Before the Storm (5 page)

“What’s his, uh, disability?” he asked. “Brain injury?”

“Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder,” I said, the words as

familiar to me as my own name.

“Really?” He looked surprised, glancing over my shoulder

as though he could see through the curtain. “Don’t those kids

usually…you know, have a look to them?”

“Not always,” I said.“Depends on what part of them was developing when the alcohol affected them.”

“You’re his adoptive mother then?”

The police on Topsail Island know me and they know Andy

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and they know our story. An ATF agent in Wilmington,

though, was a world away.

“No, I’m his biological mother,” I said.“Sober fifteen years.”

His smile was small. Tentative. Finally he spoke.“You’ve got

a year on me,” he said. “Congratulations.”

“You, too.” I smiled back.

“So—” he looked down at his closed notepad “—how much

of what he says can I believe?”

“All of it,” I said with certainty. “Andy’s honest to a fault.”

“He’s an unusual kid.” He looked over my shoulder again.

“You don’t need to tell
me
that.”

“No, I mean, in a fire, seventy-five percent of the people

try to get out the front door. That’s their first reaction. They’re

like a flock of sheep. One starts in that direction and they all

follow. The other twenty-five percent look for an alternate

exit. A back door. Bash open a window. Who’s the bald-headed

guy he was talking about?”

“I have no idea.”

“Anyway, so Andy here goes for the window in the men’s

room. Strange choice, but turns out to be the right one.”

“Well,” I said, “kids like Andy don’t think like that first

seventy-five percent, or even the twenty-five percent. It was

sheer luck. He could just as easily have gone for…I don’t know,

the ladies’ room window, let’s say, and still be stuck there.” I

hugged my arms across my chest at the thought.“Do you know

if everyone got out okay? I heard rumors that some didn’t.”

He shook his head. “This was a bad one,” he said. “Last

report, three dead.”

I sucked in my breath, hand to my mouth. “Oh, no.” Some

parents wouldn’t have the luxury of hearing their children tell

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what happened tonight. “Do you know who?” I thought of

Keith. Of Marcus.

“No names yet,” he said. “Two of the kids and one adult is

all I know. A lot of serious burns and smoke inhalation. This

E.R.’s packed tight as a can of sardines.”

“What’s the metal box?” I asked.

“The AC unit. Whoever laid the fire skipped around it.”

“Whoever… You’re saying this was
arson?
”

He held up a hand as if to erase his words. “Not for me to

say.”

“I know there was an electrical problem at the youth

building. Could that have affected the church?”

“There’ll be a full investigation,” he said.

“Is that why you asked Andy if he saw anyone else outside

the church?”

“Like I said, there’ll be a full investigation,” he repeated,

and I knew that would now be his answer, no matter what

question I asked.

I opened the curtain around Andy’s bed once I returned to

his cubicle, and noticed a man sitting on the edge of a bed on the

other side of the room. His head was bandaged and his T-shirtclad broad shoulders drooped. When he looked up to say something to his nurse, the movement made him wince. I recognized

the dark hair, the thick-lashed brown eyes. He passed a tremulous hand over his face and I saw the sheen of tears on his cheek.

Andy’s nurse was listening to his lungs. She asked him to

breathe deeply. To cough. I took that moment to whisper to

Maggie.

“Ben Trippett’s over there,” I said. Ben was a volunteer firebefore the storm

43

fighter, twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He was also Andy’s

swim-team coach and I wasn’t sure how Andy would react to

seeing him there, injured and upset.

Maggie started as if I’d awakened her from a dream, then

followed my gaze to the other side of the room. She knew Ben

fairly well, since she coached the younger kids’ swim team.

Maggie got up, and before I could stop her, walked across

the room toward Ben. He’d be embarrassed that we’d seen him

crying, but Maggie was seventeen and I had to let her make

her own errors in judgment. Her back was to me as she greeted

Ben and I couldn’t see his reaction. But then she pulled a

rolling stool close to the bed and sat down and they talked,

both of them with their heads bowed as though they were

sharing a prayer. Ben’s shoulders shook, and Maggie reached

out and rested her hand on his wrist. She amazed me at times.

Had she learned that compassion from me, watching me with

Andy? I doubted it. All good things about Maggie had been

Jamie’s doing. A seventeen-year-old girl finding it in herself to

comfort a grown man. I was, for just a moment, in awe of her.

Andy’s nurse straightened up. “Let me take your vitals and

then I’ll see about getting you discharged,” she said.

Andy stuck out his left arm for the blood pressure cuff.

“Your other arm, Andy,” the nurse said. “Remember? You

need to be careful with the burned arm for a few days.”

She took his blood pressure and temperature and then left

us alone.

“I’m going to write a book about being a hero,” Andy said,

as I reached beneath the bed for the plastic bag containing his

shirt and shoes.

“Maybe someday you will.” I considered bringing him down

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to earth a little, but how often did he get to crow about an accomplishment? Other people would not be so kind, though.

Opening the bag, I recoiled from the pungent scent of his

clothes. “Andy, what you did tonight was very brave and

smart,” I said.

He nodded. “Right.”

I thought about letting him leave the hospital without his

odorous shirt or shoes, but it was chilly outside. I handed him

the striped shirt.

“But the fire was a very serious thing and a lot of people were

hurt.” I hesitated. It was best that he heard it from me. “Some

died.”

He shook his head violently. “I saved them.”

“You couldn’t save everyone, though. That’s not your fault.

I know you tried. But don’t talk to people about how you’re

a hero. It’s bragging. Remember, we don’t brag.”

“Is it bragging if it’s in a book?”

“That would be okay,” I said.

Behind me, the glass door plowed open and I turned to see

Dawn Reynolds fly through the room toward Ben.

“Oh my God!
Ben!
” She nearly knocked Maggie off the stool

as she rushed to pull Ben into her arms. “I was so scared,” she

said, crying. Tears welled in my own eyes as I watched the love

and relief pour from her. She and Ben lived together in a little

beach cottage in Surf City, and Dawn worked with Sara at

Jabeen’s Java.

“I’m okay.” Ben rubbed her arms in reassurance. “I’m all

right.”

Maggie quietly stood up, offering the stool to Dawn, then

walked back to us.

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“Is he okay?” I nodded toward Ben.

“Not exactly.” She bit her lip. “He has a seven-year-old

daughter who lives with his ex-wife in Charlotte. He keeps

thinking about her being trapped like that. He’s upset that

people…” She looked at Andy, then me. “You know.”

“I explained to Andy that some people died in the fire,” I

said.

Maggie started to cry again. She reached in her jeans

pocket for her shredded tissue. “I just don’t understand how

this could happen.”

“I’m going to write a book about it so it won’t be bragging,”

Andy said as he pulled on one of his shoes.

Maggie stuffed her tissue in her pocket again. She lifted

Andy’s leg so his foot rested on her hip as she tied his shoelaces. “Ben said a beam landed on his head,” she said. “Uncle

Marcus was with him.”

Marcus.
I remembered what the ATF agent had said:
Two kids

and one adult.
And for the second time that night, my fear and

worry shifted from my son to my brother-in-law.

I DIALED LAUREL’S NUMBER FOR THE THIRD TIME as I

swerved onto Market Street. Voice mail. Again.
Cute, Laurel.

Now’s not the time to pretend you don’t know me.

“Call me, for Christ’s sake!” I shouted into the phone.

I still couldn’t picture Laurel letting Andy go to a lock-in,

especially one at Drury Memorial.

I’d just come out of that fire pit when Pete ran up to me.

“Lockwood!” He’d only been a few feet away, but he had to

shout above the racket of generators and sizzling water and

sirens. “Your nephew’s at New Hanover. Get out of here!”

It took a second for his words to register. “Andy was
here?
”

I shrugged out of the air pack and peeled off my helmet. My

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47

hands had been rock steady inside the church. Suddenly, they

were shaking.

“Right,” Pete called over his shoulder as he raced back to the

truck. “Drop your gear and get going. We’ll take care of it.”

“Does Laurel know?” I shouted as I stripped off my turnout

jacket, but he didn’t hear me.

I ran the few blocks to the fire station, yanking off my

gear along the way until I was down to my uniform. Jumped

into my pickup and peeled out of the parking lot. They’d

closed the bridge to all traffic other than emergency

vehicles, but when the officer guarding the entrance recognized me, she waved me through. I’d tried Laurel at home

as well as her cell. Now I called the emergency room at New

Hanover. I had to dial the number twice; my hands were

shaking that hard. I set the phone to speaker and dropped it

in the cup holder.

“E.R.,” a woman answered.

“This is Surf City Fire Marshal Marcus Lockwood,” I shouted

in the direction of the phone. “You have a patient, Andy

Lockwood, from Drury Memorial. Can you give me a status on

him?”

“Just a moment.”

The chaos at the hospital—sirens and shouting—filled the

cab of my pickup. Someone screamed words I couldn’t make

out. Someone else wailed. It was like the frenzied scene at the

fire had moved to the hospital.

“Come on, come on.” My fists clenched the steering wheel.

“Mr. Lockwood?”

“Yes.”

“He’s being treated for smoke inhalation and burns.”

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Shit.

“Hold on a sec…”

I heard her talking to someone. Then she was back on the

phone. “First-degree burn, his nurse says. Just his arm. He’s

stable. His nurse says he’s a hero.”

She had the wrong boy. The words “Andy” and “hero” didn’t

go together in the same sentence.

“You sure you’re talking about Andy Lockwood?”

“He’s your nephew, right?”

“Right.”

“His nurse says he led some kids out of the church through

the men’s room window.”

“What?”

“And she says he’s going to be fine.”

I couldn’t speak. I managed to turn off the phone, then

struggled to keep control of the pickup as the road blurred in

front of me. As nerve-racking as the fire had been, it hadn’t

scared me half as much as those last couple of minutes on the

phone.

Now that I knew Andy was going to be okay, I was royally

pissed off. The fire was arson. I had been on the first truck out

and done a quick walk around. The fire ring was even on all

four sides of the building. That didn’t happen by accident.

I understood arson. I’d been the kind of kid who played with

matches and I once set our shed on fire. I tried to blame it on

Jamie, but my parents knew their saintly older son would

never be that stupid. I don’t remember my punishment—just

the initial thrill of watching Daddy’s oily rags explode into

flame on his workbench, followed by terror as the fire shot up

the wall. So I got it—the thrill, the excitement. But damn it,

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if some asshole had to start a fire, why a church filled with kids?

Why not one of the hundreds of empty summer homes on the

island? The building itself was no great loss. Drury Memorial

had been on a fund-raising kick for years, trying to get the

money to build a bigger church. So, was that just a coincidence? And was it a coincidence that the lock-in was moved

from the youth building to the church? Whatever, it felt good

to be thinking about the investigation instead of Andy.

Ben Trippett and Dawn Reynolds were coming out of the

E.R. as I ran toward the entrance. Now
there
was a guy who

could call himself a hero. As much as I wanted to see Andy, I

had to stop.

“There’s the man!” I said, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Dude,” Ben said, with a failed effort at a smile. He leaned

against Dawn and in the light from the entrance I saw her eyes

were red.

“How’s the head?” He’d been crawling in front of me in the

church when something—a joist or a statue or who knew