocean, it leaves us a parting gift. Thick, stinky mud.” Melinda tugged on one of Sadie’s pigtails. “Sounds super fun, right?”
“Ewww.” Sadie scrunched her nose. “That’s gross.”
“Agreed,” Melinda said, herding Sadie toward the door. “Come on, let’s go in here and get warm.”
Inside the high school cafeteria, Tisha and Sadie found a quiet corner and sagged against the painted brick wall.
“We’ll go get some drinks and snacks,” Melinda said, her voice soothing. “Brody, want to come?”
Brody nodded and fell in step beside Melinda as she crossed the beige-tiled floor to a makeshift snack stand on the opposite side of the room.
“Mama, can you sing me the song?” Sadie plopped onto Tisha’s lap, looking up with hopeful eyes.
“Which one?”
“The one that Daddy always sang.”
Tisha swallowed hard, feeling the weight of sadness. “I sure can.”
She hummed a few opening bars of their favorite hymn, the beloved words that Chase had sung to Sadie since the day she was born. By now, they knew all the verses and all the hand motions by heart.
Through blurred vision and a lump in her throat, Tisha sat on the floor with Sadie and quietly sang, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.”
Yeah, okay, so Tisha knew the words were true, and she couldn’t argue with the wisdom Tom had offered.
Doubt still found a way to linger in the cracks of her heart though.
But as they sang, the tension in her chest loosened just a little.
The words were more than just a childhood melody—they were truth.
Even in the chaos, the fear, and the heartbreak, God was still holding everything together.
She glanced toward the door, thoughts of Ethan spooling through her head. Maybe she didn’t have to understand why men like him—like Chase—felt called to help others. Maybe it was enough to trust that God had given them that gift for a reason.
When they finished the song, she pressed a kiss to Sadie’s hair and whispered, “God’s got us, baby girl.”
And this time, she truly believed it.
He’d assisted one woman who’d gone into labor onto a chopper bound for the hospital in Glennallen.
Then he’d floated down Main Street in an inflatable raft from the fire department to assist a man trapped in his car with a broken leg.
After that, he’d rescued three dogs, four cats, and one bearded dragon, returning them all to their families, who were spending the night in one of the school gyms.
Ethan stifled a yawn, then eased his Suburban to a stop behind the café.
Thankfully, the water had receded some in the last hour or so.
How the car still worked given all the water that had poured out of the driver’s side door when he’d opened it, he had no idea.
But he’d take a slightly waterlogged vehicle that smelled a little if it got him where he needed to go.
And right now, he needed to get to Tisha.
Electricity had been shut off in the businesses along Main Street at least until morning, but the glow from a lantern or a candle through the window caught his attention.
Tisha. They hadn’t spoken since they’d crossed paths outside the high school.
That had only been six hours ago, but it felt like six hundred.
He would have kept going, working through the night to help residents wade through the water to find their missing pets.
But the fire chief saw him swaying on his feet as he shoveled mud out of the doorway to the police station and sent him home.
Tisha and Sadie weren’t at the high school when he’d stopped by a few minutes ago.
And now he couldn’t ignore the light in the window and just drive by the café.
What if there genuinely was an issue? No one should be in there at this hour.