Sunny Says (18 page)

“That’s not fair. You’re bigger
than I am.”

Kale laughed. “What does that
have to do with anything?”

She screwed up her face. “I don’t
know, but I’m thinking.” She ran along the beach, twisting the cord holder in
her hand, trying to make her kite do something fancy, but it merely hovered
high over the dunes, held aloft by the brisk breeze from the Gulf off
Padre Island
.

At Sunny’s insistence, they had
driven over thirty miles from
Malaquite
Beach
, down the long, skinny island. The whirling in her
solar plexus and the ripples down her spine had become stronger and stronger as
they drove. Since Kale had seemed to be growing impatient to stop and try out
their kites, she’d finally suggested that they pull over, declaring this the
perfect spot. It hadn’t really been her destination.

She shaded her eyes and looked
southward. Her sense of distance wasn’t as lousy as Kale thought. She estimated
the target to be about another fifteen or twenty miles.

Gazing over the beautiful dunes
that stood like sentinels along the coast, she watched a clump of sea oats
ripple with the wind and a gray gull wheel and ride the currents. Sandpipers
scampered along the water’s edge, poking the sand with their long bills,
hunting a meal. She felt sad, wondering if they would survive. She sighed. Even
so, better here than centered in a more populated area. It was going to be bad
enough as it was.

She let the kite string slip
through her fingers.

“Sunny!” Kale made a grab for
the weighted end of the cord, capturing it as it skittered along the sand.

“Whoops,” she said, trying to
make light of it.

“Honey, is something wrong? You
look about a million miles away.”

“No, only about fifteen.”

He frowned. “What are you
talking about?”

“The center of the hurricane is
going to hit about fifteen miles south of here, maybe twenty, just north of
Port Mansfield.”

“What hurricane?”

“Chloe. The tropical storm we’ve
been watching. It’s going to intensify into a hurricane and hit the coast a
week from today. Thank God she’ll come ashore in a sparsely populated area.
Corpus Christi
and
Brownsville
will be spared a direct hit, but the wind and water
damage will be severe.”

He tried to hide his skepticism,
but she knew him well enough by now to recognize the subtle signs. “Are you
sure?” he asked.

“Ninety-nine and
forty-four-one-hundredths percent sure. I can be more accurate as the time
draws closer.” She tried to explain how she knew, but the whole thing sounded
sort of nebulous, even to her. She was painfully aware that he was having a
hard time buying the swirling in her solar plexus.

“Maybe you’re just hungry. Why
don’t we have lunch?”

She sighed and agreed.

Kale took in the kites while she
fixed their food. They sat on a beach blanket spread over the sand.

While she picked at her lunch,
Sunny considered her alternatives. Knowing that she had no choice, she said, “I
suppose we’d better get back to the city as soon as possible. I’ll have to call
the mayor so he can begin preparations. The festival will have to be postponed.
Evacuation plans must be considered. The utility companies will have to be
alerted.”

He was quiet for a moment, his
elbows propped on his knees and his fingers laced together, staring at an empty
place between his feet. She could see internal struggle etched on his face.
Finally, he said, “Sweetheart, don’t you think it’s too early to make that sort
of commitment? Hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake here.”

“And you’re afraid I’ll be
making a fool of myself?”

He only ran his fingers through
his hair.

“Don’t you think that I realize
the position I’m putting myself in? If I go public with my prediction, I know
that I’m risking making a laughingstock of myself. Don’t you think I’m
agonizing about that? But if you’re concerned about hundreds of thousands of
dollars if I’m wrong, I’m more worried about the millions of dollars of damage
that will be done if I’m right. I’m concerned about injuries and the loss of
human life. Both people and property can be saved if preparations are made. Do
you know the devastation that a hurricane can bring?”

A pained expression contorted
his face. “More than you can imagine. I’ve seen
Bangladesh
after a typhoon. It
was hell.”

“Will you support me in this?
Further, will KRIP support me? If not, I’ll resign. I don’t want to embarrass
you or the station, but I have to follow my conscience.” She waited for what
seemed like an eternity for his answer.

More than anything, Kale wished
he could take her in his arms, smooth away the worry lines in her forehead, and
tell her without a qualm that he was one hundred percent behind her. He wanted
to believe that she was right. The problem was that he had reservations. This
new twist was infinitely more critical than a rain shower.

He’d worked his tail off trying
to get KRIP back on track. Now that things were turning around, could he risk
the station’s credibility by supporting Sunny’s outrageous prediction? KRIP
might go down the tubes if she was wrong. He shuddered when he thought of the
livelihoods at stake, the lawsuits sure to be filed. Foster would have a fit.

Hell, not even the leading
meteorologists and hurricane specialists would venture to predict a hurricane’s
path with assurances of accuracy more than twenty-four to forty-eight hours in
advance. Even then, they hemmed and hawed and spoke in probabilities. And this
storm wasn’t a hurricane yet.

He’d never put much stock in
anything he couldn’t see with his own eyes or hear with his own ears. He was a
pragmatist, pure and simple. But when he looked into the beautiful blue eyes of
the woman he loved, he saw something in their depths that made him want to take
the risks involved. He had to have faith in her or lose her.

He reached over and cupped her
sweet face in his callused hand and smiled. “Let’s go talk to the mayor.”

Laughing, Sunny threw her arms
around him and toppled him in the sand. “Oh, Kale, I love you.”

He laughed as she rained kisses
over his face. “You picked a hell of a time to tell me.”

*    *    *

“Do you think he believed me?”
Sunny asked as they walked to the car from Mayor Garza’s house.

“I think
he
believed you, all right. Remember his daughter’s wedding fiasco? And his wife
thinks you’re a saint since you were the only forecaster along the coast who
predicted that freeze last winter and she saved her precious potted plants. The
question is, will the other city officials go along with him? And can he
convince the mayors of
Brownsville
and other towns along the coast to prepare as well?”

During the drive home, Sunny
felt as tightly wound as an old-fashioned alarm clock. “Do you think we should
go by the station and prepare an announcement for the news tonight?”

“Let’s wait until tomorrow
evening. That will give Mayor Garza some time to garner support. And by that
time, the storm will have turned into a hurricane as you predicted and you’ll
have more credibility. At this point, will one day matter?”

Anger flashed through her, and
she said sharply, “Sounds to me like you’re trying to cover your—”

“Dammit, Sunny, be reasonable. I’ve
told you that I’m sticking with you on this. Give me time to talk to Foster as
well. He owns half the station.”

“Sorry. I’m edgy.”

He squeezed her thigh and patted
it. “I know, honey. We both are. And I suspect that it’s going to get worse.
What you need now is a nice bubble bath in that tub of Ravinia’s and a glass of
wine. I’ll wash your back.” He grinned.

“I seem to remember hearing
those words before.” She smiled. “It sounds heavenly.”

It was.

*    *    *

By Sunday evening, Sunny was a
wreck. Kale had done everything he could to alleviate her stress, including
taking her sailing on Laguna Madre that day. He had been a dear, tried to keep
her spirits up, but nothing had helped. She was about to put it all on the
line, and she knew it.

She had written her script
carefully, but still her knees knocked and her palms sweated. She wiped her
hands on her thighs and took a seat behind the news desk during the commercial
break.

When the floor director cued
her, she smiled faintly into the camera. “Good evening. This is Sunny Larkin
with a special announcement that concerns the safety and welfare of our
community.

“As you heard earlier in the
program from our weekend weather reporter, Tom Crockett, tropical storm Chloe
has passed over the Lesser Antilles and is now south of Puerto Rico. Only
moments ago, the
National
Hurricane
Center
in
Miami
upgraded the storm to a hurricane, as I forecast on
Friday. Although I have no desire to alarm you, I believe that the storm will
intensify and enter the
Gulf of Mexico
.” She took a deep breath.

“Neither the
National
Hurricane
Center
nor the
National Weather Service will be likely to issue hurricane watches or warnings
for several days, but I predict that Hurricane Chloe will make landfall on the
Texas
coast
early Saturday morning, a few miles north of Port Mansfield. I urge everyone in
our coastal viewing area, from
Brownsville
and Port Isabel up to Rockport and the lower end of
Matagorda
Island
, to be
on the alert and to begin all necessary precautions. This includes
Corpus Christi
and the surrounding area. Stay tuned to KRIP for updates on the storm’s
progress.”

The moment the floor director
signaled that the broadcast had ended, she laid her head on the desk and took
deep breaths to quell the nausea.

“Sweetheart, you did fine. Just
fine.” Kale rubbed her back and spoke soothing words to her.

She sat up and tried her best to
smile. “Well, the fat’s in the fire now.”

*    *    *

The fat sure as hell is in the
fire, Kale thought as he read the Monday morning Caller-Times. The headline
read: “PROPHECY OR PUBLICITY STUNT?” In fairness, he had to admit that the
article about Sunny’s hurricane forecast was handled reasonably objectively.
But it looked bad. He hated for her to read it.

The phone rang and Kale snatched
it up quickly, hoping that it hadn’t disturbed Sunny, who needed another hour
or two of sleep. It was Foster, and his voice was an octave higher than normal.

“You’ve got to get to the
station right away,” Foster said. “All hell’s breaking loose down here.”

When the phone rang for the dozenth
time on Wednesday morning, Sunny considered not answering it, but she couldn’t
abide ringing phones. She picked it up and said, “Hello.”

“Well, roomie, it looks like you’re
famous,” Estella said. “I heard your name on Good Morning USA a couple of hours
ago—a promo for an interview tomorrow morning.”

“You and most of
America
. My
parents called from
Louisiana
first, then three of my brothers and sisters, and
everybody else who has this supposedly unlisted number. I didn’t realize that
program was so popular, or that I’d become so infamous. I’m right up there with
the tabloid stars like the three-headed pig sired by the man in
Arkansas
and
the woman who murdered her husband with laxatives. I’m expecting a call from
Nancy or David any moment.”

Estella laughed. “What in the
world is going on?”

Sunny explained about the
hurricane prediction. “City government is in an uproar, but thank goodness they
decided to postpone the festival— though not without a fight. Since the wire
services got hold of the story, the station has become a madhouse. Kooks are
coining out of the woodwork, and reporters from all over the country have been
calling. People think I’m Kreskin. The switchboard is suffering meltdown. I
finally decided to do an interview with Good Morning USA. They’re sending down
a crew from
New York
this afternoon to do the live feed-in tomorrow
morning. They’ll be staying until the storm hits—hoping, I’m sure, that I’ll
make a jackass of myself.”

“You won’t, sweetie.”

“Thanks, friend,” Sunny said. “That
means a lot.”

“How’s Kale talking this?”

“Better than I expected. He
scowls and growls almost continuously, and lately his language could blister
the paint off the
Harbor
Bridge
, but he’s been very supportive and protective of me.
Everybody at KRIP has rallied around. That helps. One of the radio stations in
town is taking a poll of whether people believe me or not.”