Chapter 8 #3
He leaned forward to meet her halfway, tunneled his fingers through her hair, and kissed her, slowly, over and over, until the only thing stopping them then from following through was a hospital bed and too many stitches yet to heal.
By the time the next nurse showed up in the room, the guardrail was back up, and Briar had changed back into Tate’s T-shirt and was curled up on the cot with the blanket pulled up beneath her chin, watching him sleep—remembering the little boy who’d become her best friend, and now the lover in waiting.
* * *
It was sometime after one a.m. when Roger drove into town. The lack of lights was shocking. He got lost twice just trying to find the street where his house was, and when he finally pulled up in the driveway, the debris in the front yard was a reminder of what Briar and Tate had endured.
After digging a flashlight from beneath his seat, Roger started up the front steps, but when he started to unlock the door, it swung inward.
Startled that it had been left unlocked, he swept the flashlight around the living room.
When he realized it was intact, he breathed a sigh of relief and started through the rest of the house, but everything changed as he moved into the back half of the house.
When he reached the kitchen, he stopped in horror.
The sliding doors had shattered into a million pieces all over the kitchen floor.
The top half of a tree was over the island and lying on top of their glass-top stove, and an opossum that was walking around the room stopped and hissed at Roger when he heard his approach.
Now he understood why no one had taken the time to lock the front door when they were trying to escape.
The whole back of the house was mostly gone, and this is where Briar was when the disaster struck.
It hurt his heart, just imagining how afraid she must have been, crawling out from under the branches, unable to get into shelter.
He bypassed the glass and tree and continued sweeping the beam from his flashlight into the darkness as he went down the hall.
There were puddles everywhere. Clearly what roof was still there was leaking badly.
Then he discovered more water damage as he entered their primary bedroom.
The bedding, curtains, and carpet were soaked, and one window had been blown out, shattering glass everywhere.
More roof and glass damage. Then he saw the door to their walk-in closet and what was within, and said goodbye to a whole wardrobe of clothes.
“God, what a mess,” he muttered, thinking of the people he would have to contact to get this cleaned up before repairs could even begin. “And thank the Lord that Mariah isn’t here. She’d be screaming her head off and going for the wine.”
He left their bedroom and went farther down the hall to the basement door.
When he tried to turn the knob, it wouldn’t budge.
Disgusted beyond words, he pulled the house keys out of his pocket, unlocked the door, then made his way back into the living room.
It was the only room downstairs that was still intact, and he was weary to the bone.
He wanted to call Briar, but there was still no cell service, and it was not the time of the morning to visit hospital patients.
He locked the front door out of habit, then remembered the whole back of the house was wide open to weather and critters.
He hadn’t shed tears since he was twelve years old, but he was fighting them back now as he kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the sofa.
The first thing on the agenda was finding his daughter, but that had to wait until morning. And he could only imagine the insurance claims he would be processing…including his own. God, what a nightmare. He didn’t know what Mariah was doing, and he didn’t care.
Even though the room was hot and the air was damp and sultry, he pulled a lightweight throw from the back of the sofa and covered himself up. It was a feeble attempt to put something—anything—between him and the hole in his world.
* * *
It was just after sunrise when a loud crash became Roger’s rude awakening.
He threw back the quilt and dashed into the kitchen, only to realize that the smaller limbs on the tree had finally given way to the weight of the limb, and the trunk part of the tree had fallen the rest of the way off the island.
The opossum was AWOL, and he sincerely hoped it wasn’t somewhere else in the house.
He grabbed his suitcase and headed up the stairs to Briar’s room. It was the only intact room in the house with a bathroom, and he took a cold shower and shaved, then dug out a set of clean clothes from his bag and got dressed.
As he was combing his hair, he kept looking at his face, trying to find a glimpse of the young man he’d been, but all he saw was a slightly overweight forty-five-year-old man with fading blue eyes and the beginnings of a comb-over.
He moved his suitcase into the hall outside Briar’s room, pocketed his car keys, and headed out the door.