Before the Storm (49 page)

“I CAN’T SEE THEM ANYMORE!” I SHOUTED TO Marcus. I

couldn’t see
him,
either, but I knew he was searching the yards

of the front row of houses for a boat or raft.

“What?” He appeared suddenly, running toward the water

with a surfboard.

I pointed toward where we’d last seen Maggie and Andy.

“They’ve disappeared!”

He stopped running to look toward the horizon.

“I don’t know what happened!” I said. “I blinked and they

were gone.”

He headed for the water again, dropping the surfboard on

the surface and starting to paddle.

“Let me go, too!”

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“Stay here and keep trying the phone!” he shouted.

We’d been trying to get a signal with both of our phones

ever since we got there. I lifted my phone to punch in 9-1-1

again with my cold, shaking fingers, but something caught my

eye on the beach a good distance north of where I stood.

People? A small figure, pink lit in the shallow water, nearly to

the inlet. It couldn’t possibly be one of my children. There was

no way either of them could have swum to shore that quickly

under the best of circumstances.

But whoever it was had dark hair and was very slight.

“Marcus, come back!” I shouted as I started running. The

wet sand was like concrete beneath my bare feet. I tried to

make sense of the tiny image on the beach. What was he or

she doing? Not standing, that much was clear, and I ran faster.

The sandpipers and gulls dashed out of my way. I’d never run

so fast in all my life.

“Be careful, Laurel!” Marcus shouted from behind me. I

heard his own thudding footsteps on the sand. I knew he was

warning me about the debris scattered along the beach in

front of me, but I wasn’t going to slow down for shards of glass

or rusty nails. I knew he wouldn’t either.

Andy was getting to his feet in the wet sand, gentle waves

lapping at his legs.

“Andy!” I waved my arms. He was alive! “Andy!”

He tugged at something in the water and it wasn’t until I

was nearly on him that I realized it was Maggie.

“Oh my God!” I ran into the chilly knee-high water, splashing it behind me.

“Mommy!” Andy lost his footing and sat down again. When

I reached him, Maggie’s head was in his lap.

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“Maggie!” I dropped to my knees next to my children.

Andy was wheezing, his breath whistling above the soft

murmur of the waves and his chest expanding and contracting like an accordion.

“Baby!” I grabbed his neck and kissed his forehead, but

quickly turned my attention to Maggie.

“Is she all right?” Marcus dropped to the water next to us

as Maggie started coughing. Her eyes were closed, her skin an

icy blue, but she was alive.

She gasped, choking on salt water, and I rolled her head

from Andy’s lap to mine, turning her onto her side.

“Maggie, sweetie, it’s Mom.You’re okay, baby.”

She hacked and coughed, but I wasn’t sure she was conscious. She was a deadweight on my lap and an incoming wave

washed over her face.

“Let’s get her out of the water,” I said.

“Is she breathing okay?” Marcus asked as we carried her a

few feet higher on the beach, turning her onto her stomach.

Andy knelt next to her face.“Maggie!” he shouted.“Are you

okay, Maggie?”

I saw blood on Andy’s legs. “Andy, you’re bleeding! Where

are you hurt?”

Andy looked down at his legs. The blood appeared to be

pouring from his knee.

“It’s Maggie!” Marcus rolled her onto her back, and I saw

what I had missed when we’d been sitting in the water: a deep

cut on her neck, gushing blood onto the sand. Marcus lifted

his T-shirt over his head and pressed it to the wound.

Maggie coughed, and we started to roll her over again, but

she seemed to get her breathing under control.

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“Maggie, sweetie, can you hear me?”

She mouthed something I couldn’t understand.

“What, honey?” I leaned closer.

“Did you swim all the way from out there?” Marcus asked

Andy incredulously.

“We didn’t have to swim,” Andy said. “A big wave came and

lifted us way up.” He reached his arms toward the sky.

Maggie whispered something again, her mouth moving

soundlessly.

I leaned my ear against her lips, “What, Maggie?” I asked.

She mouthed the words silently, then cleared her throat. “It

was Daddy,” she said.

SOMEONE HELD MY HAND. I THOUGHT IT MIGHT be Daddy.

My lungs burned when I breathed in. Everything hurt, especially my neck, and I wanted to reach up and touch the place

that ached, but my arms were too heavy, and anyway, I didn’t

really care. My head seemed disconnected from the pain

somehow. If heaven existed, did it feel like this? Floating above

the pain, holding Daddy’s hand? I thought it probably did.

“She’s smiling,” a man’s voice said.

Uncle Marcus? I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids were

as heavy as my arms.

“Maggie?”
Mom.
It was Mom’s hand holding mine.

I remembered the wave. I remembered losing Andy.

“Andy?” My eyelids flew open and I tried to sit up.

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“Whoa.” Uncle Marcus put his hands on my shoulders and

lowered me down again.

“Not so fast, sweetie,” Mom said.

I was in a strange white room. Mom was on my right, still

holding my hand; Uncle Marcus was on my left, running his

hand over my hair.

“I lost Andy,” I said. My voice was raspy, not like my voice at

all.

“Andy’s fine,” Mom said.

“I’m sorry!” I started to cry. “I lost him in the wave!”

“He’s fine, Mags,” Uncle Marcus said. “Don’t cry. He’ll

come see you later.”

My neck hurt. The pain cut through the floaty feeling in my

head. I felt sick to my stomach and swallowed once. Twice. I

was definitely not in heaven.

“You’re in Cape Fear Hospital,” Mom said. “You have a cut

on your neck. It probably hurts a lot.”

I nodded, my eyes shut. Andy was safe? Would they lie to

me about something like that?

“Does it hurt to breathe?” Mom asked.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“You’re going to be fine,” she said. “You and Andy were incredibly lucky.”

“Is Ben here?” I opened my eyes again, squinting from the

bright light in the room. I didn’t care who knew about Ben

now. I wanted him with me.

“No, Mags,” Uncle Marcus said. “Just your mom and me.”

“You said something about Daddy saving you,” Mom said.

“Helping you. What did you mean, sweetie?”

I closed my eyes again. I remembered the sense of calm I’d

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felt as the wave lifted me high in the air, but I was awake

enough to know how crazy that would sound to Mom. How

crazy it sounded even to
me.
I’d keep it to myself.“I don’t know

what you’re talking about,” I said.

Mom hesitated, and I thought she wasn’t going to give up.

“Okay,” she said finally.

I suddenly remembered the whole reason I was there. “The

hearing!” I said, trying to sit up again. “Is it—”

“Postponed.” Mom held me down. “Don’t think about that

now.”

I remembered Andy in The Sea Tender, telling me he’d

gone outside to check for bugs during the lock-in.

“I need to talk to someone,” I said.

“What you need is rest.” Uncle Marcus rubbed my shoulder.

“No.
No.
I need to talk to Andy’s lawyer. No! To the
police.

Right now.”

“You have a lot of pain medication in you,” Mom said. “It’s

not the time.”

“Yes, it’s time!” I insisted. “
Yesterday
was the time. Last
week

was the time. Last
month
was the time.”

“Mags, what are you talking about?” Uncle Marcus asked.

I couldn’t tell them. They might stop me from doing what

I needed to do. What I should have done weeks ago.

“I’m awake,” I said. “I’m not out of it, and I need to talk to

the police now.” I looked from my mother’s face to Uncle

Marcus’s and saw their confusion.
“Now,”
I said again. “You’ve

got to let me. Before I chicken out. I need to tell them what

really happened.”

“What do you mean, ‘what really happened’?” Mom asked.

She looked a thousand years old.“Did Andy tell you something?”

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She was scared. Was she afraid I’d reveal something that

would send Andy to prison for certain? I wondered if the

same fear would be there if she knew that
I
was the one who

was going to be locked up for good.

“You really should have a lawyer here,” Uncle Marcus said

for at least the tenth time, when Flip Cates finished reading me

the Miranda Warning. I knew he’d asked Flip to come instead

of that weird Sergeant Wood and I was glad. But no way was

I waiting for a lawyer. I’d already waited an hour for Flip.

I shook my head—a mistake. The doctor had told me not

to move my head or I might open the cut on my neck again. I

touched the bandage lightly with my fingers. The cut burned

and my whole body ached, but I refused to take any more pain

medication until after I talked to Flip. I didn’t want anyone to

say that I wasn’t in my right mind when I spoke to the police.

Mom stood up from her chair to check my bandage. “It’s

not bleeding,” she said. “I wish you’d reconsider, Maggie.

Maybe Mr. Shartell could just talk to you on the phone before

you say anything.”

“I can wait, Maggie,” Flip said. He was sitting where Uncle

Marcus had been earlier, and he’d put a tape recorder on the

rolling table. Uncle Marcus stood at the end of my bed.

“I don’t
want
to talk to him,” I said again. Mom and Uncle

Marcus had been badgering me about a lawyer ever since I said

I wanted to talk to the police. “He’ll spin things around until

I don’t understand what I’m saying myself. I want to tell what

really happened the night of the fire.”

My mother twisted her old wedding ring on her finger.“You

can’t cover for Andy, sweetie,” she said.

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I was surprised. “I’m not,” I said. “He didn’t know it, but

he’s been covering for
me
all this time.” I looked at Flip. “Can

we get started now?”

“Sure, Maggie,” Flip said. “Do you want me to question you

or would you rather just talk?”

“I’ll just talk,” I said.

“Okay, then.” He did something with the tape recorder,

moved it a little closer to me on the table. “Go ahead,” he said.

I took a deep breath and began.

WHEN YOU REALLY LOVE SOMEONE, WHEN their joy feels

like your joy and their hurt like your hurt, it’s both a wonderful and a terrible thing. That’s how it was with Ben and me. I

was like a living, breathing clump of empathy around him. I

thought he was so amazing, inside and out. Always patient with

the kids on the swim team. Always encouraging my baby

brother. Believing in Andy the way I did. I loved Ben for that,

and for his tenderness with me, and for the way he adored his

daughter. For the way he kept trying to do well in the fire department when it was so hard and scary for him.

“When I was a little kid,” he told me one night when we were

in bed at The Sea Tender, “my father would punish me by

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focating. I’d panic. I’d pound on the cupboard door, but no one

would come.”

I rubbed his arm as he spoke. I couldn’t imagine a parent

being that cruel.

“I didn’t have any more problems with claustrophobia,

though, until the first time I had to put on SCBA gear during

my fire training,” he said. “It was like I was five years old again

and trapped in the cupboard. That’s the way it is every time I

put on the face piece. I can’t seem to get past it. I’ve mastered

everything else.Your uncle says to give it time, but I think it’s

getting worse instead of better.”

I was amazed he’d tell me something so personal. He trusted

me with a secret. It made me feel like I could trust him back.

With
anything.

A couple of weeks later, I was in Jabeen’s with Amber and

some other girls, back when I could still stand hanging around

with them. We sat in a booth, and the next booth over had some

of the volunteers from the fire department. Two men and a

woman.

I looked up from my latte to see Ben walk in the door. He

nodded to me and I nodded back. We were good at acting cool

around each other, like we were the coaches of the swim team

and nothing more.

“Hey,” Ben said to the volunteers as he walked up to the

counter where Sara was working.

“Hey,” the volunteers said back to him.

He ordered a coffee to go. Amber was blathering on about

Travis, but it was like a white noise in my ears because I was

so focused on Ben, while trying not to
act
like I was focused