Before the Storm (3 page)

was Mom going to handle Andy without me?

As a mother, Mom was borderline okay. She was smart and

she could be cool sometimes, but she loved Andy so much that

she suffocated him, and she didn’t have a clue. My brother was

my biggest worry. Probably ninety-five percent of my time, I

thought about him. Even when I thought about other things,

he was still in a little corner of my mind, the same way I knew

that it was spring or that we lived in North Carolina or that I

was female.

I talked Mom into letting Andy go to the lock-in tonight.

He was fifteen; she had to let go a little and besides, Emily’s

mother was one of the chaperones. I hoped he was having a

good time and acting normal. His grip on social etiquette was

pretty lame. Would they have dancing at the lock-in? It cracked

me up to imagine Andy and Emily dancing together.

My cell phone vibrated in my jeans pocket and I pulled it

out to look at the display. Mom. I slipped it back in my jeans,

hoping she didn’t try to reach me at Amber’s and discover I

wasn’t there.

The phone rang again. That was our signal—the call-twicein-a-row signal that meant
This is serious.Answer now.
So I jumped

up and walked into the house. I pulled the door closed to

block out the sound of the ocean before hitting the talk button.

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

“Oh my God, Maggie!” Mom sounded breathless, as though

she’d run up the stairs. “The church is on fire!”

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25

“
What
church?” I froze.

“Drury Memorial. They just cut into the TV to announce

it. They showed a picture.” She choked on a sob. “It’s completely engulfed in flames. People are still inside!”

“No way!” The weed suddenly hit me. I was dizzy, and I

leaned over the sink in case I got sick.
Andy.
He wouldn’t

know what to do.

“I’m going over there now,” Mom said. Her car door

squeaked open, then slammed shut. “Are you at Amber’s?”

“I’m…” I glanced out the door at the dark ocean. “Yes.” She

was so easy to lie to. Her focus was always on Andy, hardly ever

on me. I stubbed out the joint in the sink.“I’ll meet you there,”

I added. “At the church.”

“Hurry!” she said. I pictured her pinching the phone

between her chin and shoulder as she started the car.

“Stay calm,” I said. “Drive carefully.”

“You, too. But
hurry!
”

I was already heading toward the front door. Forgetting

about the Condemned sign, I ran right into it, yelping as it

knocked the air from my lungs. I ducked beneath it, jumped to

the sand and ran down the boardwalk to my Jetta. I was miles

from the church in Surf City. Miles from my baby brother. I felt

so sick. I began crying as I turned the key in the ignition. It was

my fault if something happened to him. I started to pray, something I only did when I was desperate.
Dear God,
I thought, as

I sped down New River Inlet Road,
don’t let anything happen to

Andy.Please.Let it happen to me instead.I’m the liar.I’m the bad kid.

I drove all the way to Surf City, saying that prayer over and

over in my mind until I saw the smoke in the sky. Then I

started saying it out loud.

THERE IS ONLY ONE STOPLIGHT ON THE twenty-six miles of

Topsail Island. It sits two short blocks from the beach in the

heart of Surf City, and it glowed red when my car approached

it and was still red when I left it behind. If there’d been a dozen

red lights, they wouldn’t have stopped me. People always told

me I was a determined woman and I was never more so than

the night of the fire.

Miles before the stoplight, I’d seen the yellow glow in the sky,

and now I could smell the fire itself. I pictured the old church.

I’d only been inside it a few times for weddings and funerals, but

I knew it had pine floors, probably soaked with years of oily

cleaner, just tempting someone to toss a match on them. I knew

more than I wanted to know about fires. I’d lost my parents to

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27

one, plus Jamie had been a volunteer firefighter before he died.

He told me about clapboard buildings that were nothing but

tinder. Probably one of the kids lit a cigarette, tossed the match

on the floor. Why oh why did I listen to Maggie? I never should

have let Andy go. Maggie was around him so much, she thought

of him as a normal kid.You got that way when you were around

him a lot.You got used to his oddities, took his limitations for

granted. Then you’d see him out in the world and realize he still

didn’t fit in, no matter how much you’d tried to make that

happen. It was easy to get seduced into thinking he was okay

when the environment around him was so carefully controlled

and familiar. Tonight, though, I threw him to the wolves.

The street near Drury Memorial was clotted with fire

trucks and police cars and ambulances and I had to park a

block away in front of Jabeen’s Java and The Pony Express.

I’d barely come to a stop before I f lew out of my car and

started running toward the fire.

A few people stood along the road watching clouds of

smoke and steam gush from the church into the bright night

sky. There were shouts and sirens and a sickening acrid smell

in the air as I ran toward the front doors of the church. Huge

floodlights illuminated the building and gave me tunnel vision.

All I saw were those gaping doors, smoke belching from them,

and they were my target.

“Grab her!” someone shouted.

Long, wiry arms locked around me from behind.

“Let go of me!” I clawed at the arms with my fingernails,

but whoever was holding me had a grip like a steel trap.

“We have a staging area set up, ma’am,” he shouted into my

ear. “Most of the children are out and safe.”

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diane chamberlain

“What do you mean
most?
” I twisted against the vise of his

arms. “Where’s my
son?
”

He dragged me across the sandy lot before loosening his

hold on me. “They’ve got names of the children on a list,” he

said as he let go.

“Where?”
I spun around to see the face of Reverend Bill,

pastor of Drury Memorial. If there was a person on Topsail

Island I didn’t like, it was Reverend Bill. He looked no happier

to realize it was me he’d been holding in his arms.

“One of
your
children was here?” He sounded stunned that

I’d let a child of mine set foot in his church. I never should

have.

“Andy,” I said. Then I called his name. “Andy!” I shaded my

eyes from the floodlights as I surveyed the scene. He’d worn

his tan pants, olive green-striped shirt, and new sneakers

tonight. I searched for the striped shirt, but the chaos of the

scene suddenly overwhelmed my vision. Kids were everywhere, some sprawled on the sand, others sitting up or bent

over, coughing. Generators roared as they fueled the lights, and

static from police radios crackled in the air. Parents called out

the names of their children.
“Tracy!”
“Josh!”
“Amanda!”
An

EMT leaned over a girl, giving her CPR. The nurse in me

wanted to help, but the mother in me was stronger.

Above my head, a helicopter thrummed as it rose from the

beach.

“Andy!”
I shouted to the helicopter, only vaguely aware of

how irrational I must have seemed.

Reverend Bill was clutching my arm, tugging me across the

street through a maze of fire trucks and police cars to an area

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29

lit by another floodlight and cordoned off with yellow police

tape. Inside the tape, people stood shoulder to shoulder,

shouting and pushing.

“See that girl over there?” Reverend Bill pointed into the

crowd of people.

“Who?
Where?
” I stood on my toes trying to see better.

“The one in uniform,” he shouted. “She’s taking names,

hooking parents up with their kids.You go see—”

I pulled away from him before he could finish the sentence.

I didn’t bother looking for an entrance into the cordoned-off

area. Instead, I climbed over the tape and plowed into the clot

of people.

Parents crowded around the officer, who I recognized as

Patty Shales. Her kids went to the elementary school in Sneads

Ferry where I was a part-time nurse.

“Patty!” I shouted from the sea of parents. “Do you know

where Andy is?”

She glanced over at me just as a man grabbed the clipboard

from her hands. I couldn’t see what was happening, but Patty’s

head disappeared from my view amid flailing arms and angry

shouting.

From somewhere behind me, I heard the words “killed”

and “dead.” I swung around to see two women, red eyed, hands

to their mouths.

“
Who’s
killed?” I asked. “
Who’s
dead?”

One of the women wiped tears from her eyes.“I heard they

found a body,” she said. “Some kids was trapped inside. My

daughter’s here somewhere. I just pray to the Lord—” She

shook her head, unable to finish her sentence.

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diane chamberlain

I felt suddenly nauseated by the smell of the fire, a tarry

chemical smell that burned my nostrils and throat.

“My son’s here, too,” I said, though I doubted the woman

even heard me.

“Laurel!” Sara Weston lifted the yellow tape and ducked

under it, running up to me. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“Andy’s here. Is Keith?”

She nodded, pressing a trembling hand to her cheek.“I can’t

find him,” she said. “Someone said he got burned, but I—”

She stopped speaking as an ominous creaking sound came

from the far side of the church—the sort of sound a massive

tree makes as it starts to fall. Everyone froze, staring at the

church as the rear of the roof collapsed in one long wave,

sending smoke and embers into the air.

“Oh my God, Laurel!” Sara pressed her face against my

shoulder and I wrapped my arm around her as we were jostled

by people trying to get closer to Patty. Parents stepped on our

feet, pushing us one way, then another, and Sara and I pushed

back as a unit, bullish and driven. I probably knew many of the

people I fought out of my way, but in the heat of the moment,

we were all simply desperate parents.
This is what it was like

inside,
I thought, panic rising in my throat.
All the kids pushing

at once to get out of the church.

“Patty!” I shouted again, but I was only one voice of many.

She heard me, though.

“Laurel!” she yelled. “They took Andy to New Hanover.”

“Oh God.”

“Not life threatening,” Patty called. “Asthma. Some burns.”

I let out my breath in a silent prayer.
Thank you, thank you,

thank you.

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31

“You go.” Sara tried to push me away, but I held fast to her.

“Go, honey,” she repeated. “Go see him.”

I longed to run back to my car and drive to the hospital in

Wilmington, but I couldn’t leave Sara.“Not until you’ve heard

about Keith,” I said.

“Tracy Kelly’s parents here?” Patty called.

“Here!” a man barked from behind me.

“She’s at Cape Fear.”

“Is Keith Weston on the list?” Sara shouted into the din.

I was afraid Patty hadn’t heard her. She was speaking to a

man who held a pair of broken glasses up to his eyes.

“Keith Weston was just airlifted to New Hanover,”Patty called.

“Oh, no.” Sara grabbed my arm so hard I winced. I thought

of the helicopter rising into the sky above me.

“Let’s go,” I said, pulling Sara with me through the sea of

people. Tears I’d been holding in spilled down my cheeks as

we backed away, letting other parents take our places.“We can

drive together.”

“We’ll go separately,” Sara said, already at a run away from

me. “In case one of us has to stay longer or—”

“Mom!” Maggie suddenly appeared at my side, winded and

shivering.“They told me Uncle Marcus is here somewhere, but

I couldn’t find out anything about Andy.”

“He’s at New Hanover.” I grabbed her hand. “I’m parked

over by Jabeen’s. Let’s go.”

I took one glance back at the smoking church. The ragged

siding that still remained standing glowed red against the eerie

gray sky. I hadn’t thought about my former brother-in-law

being there, but of course he was. I pictured Marcus inside the

church, moving slowly through the smoke with his air pack on,

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diane chamberlain

feeling his way, searching for children who never stood a

chance. Could he have been hurt when the roof collapsed?

Please,no.
And for the briefest of moments, I shifted my worry

from Andy to him.

Maggie and I barely spoke on the way to Wilmington. She

cried nearly the whole time, sniffling softly, shredding a tissue

in her lap. My eyes were on the road, my foot pressing the gas

pedal nearly to the f loor. I imagined Andy trying to make