11. Tessa
“Wait. What?” Tessa put down her third cup of cold coffee, another one wasted as the gray, wind-whipped, rain-soaked Friday morning slipped into early afternoon. With each passing second that Morgan didn’t show up with Olive, Tessa grew more miserable. “She’s not answering?”
Dusty shook his head, his face pale, his eyes clouded with concern. “I just keep getting voicemail.”
“Lynda?”
“She called the counselor on duty, a woman named Renee, who has worked with Morgan from day one. Renee said she talked to Morgan last night, she was ‘tired but doing okay’ and planned to be checked in by noon, no later.”
Tessa gnawed her lip. Morgan had agreed to spend the storm in the safety of the patient rehab center, well inland and protected. Normally, child services would take Olive and get her…who knows where.
Thank goodness, Dusty had looped Lynda into the situation, and won a small but significant victory when child services agreed that they could take Olive when they evacuated.
Which was all supposed to happen hours ago.
Tessa blinked back the sting of tears and turned toward the sliver of glass that hadn’t been boarded yet along the Gulf-facing bank of windows.
The horizon was a dark smudge. The palm trees that lined their road were bent, the fronds whipping in a straight horizontal line. The waves were nothing short of treacherous, with warning flags high and straight along the deserted public beach.
Norman was a hundred and twenty miles out and nothing would stop his arrival. Not Morgan, not boards on glass, and not sandbags.
They had to get out of here.
“Dusty, what should we do?” she asked.
“I don’t know. If we get on the road now, Morgan can’t keep her. I don’t know where she’ll go.”
Tessa grunted, and it turned into a hopeful gasp when her phone rang, but it was only Eli.
“How’s the traffic?” he asked without even saying hello.
“I wish I knew,” she said. “We’re still in the house.”
“Tessa!”
She rolled her eyes. “I know, I know. Did you get to Rock Hill?”
“Yes, about an hour ago. Bumper to stinkin’ bumper, but we made it. Maggie and your mom are safe and sound with the biker gang.”
She snorted a laugh, still processing all that Kate had filled her in on when they talked late last night. They’d stayed here to board and sandbag this house and get the Good Time Girl into dry storage, which had taken hours, but it sure sounded like the real action was at the Summer House.
“That’s good,” she said. “But Olive’s mother hasn’t shown up with her yet. We have to wait or…” Or what? “Find her, I guess,” she added, answering her own question.
“Oh, man, that’s scary, Tess. You know Norman is flirting with cat four.”
“Well, he could blow in at cat fifty and I’m not leaving without Olive or knowing she’s completely safe.”
Next to her, looking at his phone, Dusty swore under his breath.
“What?” she demanded, her heart in her throat. “Morgan?”
“No, but Mid-Bay Bridge just announced. Hard close at six. Possibly earlier if winds rise on the span.”
Without an open bridge, they’d be stuck here.
“Listen, Eli, we’ll call you when we’re on the road,” she said, not wanting anything to distract her from her desperation for Olive.
“’Kay. I’m praying for you, Tess. I want you to get out of there. With Olive.”
“Thanks.” She hung up as the window over the kitchen sink rattled in a gust.
She and Dusty stared at each other.
“We have some choices,” he said. “We can go look for her—I know where Morgan lives.”
“What if she’s not there? What if she comes here? I could stay here and wait while you go look.”
He made a face. “I don’t want to leave you, Tess. What if I get stuck and they won’t let me back? The bridge is open one-way only. Emergency access? Yes, maybe. But what if we get separated and you’re here alone with Olive?”
She pressed her hand to her lips. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know!” The last word cracked with a sob.
Instantly, he wrapped her in an embrace.
“Listen, it doesn’t look like we’ll be in the eye,” he said in his most comforting therapist voice. “It’s headed toward Panama City Beach.”
“That’s close.”
“And we’re on the wrong side of the winds,” he conceded. “Plus, storm surges don’t really care about landfall. We could flood but I don’t think we’ll be wiped out.”
“Dusty! I don’t care if this house is rubble. I want Olive!”
He squeezed her harder. “Look, I can take back roads to Morgan’s apartment. I’ll go look and come right back here. You stay and wait for her. Then we’ll come up with a backup plan.”
She inched back and looked up at him through tears. “Bring my girl home,” she begged.
He leaned his forehead against hers. “I will try, I promise.”
Tessa paced, cried, checked her phone six thousand times, and made deals with a God she didn’t believe in. Time ticked by at a snail’s pace, the wind picked up at least a few knots, and Dusty, bless his heart, texted every ten minutes.
Morgan didn’t show.
Dusty called from her apartment and the minute she heard his voice, her heart dropped down to the pit of her churning stomach.
“She’s gone, Tess. No car. No answer. No sign of her or Olive. No neighbors, either—everyone’s evacuated or not answering the door for fear it’s the cops ordering them out.”
She dropped onto the sofa and groaned. “She might be on her way here.”
“I’m coming back. If she isn’t there in an hour, we have to hunt her down.”
“Where? How?”
“I have some ideas,” he said. “You’ll have to trust me.”
“I do,” she assured him. “Maybe she’ll show in the next hour.”
But she didn’t. Dusty was back in far less time than it took him to get to Morgan’s house, and the two of them waited, watched out the sliver of glass to the driveway, and barely spoke except for a few calls to Lynda.
He made the last one to inform her of what they were doing.
Tessa rushed to get her bag—and Olive’s, because Tessa had a streak of her mother’s optimism—while she listened to the one-sided conversation.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Dusty said to Lynda. “She has a few safe places, except they are all outside and none of them are safe.”
She wouldn’t take Olive outside in this, would she? Tessa glanced out at the furious winds bending every tree and the dark, dark bands of clouds bearing down on them.
What kind of mother was Morgan?
One who was so crippled by grief and the bad hand of cards that life had dealt her that she needed rehab therapy, probably struggled with addiction, and was voluntarily giving up her daughter for adoption to save the child. That’s what kind.
Tessa had such mixed feelings about Morgan. A lot of pity, a little respect, plenty of questions, and a well of gratitude for her decision to give Olive a better life. But right now? She could strangle the woman.
“She’s right here,” Dusty said, tapping the phone to put it on speaker. “Lynda wants to talk to you.”
“Hello, Lynda,” Tessa said, hating that her voice sounded so strained and tense. A good mother would be calm in a crisis, right?
“Honey, take a deep breath.”
Tessa could imagine the woman saying the words on the other end. Tall, competent, trustworthy, and deeply concerned for Olive.
“I’m trying,” Tessa said.
“Listen to me. The window for Morgan to report here is now closed. We’ve notified the police on Olive’s behalf, and they’re putting a soft notice out on Morgan’s vehicle. When they have her, they will call me. Then I will call you. Then we’ll decide what is best for everyone’s safety.”
“Can we look for her?” Tessa asked.
“Of course,” she said quickly. “Just keep your phones nearby because the police will call me, not you. And depending on where they are, we’ll make a game-time decision about where Olive will stay during the storm.”
“And if you don’t find her?”
She heard Lynda sigh. “Then maybe you will.”
The minute they hung up, they grabbed their bags and booked it out the door.
“Leave the door unlocked,” Tessa said. “If Morgan shows up, maybe she’ll come in. Leave her a message to that effect. At least she won’t be outside. Where are we going?”
Thankfully, he didn’t question the suggestion, just hauled the bags down the stairs, the wind buffeting them at every step.
“We can try the pier,” he said. “She likes to go there.”
“In this weather? Olive would blow out to sea!”
“The other idea I had was kind of out there.”
In the driveway, Tessa fought the wind, her hair blowing wildly over her face. “Out there like far away or out there like crazy?” she asked, raising her voice because there was no way to hear each other.
“Really crazy,” he called over the noise. “But we’ll be on this side of the bridge, so if we wanted to come back home and ride out the storm here, we could.”
She tried to pull her door while he threw the bags in the back, giving her a chance to look at the empty car seat and choke back a sob.
In fact, all Tessa wanted to do was cry while she waited for him to come around and get behind the wheel just as fat raindrops started to splash the windshield.
That hurricane was not far away now.
“So let’s try whatever you think. Where to?”
“The cemetery,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Her late husband and parents are in the plot at Beal, in Fort Walton. She’s told me many times that she goes there when she hits rock bottom.”
“In a hurricane?” Tessa choked.
Dusty threw her a look. “Grief has changed her in ways you can’t understand, Tessa. She’s one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen. Profoundly lonely—”
“She has Olive!”
“And not equipped to handle a toddler,” he finished. “Even before they died, she struggled with deep depression, and her post-partum was off the charts. She gets solace from visiting them and she doesn’t always think straight. She’s…not…”
He didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to. She’s not safe, Tessa thought. For herself or Olive. In fact, she might be more dangerous than the hurricane that barreled closer every minute.
“To the cemetery, then.”
No one was driving to Fort Walton Beach, so 98 was freakishly clear of other cars, but the rain grew steady as they headed east to the cemetery.