The Running Girls(87)
As had happened following Hurricane Ike, the town had started rebuilding, but many islanders had decided enough was enough and left the place for good. Billions were being spent on assisted funding for building repairs, but sometimes it was hard not to wonder if the money could be best spent elsewhere. The boosters’ argument was that the island had endured storms since the great one of 1900, and had always survived and come back stronger, but Laurie wondered if that was really true. Each storm brought with it a destructive legacy all its own, she believed, and every time they built the island back up, they knew that sooner or later it would be knocked down again.
But she wasn’t a policymaker and it wasn’t as if they could abandon the island and start again somewhere else. With global warming, Galveston would always be at risk, but so were many other places. Safe havens seemed in swiftly diminishing supply, if indeed they’d ever really existed.
“You OK?” she said to David, who was staring out of the passenger window of their car as they made their way along Seawall Boulevard.
The last few months had been rough on him. The revelations about Mosley being his half-brother had hit the national news. He’d struggled to come to terms with the fact that a half-brother he’d never known had killed his mother, uncle, and Grace Harrington, and that the father he’d always thought was guilty had gone to prison for no reason.
Tilly’s father had survived, and along with Tilly had left the island for Texas City. Laurie had spoken to Tilly last week. She too was slowly recovering from her ordeal, and was planning to study marine biology in Austin come September. Laurie had also spoken to Sandra Harrington a few times since the hurricane struck. She’d also relocated and was trying to rebuild her life alone on the outskirts of Dallas.
An investigation had been launched into the Annie Randall case, but with Jim Burnell long in his grave it was doubtful there would be any repercussions for Mosley having not been identified as a suspect. Warren had pored over what information they had, but the written case notes from the time had only recorded a one-way conversation between Burnell and Sadie Cornish. If Sadie’s son had been mentioned, Burnell hadn’t recorded it and had taken that failure to his grave.
Laurie made the turn to Frank’s house and paused to check again with David that he was all right. This was the fourth time he’d met up with his estranged father, and things were getting both easier and more difficult. David was beginning to wrap his head around the whole situation, but Frank’s condition was such that it wasn’t always easy to talk things through. After he’d recovered from his hypothermia scare, Frank had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It was believed that he’d probably been suffering from it since his time in prison. He had good days and bad days. Most of the time he was lucid, but every now and then it was as if he disappeared right in front of them.
They parked and Laurie walked with David toward the tree where, just a few months ago, she’d witnessed Warren attack her father-in-law. Frank was waiting for them on the porch, sitting with a coffee in his hand. “Laurie, David, so glad you could make it,” he said, getting up before they had a chance to stop him.
On days like these, it was difficult to imagine he had Alzheimer’s. He grimaced as he stretched out his bad leg, but he looked well. Laurie had been making sure he was eating properly, and he’d put on a few pounds since the hurricane, giving shape to his once gaunt face. “Come on in,” he said, “I have some more coffee going.”
Despite its elevation, the house hadn’t missed the flooding. Laurie had arranged for a team to clear out the place before Frank’s return, but it still retained its place-out-of-time quality. She glanced over at the pictures like she did every time she came here, the photos of Frank, David, and Annie now telling a different, still achingly painful, yet truer story than before.
Frank made them lunch and though she sensed David’s reserve—he might always call his dad by his first name—Laurie thought things were nonetheless better than the last time, which had been better than the time before that.
“Here,” said Frank, as they were about to leave. Dusk was falling, and the peaceful sound of birdsong rang through the air. “I was going through some of the stuff they salvaged after the storm, and I found this. You remember this, David? I took this of you both. We were so proud of you that day.” It was a picture of David’s graduation, of David arm in arm with his mother, a few years before Annie’s death.
“Thank you,” said David, taking the frame from Frank, before giving him the briefest of hugs goodbye.
Laurie marveled at the shape of her legs as she cycled along the seawall. Would she always be such a perpetual work in progress? She’d cut down on the exercise these last few weeks, and already her legs felt slenderer, the muscle still there but no longer dominating as once it had. It was heartbreaking passing the boarded-up shops and restaurants, devastating when those places were missing completely, empty spaces or ruined foundations in their wake. She turned from such thoughts and focused on her momentum, gaining speed until all she could think about was the rush of the cooling breeze she created.
Things were better than ever with David, but she still needed these times of being alone, her only concern the power of her body as she drove herself on.
She pulled up outside their apartment thirty minutes later. They’d been fortunate that the apartment had been above the water level of the surge, but even here, reminders of the hurricane were everywhere. It clung to the building with its restored windows and shiny new gutters, and appeared to hang in the air as if reminding Galveston’s citizens that it wasn’t over; that for them, it would never truly be over.