Two from the Heart(2)

I was too scared to look at the ocean again.

I was just about to climb into the bathtub and cover myself with the pillows when the sound of the wind grew quieter.

The rain stopped abruptly.

I stood up again. I crept toward the front door. I paused, and then I opened it.

Looking up at the sky, I could see huge walls of clouds on every side, brilliant white in the sunlight. The air was warm and wet. Only the ocean still surged, just a few feet from the dune.

For a minute, I thought it was over. That I was safe.

But as everyone knows, hurricanes have eyes. And the wind comes back—maybe even stronger.

And pretty soon, it came, flinging needles of sand into my face before I ran back inside.

If I said that hurricane had the same name as the woman my husband left me for—Claire—you might not believe me. But it’s true.

And if I thought that in losing him, I had lost enough—well, that wouldn’t turn out to be true at all.

An hour later, I watched Bill’s shed fly away like the farmhouse in The Wizard of Oz. Through the tiny window in my front door I watched as waves as big as my house crashed ashore only yards away.

My house creaked and shook, trying to stand its ground against the wind. The rain was relentless. Horizontal.

I ran back to my bathroom and shut the door. I crawled into the bathtub and pulled the pillows over me. The wind was screaming banshees. I swear I saw the walls moving, pushing in and out as if they were breathing.

Then something huge smashed into my house, and the whole world seemed to shake. The shrieking wind was even louder now. And was that the sound of rain falling right outside the bathroom door? Falling inside my house?

The door rattled but held. I burrowed down under pillows and prayed to anyone who would listen, Don’t let me die. Don’t let me die.

Water—waves or rain—slid under the bathroom door. The wind sounded like a thousand people screaming.

I screamed, too.





Chapter 2


I THOUGHT I’d be swept out to sea in the middle of the night. But I woke on dry land, curled up in my bathtub.

The walls around me still stood, and for a moment I was sure that I’d escaped the storm unscathed. But when I crawled from the tub and stepped into the hallway, I saw the extent of the destruction. My house wasn’t a house anymore—it looked like a pile of debris with a bathroom.

Topher’s biggest palm tree, the one that had cost him $15,000, had fallen onto the back half of my cottage and demolished it.

I sank down to my knees. I would have thrown up, but there was nothing in my stomach.

It wasn’t just losing the house, the sweet little cottage I’d just painted a cheerful yellow. It was my darkroom, now crushed under that ridiculous tree. My passion—and my livelihood.

I was probably the only photographer in the southeastern United States who didn’t use a digital camera. I processed the negatives and printed the photos myself—steps that were as much a part of the art as taking the original picture.

Needless to say, I’d uploaded exactly nothing to the cloud.

Which meant I had exactly nothing left of my portfolio.

I was too gutted to cry.

“Annie, Annie, are you okay?” Bill called. He stood below the ruined edge of my house with a ladder. “Come down this way,” he urged.

Numb, my body vibrating with shock, I climbed down and looked around me. There was a creek running down the street behind my house, and in it bobbed tree branches, a baby stroller, and a laundry basket. At first I thought my car was gone, too, but then I spotted it twenty-five yards north of where I’d parked her, partially submerged in a giant puddle.

Topher’s garage roof was gone. Most of Bill’s siding had been ripped off, and his deck, like mine, had been swept away.

But it looked like I’d been hit hardest.

“You said everything would be fine,” I cried.

Bill’s normally stern face seemed to crumple. “I said probably,” he reminded me. “Anne, I’m so sorry.”

For the first time in over a year, I ached for my ex-husband. I’d ignore Patrick Quinn’s wandering eye forever if he’d only come back and help me deal with this mess. And if sometimes, at night, he’d still hold me close.

Bill reached out and roughly patted me on the shoulder. I felt like someone had scooped out my insides, and I had to turn away. I couldn’t even bear to look at what else was lost.

And so, wearing ratty sweats and a pair of waders, I headed north toward town.

The beach was covered in trash and the air smelled rank, but the birds were back, pecking around in the wreckage.

The sun came out as I walked, and then, as if by magic, the air filled with butterflies.

My mother would have told me there was a message in this—something about beauty after a storm—but she’d been dead almost twenty years now. And I wouldn’t have believed her anyway.





Chapter 3


BARNACLE BILL’S Diner looked like it had been hit hard, too, but then again it had looked that way before the hurricane. That was one of the reasons only locals went there. Despite its faded, decrepit exterior, inside it was bright and clean, and almost everyone I knew was tucked into the red vinyl booths, sharing stories about the storm.

When I staggered in, though, the room went quiet. It was clear to everyone that my night had not gone well.