Before the Storm (47 page)

voice broke as the images ran through my mind. “Not understanding what’s going on?”

“I know, Mags,” he said. “But try to calm down, all right?

Maybe the judge will see reason tomorrow and not lock him

up. Maybe he’ll even let him stay in the juvenile system.”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “That’s not what you said a couple of

hours ago. Especially now that they have his fingerprints on

that container.”

“If he doesn’t show, it’ll be worse for him,” Uncle Marcus

said.

“I’m hanging up.” I turned my phone’s power off so I

wouldn’t have to hear it ring when they tried to call me back.

I wondered if, by now, even Mom and Uncle Marcus believed

Andy had done it. Was I the only one who knew he was

innocent?

I was scared driving back to the cottage. I drove faster and

faster, thinking again about the candles. I was so relieved when

I saw that The Sea Tender was still standing. I parked the car

on New River Inlet Road this time and ran as fast as I could

back to the cottage. Inside, Andy had his earbuds in and barely

seemed to notice when I burst into the living room.

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I talked him into playing a game of Concentration with the

sticky old deck of cards from one of the kitchen drawers. We

spread them out between us on the sofa, and my hands shook

when it was my turn to turn over a pair. Now that we were

here, with my brother fed, my mother called and nothing

more that needed to be done, I was starting to freak out. What

was I doing? What had I done?

“I win!” Andy shouted, when we counted our pairs. For

once, I envied his ability to see life so simply.

We played a few more hands. Then I blew out the candle

on the windowsill and we watched the rain and salt water tap

against the glass in front of us. The cottage vibrated, I guessed

from the water swirling around the pilings. My nerves were

going to snap any minute.

Andy had kicked off his shoes and now he put his feet on

the windowsill. “I wish we could see the ocean,” he said.

I leaned forward to see if the white water was visible.

“Do you mind getting wet again?”

“Are we going back to the car?”

“No,” I said. “It’s not raining that hard right now. Let’s sit

out on the deck and watch the ocean.”

He followed me out the kitchen door onto the deck. It may

not have been raining hard, but the wind made balloons out

of our shirts and whooshed in our ears. I sat down where I

always did, on the edge of the wet deck with my legs dangling

over the side, my arms on the lower rung of the railing. The

vibration was much stronger out here. The deck shook as if

someone was running across it.

I patted the boards next to me and Andy sat down, too.

“Now we can see the ocean.” I could tell from the frothy

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white water that the waves were very high, crashing crazily into

each other. The darkness scared me, though, because I couldn’t

get a good sense of how high up the beach the waves were

coming. I felt the spray on my bare feet as the water swirled

around the pilings.

“We could fish from here,” Andy said.“If we run out of food,

we can catch fish.”

Right,
I thought. Like
that’s
in my plans.

“Yes, we could,” I said.

I put my arm around Andy’s shoulders. A different fifteen-

year-old boy probably would have knocked my arm away, but

Andy didn’t seem to mind. What I really wanted to do was

wrap both my arms around him. Hold him tight. I’d resented

my mother for pouring one hundred percent of her love and

attention into Andy, giving him the fifty percent that should

have been mine. But I’d never resented Andy. It wasn’t his fault

she loved him more.

“Do you remember Daddy at all?” I asked him.

“I rode on his shoulders,” Andy said. In his room, he had a

framed picture of Daddy holding him on his shoulders when

he was about two. I was sure his memory wasn’t of Daddy, but

of the picture.

“Sometimes,” I said, “when I sit out here, I feel his spirit.”

“Like a ghost?” Andy asked.

“No, not exactly. It’s hard to explain.You remember Piddie?”

Piddie had been his goldfish. We’d found him belly-up in his

bowl a few months ago.

“Yes. He was pretty.”

“Do you ever, sort of, feel him around? Like, you know perfectly well he’s not there, but you feel like he is.”

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“No. He’s dead.”

“Well, okay. I’m trying to explain what I mean by Daddy’s

spirit, but I don’t think you can understand it.” I lowered my

arm from his shoulders and leaned on the railing again. “I just

feel like he’s here with me sometimes.”

“He’s
dead!
” Andy sounded so upset that I laughed.

“I know, Panda Bear. Don’t worry about it.”

Between the wind and the light rain, it was chilly on the

deck but I didn’t want to go inside. I thought I should keep an

eye on the ocean, although I was sure we were okay. If the deck

started to actually sway, though, maybe we’d have to leave the

house.

“My friends think I’m going to go to jail,” Andy said

suddenly.

“You won’t go to jail.”

“I’m scared I’ll have to because I lied to the policemen. I

lied to everyone.”

I was confused. “What do you mean, Andy? When did you

lie?”

“I said I didn’t go outside while the lock-in was there, but I

did.”

“You
did?
Why?”

“To see if the bugs were dying. To see if the bug spray

worked, but it was too dark.”

I shut my eyes. I knew what he was talking about. I knew

everything.

“I promise you, Andy,” I said, “I will not let you go to jail.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” I felt a chill up my spine,

saying those words.

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“How can you stop the police from putting me in jail?” he

asked.

“I can stop them.”

“But how?”

I put my arm around him again.“By telling them what really

happened that night.”

IT WAS NOT DAMP IN MY HOUSE SO MUCH AS RAW, as though

the weather had crept in through the windows. I huddled on the

sofa beneath an afghan, while Marcus tended the fire he’d built.

“At least you know Maggie’s got him someplace where he’s

safe.” Marcus sat down on the sofa near my feet.“Do you think

you should call Shartell?”

“I don’t want to.” I realized that whatever insanity had made

Maggie spirit Andy away tonight, part of me shared it. As long

as he was with her, he wouldn’t be afraid and he wouldn’t be

in jail. “But I don’t know what I’ll do in the morning when

we’re supposed to show up for the hearing.”

“I guess we’ll deal with it then,” Marcus said.

I lifted my head to look at him. “Thank you for saying
we,
”

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I said. “You’ve always tried to be…a
we
when it came to Andy.

I’m sorry I made that hard.”

“I understood.” He shifted on the sofa. “I don’t know how

much Maggie told you, but Jamie and I had a colossal fight on

the boat. I was angry with him about the whole Sara thing, and

when I got on his case about it, he turned on me, saying I didn’t

have much room to talk. He’d figured out that Andy was mine,

and—”

“He
did?
I was never even sure that you knew.” Relief

washed over me now that it was out in the open. It should

have been for years.

The light from the hurricane lantern caught his smile.“I was

pretty sure about that right from the start. From when you told

me you were pregnant. Jamie probably was, too. We just let

it be the elephant in the room. But that elephant didn’t fit on

my boat with us.”

I remembered the bruises on Marcus’s body that had caused

the police to suspect foul play. “Do you mean you had a
fist-

fight?
” I couldn’t picture the brothers physically fighting.

“Most definitely. That’s why I was scratched up, but I only

told the cops about the whale. I couldn’t tell them the rest of

it without getting into what led to the fight and all that.”

“Was there really a whale, Marcus?”

He nodded. “We watched it for a while, and then it disappeared. While we were…having at it, the boat suddenly shot

up in the air and we were tossed out. Jamie hit his head on the

bow. All of that part is true.”

“You should have told the truth,” I chided. “If I’d known the

truth, it would have made me more open to you.You had to

know that.”

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“At what cost?” he asked. “I didn’t want to hurt you or your

memory of Jamie. I didn’t think it would ever have to come

out.”

“Keith is really Jamie’s son?” I whispered.

“Jamie told me he was. And once he said it, I could see Jamie

in him. Do you see it?”

I thought about Keith’s dark hair, the body that was already

growing thick and brawny. I rubbed my breastbone.“My heart

hurts,” I said.“Ever since Maggie told me. It just hurts so much.”

“I know.” Marcus rested his hand on my foot through the

afghan. “I’m sorry.”

I drew in a long breath and blew it out. “Maggie said you

set up a college fund for him.”

“I did,” he said. “That’s how Keith found out. It just seemed

so wrong that Jamie’s other kids had so much when Keith had

so little.”

“Oh!” I suddenly remembered the day I tried to pay Sara’s

hotel bill. “You’re paying for Sara’s hotel room!”

He nodded.

I dropped my head back against the sofa. “I’m so humiliated,” I said. “Sara…I thought she was my best friend.”

“She
is
your best friend.”

I shook my head. “How could she have done that to me,

though?”

Marcus squeezed my foot through the afghan. “How could

you and I have done it to Jamie?” he asked.

I don’t know how I managed to fall asleep. Marcus shook

my shoulder and I jerked awake, flinching at a pain in my neck

from the cramped position I’d slept in on the sofa.

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“Did they come home?” I sat up and looked toward the stairs.

“No.” He shook his head. “It’s a little after five and the

weather’s settled down. I’m going to try driving over to Ben

and Dawn’s. I can’t just sit here any longer, and maybe Ben’ll

have a clue where they are.”

I tossed the afghan onto the back of the sofa and stood up,

my legs wobbly beneath me. “I’m going with you,” I said.

I felt as though I was riding in a boat rather than a pickup

as we turned onto New River Inlet Road from my street.

Marcus’s headlights illuminated the water on the road, but it

was impossible to know how deep it was. Tall wings of it rose

up on either side of the pickup, although Marcus drove slowly.

The wind had let up and it was no longer raining, but aside

from our headlights, the island was in complete, disconcerting darkness that my eyes couldn’t pierce. The sky felt as

though it was mere inches from the roof of the cab.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a night this dark,” Marcus said

as he drove. He sat upright, close to the steering wheel, and I

knew he felt as tense as I did.

Although there wasn’t another vehicle on the road, it

took us half an hour to drive the seven miles to Surf City.

Marcus got out of the pickup a few times to shine his f lashlight on the road ahead of us, making sure the water wasn’t

too deep or too swift to drive through. Finally, we turned

onto the beach road near Dawn’s cottage, and Marcus

inched along as we tried to make out one dark building

from another.

“I think that’s it.” I pointed to the barely visible cottage.

“Isn’t that Dawn’s car on the street in front?” Marcus asked.

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I followed the beam of his headlights to the car and saw that

it was parked in front of Ben’s van.

“Why are they on the street?” I asked.

Marcus pulled into the driveway, his headlights answering

my question: the parking area beneath the cottage was under

at least a couple of feet of water.

“Oh boy.” Marcus turned off the engine. “I bet this storm

did a number on the beaches.”

We got out of the pickup, each of us carrying a flashlight,

and Marcus put his hand on my back as we walked toward the

cottage. At the top of the front steps, he banged on the door

with the side of his fist.

We waited thirty seconds, then Marcus tried the door.

“Locked.” He banged again, relentlessly this time. “Ben!”

he shouted.

I saw a flicker of light inside one of the windows, and a

second later Ben opened the door, a flashlight in his hand.

“Is there a fire?” he asked. Then he noticed me. “What’s

wrong?”

“Let us in.” Marcus pushed past him and I followed.

“Do you know where Maggie and Andy are?” I asked.

“Aren’t they home?” Ben wore a pair of tan shorts, unbuttoned at the waist, and nothing more. I didn’t want to think