A Wedding for Julia (42 page)

She’d made it to the back door when Tim and Jeanette caught up with them, their two younger girls and Bandit huddled between them.

“Hurry, Julia.” Tim’s face said all she needed to know. They had run out of time. Still, she paused at the back door. Would her home be standing when they emerged from the basement?

“Don’t look back. Just go!” The words were practically torn from Tim’s mouth as the front door of her home was ripped off its hinges. The last thing she saw was it slamming into the Elliots’ car, straight through the windshield.

Had that happened? How could that have happened?

Jeanette had moved in front of their group and was now holding their youngest girl in her arms. Zoey clutched Bandit to her chest and buried her face in his fur.

“Put your hands on my shoulders and don’t let go!” Jeanette was screaming to two of the guests, but the words could barely be heard over the noise of a train screaming in Julia’s ears.

She glanced down at her feet. Though she remained inside the house, the floor of her home was now ankle deep in leaves.

Tim thrust Victoria into Julia’s arms. She staggered under the sudden weight of the ten-year-old. Then a hand was pushing her out the back door.

With one arm, she clutched Victoria to her, and with the other she encircled the shoulders of the young mother, the woman whose name she didn’t know. Together they stumbled into the afternoon that had become total darkness, in the direction Julia knew would lead to safety. Slamming her knee into the basement door, she nearly fell, but Tim was behind her, pulling her back to her feet. Before she could regain her balance another force, a stronger one, picked her up, then pitched her back down again—down and into the hole.

Her feet never touched the steps.

Julia did her best to fall to the side, to not land on Victoria or the mother holding the infant.

Behind her she was aware that Tim and someone else was struggling with the door. That was why he’d given her his child. He had known he would need to stay out in the storm. He’d known he might not make it into the basement.

Tim and the man who had stayed at the opening to the basement were screaming for help. Wess and the man with the phone rushed past her. She could just make out their figures in the cracks of lightning that were now almost constant.

Victoria’s arms were locked around her neck, and she was aware the child was sobbing, but her attention was focused on the door at the top of the stairs.

Still it wouldn’t close. Why? What was wrong? Had the wind broken it? Would they all be pulled out of their only safe haven?

Bandit barked as if all of their lives depended on him.

Tim shouted, his voice reminding Julia of her father the one time she’d seen him angry—angry with a force he couldn’t battle. Angry with a storm that threatened his family.

“On three!”

The wind tore the first two numbers, but when he shouted “three” again there was a thump. They were suddenly shrouded in darkness and silence.

Then she heard a sound she’d only heard twice before, and it knocked loose a memory she’d buried somewhere in the deep recesses of her heart.

It was the sound of a bar sliding through a lock.

Chapter 34

C
aleb moved through the darkness to Aaron’s side.

Some part of his mind registered the sounds around him—people praying, some weeping, the horses stomping and making a noise he’d never heard before. Pumpkin yowling as if he could save them with the intensity of his cries. Over and above all that was the storm, unleashing a fury he could never have imagined. He couldn’t imagine it still, and yet it was wreaking destruction around them.

“We need to make sure everyone is here,” Caleb said.

“What does it matter? No one could—”

“We need to make sure.”

He had his arm across Aaron’s back and felt his shoulders slump. In that moment he knew that his friend was struggling with the same emotions, the same fears, he was. “Lydia is in
Gotte
’s hands. We need to care for these who are here. Let’s be sure.”

“All right.”

“Flashlights?”

“Near the front if you can find them in the dark.”

“You can use my phone.” A hand reached forward from the darkness and handed Caleb a cell phone. The hand was shaking, but the voice persisted. “There’s no cell service, but the flashlight app works.”

The teenage boy pushed a button, and a bright beam of light emitted from the device.

“
Danki
. Do you have something to write with?”

“Nah.”

“I do.” An older woman with short spiky hair handed him a pen.

“We’ll need two.” He had to shout to be heard over the rain and hail.

She fumbled around in her purse until she found another, which she gave to Caleb.

“I don’t have a fancy phone, but I have a small flashlight I keep with me.” An older man with a short-cropped gray beard handed over his device.

“This will help, and we’ll return your items to all of you once the storm has passed.”

“If it passes—” the teenager said loudly.

“All things pass, son.” Caleb turned toward Aaron. “You take the right side. I’ll take the left. Ask their cabin number and if everyone in their party is here. We’ll meet at the back wall.”

He didn’t tell him to hurry. There was no need. The screaming sound from the front of the barn was all the warning they needed.

If anyone was missing, he didn’t know how they would go and look, but it was better that they do something. As he made his way down the last three stalls, where the
Englischers
were huddled, he reminded everyone that they were in the safest possible place, that the barn had stood for more than a hundred years, and that
Gotte
would protect them.

A few of the women were weeping and some of the children wouldn’t raise their heads to look at him, but the men seemed like a solid group. The fact that he and Aaron were checking to see that all the guests were present and accounted for had a calming effect on everyone.

Caleb reached the back wall as Aaron was speaking to a couple huddled together.

“What’s wrong with them?”

“The man was hit in the head with some flying debris. He doesn’t seem to have a concussion—he’s aware of where he is and what has happened—but he’s bleeding more than I’m comfortable with.”

“One of the women on my side has medical training. I’ll go ask if she can help.”

Caleb made his way back down his side until he found the woman, who was middle-aged with red hair. She followed him to the wounded man, but he didn’t stay to hear her assessment. If anyone was still outside, the window of opportunity to fetch them was quickly closing.

“Cabin numbers?” he asked Aaron.

Aaron ran down his list.

“And everyone was accounted for?”

“
Ya
. Only minor injuries except for the one.”

“Then we’re all here.” Caleb felt one of a dozen burdens lifted off of his shoulders. These weren’t his cabins, but somehow it felt as if these people were his responsibility until the storm passed.

Why was that?

Aaron was the owner. After deciding to marry Lydia and settle down in Wisconsin, he had purchased the property from his Aunt Elizabeth. He’d always been levelheaded and able to handle whatever came his way. Suddenly, though, in the light of the
Englischer
’s phone, Caleb realized Aaron was only twenty-four-years old. The naked fear on his face reminded Caleb of Aaron’s youth and of the young boy who used to follow him around.

In recent weeks Caleb had suspected he’d followed his best friend’s cousin here because God intended for him to meet and care for Julia. Maybe there was another reason, though. God was all-knowing.

Nothing surprised Him—not even the wrath of a once-in-a-century storm. And perhaps, just maybe, God had placed him here, in this barn, to help his young friend at this moment.

He put a hand on Aaron’s shoulder. “
Gotte
will see us through this. He will command His angels concerning us to guard us in all our ways.” The words should have come from Ada, but as they surged into Caleb’s heart, he knew the truth of them. Even as the structure over the front portion of the barn creaked and groaned, any remaining fear he felt vanished.

The promise from the Psalms had barely left his mouth when the front portion of the barn began to shake.

“It’s coming down,” someone screamed.

The horses panicked and attempted to knock down the walls to their stalls.

Caleb tried to holler out for everyone to move toward the back wall, but he couldn’t hear anything except for a loud roaring. So he pushed Aaron to the ground, up against the earthen wall, and he ran in the opposite direction, the direction his body did not want to go—toward the front of the barn.

He made it to the third stall, where he’d first begun counting guests. Most were now standing, watching in horror as the large doors of the barn were torn off and tossed high into the air. As lightning continued to pulse across the sky, he had a brief glimpse of the scene outside. One cabin flew through the air. An
Englischer
’s car slapped against the front of the barn.

“Get back. Everyone move back!” Though he was screaming, the black funnel at the door of the barn seemed to tear his voice away. He turned from the sight of it and began pushing people toward the back wall.

He heard them stumbling forward in the darkness and then a giant, ripping sound filled the air.

Someone shouted, “It’s not going to hold.”

Pumpkin shot past him in the darkness.

Caleb clapped his hands over his ears, sure his eardrums were going to burst. He fell forward in what he hoped was the right direction—toward the earthen wall the back of the barn had been built against. He could no longer hear the horses or the people around him. He also couldn’t see. Somewhere in the last few moments he’d either dropped the phone with the flashlight or it had been ripped from his hands.

They were now in total darkness.

And still the monster outside the front of the barn kept advancing. He was aware of creaking and groaning as the structure fought to remain standing. When the front portion collapsed, he feared they would all be buried alive.

Throwing himself over the two people closest to him, he covered his own head with his arms and waited for the blow to come. His heart ached as he realized he would never again hold Julia in his arms, never hear the Psalms fall from Ada’s lips, never see Sharon grow into the young woman God intended her to be.

“The Lord is near to all who call on Him.”

Was it Ada’s voice or King David’s he heard? He didn’t know and it didn’t matter.

He called, he prayed, and he cried out from the depths of his heart as Aaron’s barn fell down around them.

The prayers were still echoing in his heart when they were shrouded in complete and total silence.

Chapter 35