The Truth About Love and Lightning (3 page)

Because, when it came down to it, Abby truly loved Nathan March. If Nate’s passion was equally intense, then expressing his commitment to her—say, in the form of an engagement—seemed perfectly reasonable.

“Love is all you need,” she had insisted because she believed it.

Nate had merely sniffed. “That’s a Beatles song, not reality.”

But Abigail had always believed that songs, like art, often revealed universal truths, and the fact that love made the world go round was one of them. What she wanted was an unshakable commitment to a future together, not a roommate who paid for pizza and kissed her and told her she was sexy (however nice all those things might be). It took everything she had to finally put her foot down and give him an ultimatum.

“If you’re not sure in this moment that you want to be with me forever, then I think you should move out until you make up your mind.”

“You want me to go?” At first, Nate had seemed truly stunned. Then he’d burst out laughing. “You’re joking, right? You’re kicking me to the curb because I don’t share your fairy-tale view of marriage?”

“I’m not kicking you anywhere, Nathan. I’m merely suggesting that you leave until you decide whether I’m ‘the One’ or not,” Abby had explained in the clearest way possible.

He had arched a furry eyebrow. “
The One
? Do you know how archaic that sounds?”

“Maybe to you, but not to me.” The more he seemed to mock her, the angrier she’d become. How could he be so dense, as if after six years together he had no clue about her desires? When it came to marriage, he seemed to have a complete mental block. “If you don’t know for certain and you think there’s someone better for you out there, I can’t have you around. I turn forty this year. I don’t have time to waste, and I need to know I’m as important to you as you are to me. Right now, I have my doubts.”

“C’mon, Abs, this isn’t funny.” He had stared at her until his smile died, finally grasping the idea that she wasn’t joking around. “You’re really serious?”

“Totally.”

“Wow.” His Adam’s apple had bobbed, his wide forehead pleating. “You know I love you or I wouldn’t be here. I would have left ages ago. But I stay because I wake up in the morning and want to be with you that day. Isn’t that enough?” Heat had flushed his cheeks. “Do you want me to drop down on bended knee and propose? Should I promise you forever because it’s what you want to hear?”

“No”—she had shaken her head as tears stung her eyes—“not if you don’t really mean it.”

He’d pinched his lips together, looking pained, and his hazel eyes had darkened, wounded. “I’ll do whatever you want,” he finally told her, grudgingly. “It’s your call, and maybe you’re right. Maybe we both need some space to think.”

“Yes, space to think,” she’d agreed, though it tore her in two just to say it.

And, just like that, Nate had stuffed his gym bag with underwear, T-shirts, socks, toothbrush, and toothpaste. He had held her hand for a moment before he’d walked out the door, mumbling something about crashing with Myron until she came to her senses. His head low, he’d dragged his heels down the hallway as though, any second, she would call him back and tell him she didn’t mean it, that having a ring on her finger didn’t matter.

But it did. It really did.

So Abby had shut and bolted the door behind him, thinking that any minute she would hear his key in the lock, that he’d come back and blubber that she was most assuredly the One and he couldn’t live without her.

Five minutes passed, then twenty more, until an hour had gone by and Abigail had ascertained that he wasn’t returning. At least not right away. She had messed up her bed and now she had to lie in it.

That fight seemed so long ago, especially since her call from Dr. Epps. Two weeks apart from Nate felt like years; fourteen long days in which they had spoken only a few times when he’d phoned to say he needed to drop by to pick up a gadget or more underwear. Abby had been careful not be anywhere around when he did. That would have only confused her all the more.

Despite the fact that she considered herself an independent woman, she felt unsettled and weak without him, as if she’d removed an internal organ required to properly function. Then to hear that she was having a baby. Nate’s baby.

It was almost too much to take.

Abby knew she couldn’t stay in the apartment alone, not while she was so aware of the new life taking root inside her, the tiny seed of a baby that was partly Nate’s too. If she was going to get through this, if she was going to figure things out, it wouldn’t be here. She couldn’t tell Nate. She refused to have him beholden to her because of her pregnancy. If he came back—if they decided to make a go of it again—it had to be because of love and love alone.

She couldn’t explain to her friends in Chicago, because they were Nate’s friends, too. They would spill the beans to him, and she wasn’t ready for that yet.

The only place where she could take refuge was home. She craved a chance to pause and draw in a deep breath. Lots of deep breaths. Becoming a mother changed everything, and she was sure her own mom would understand better than most. When Gretchen had given birth to Abby, she had done it alone, and Abby needed reminding that such a fate wasn’t the end of the world.

Besides, she felt inexplicably drawn to the farmhouse where she’d been raised. She yearned to soak in its calm and sleep in her old bed in the room that had once been her father’s—the father she’d thought about so often as a child, the one she’d wished so hard would return every time she’d blown out a candle on a birthday cake. Though she’d never met the man, he still loomed large in her life. Samuel Henry Winston, son of a walnut farmer, grandson of a rainmaker, and “the best friend I ever had,” according to her mother.

Abby had only his photograph, one Gretchen had given her ages ago, of a teenager in overalls with a long face, dark hair, and piercing eyes. “He was like no one else, attuned to nature in ways most folks aren’t,” her mom had said. “When Sam wept, the clouds would open wide and cry with him,” Gretchen would explain while Abby ate up every word like she was listening to a favorite bedtime story. “And when he smiled one of his rare smiles, the sun beamed so brightly it was blinding.”

“Do you figure he can see me?” Abby would frequently ask, and her mother had replied with an ebullient nod. “I have a feeling he’s watching you always and that he’s much nearer than you think. If he could find his way back, he would, I’m sure of it.”

Just as Abby needed to find her way back now.

Perhaps the baby was a sign that she’d gotten off track, that she’d lived her life according to Nate for so long that she’d pushed aside what was most important. Her mom and her aunts. The farm. The family. Her dad.

“We’re going home,” she said and put a hand on her belly. Exhaling softly, she picked up her cell phone, hesitating but a second before she dialed Walnut Ridge. Her mother’s phone rang and rang and rang without an answer, which worried her a little. Someone was always around the house, if not Gretchen then Aunt Bennie or Aunt Trudy.

She hung up and tried again, only to get a rapid busy signal.

Maybe they were having trouble with the lines. Could be a squirrel had chewed through them again. That had happened on more than one occasion, and it took the devil to get the service truck out to the old farm for repairs.

Well, no matter,
she told herself, ending the call. She’d call the office and tell Alan she was taking some sick days. Then she’d pack a bag and catch a cab to the train station. Her mom had told her over and over again, “If ever you need me, I’m here for you, any day, rain or shine.”

And, at the moment, Abby needed her something fierce.

Three

Time stood still as Gretchen listened to the freight-train-like charge of wind and the barrage of hail pelting the house with a relentless
rat-a-tat-tat
.

“It’s right on top of us,” Bennie said, gripping her sister’s hand so tightly that the blood ceased to flow to Gretchen’s fingers.

Matilda scrabbled over her feet to get to Trudy’s lap, and Gretchen found herself holding her breath until she finally had to gasp, sucking in dusty air that tickled her throat and left her coughing.

As suddenly as it had arrived, the barrage of noise receded, as if someone had shut off a giant switch, and then the room grew deathly still, the only noise their anxious breaths and Trudy’s voice, repeating in a hushed whisper, “We’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay.”

When only silence followed, Gretchen dared to open her eyes to see an impatient Matilda pacing. “Is it gone?” she asked.

Bennie loosened her death grip and tipped her head from side to side. “Yes, it’s gone,” she said and smiled with relief. “We made it.”

So far as we know,
Gretchen mused. At least, the house hadn’t fallen down around their ears. Still, she was afraid to see what was upstairs and even more frightened of what lay outside.

“Let me go up alone to check,” Gretchen said and released her sisters’ hands before rising from the folding chair. She turned the flashlight toward the stairs and headed up. Though the ceiling bulb remained dark, she didn’t worry about leaving Trudy and Bennie in the gloom. They were perfectly capable without the light and, besides, they wouldn’t go anywhere until she gave the all clear.

She could barely breathe as she unlocked the door at the top of the stairs and opened it, part of her fearing there would be nothing beyond but rubble. Instead, she peered into the kitchen, where everything was as they’d left it.

“We’re good!” she called down to her sisters.
We lucked out,
she told herself as she heard the scuffle of their footsteps on the steps behind her, Bennie appearing first and then Trudy, just as they’d emerged from Annika’s womb.

“It’s so gray in here,” the elder twin said, touching her way toward the kitchen sink. “The electricity must be off, eh?” she asked, perceiving the subtle change of dark and light.

“You’re right,” Gretchen confirmed and tried the kitchen switch, thumbing it on and off to no avail.

“Well, it’s a good thing we have a gas stove,” Trudy cheerily remarked, easing her way across the room toward the pantry. “I’ll put a kettle on and make us all a cup of tea. Chamomile, I think, to calm our nerves. My heart’s still racing.”

Gretchen wandered through the dining room, the front hall, and the parlor, making sure all was safe. Thankfully, framed embroidery and mirrors still hung on the walls, the windows appeared intact—albeit muddied by wet leaves—and the ceiling sported no new stains, merely cracks in the plaster that had been there for an eternity.

“The house seems to have held together,” she called out as she walked toward the kitchen, Matilda nearly tripping her as the cat howled and ran past her, heading for the back door.

“I hope the shutters stayed on,” Trudy said, fingers reaching into cupboards that held the china cups that had once been their mother’s, while Bennie filled the kettle at the sink. “If anything’s broken, we’ll have to call Walter.”

She said it so eagerly that Bennie teased, “You’re sweet on the handyman, are you, Trude?”

“Go on, you!” Trudy said, giggling.

“Well, I don’t figure we’ll need Walter for the shutters anyway,” Bennie announced as she shut off the faucet and moved the kettle to a burner. “I didn’t hear them do anything but bang, and Gretchen wouldn’t have let us up if any windows were broken, would you, sweet?”

“Not a chance,” she told her sister, “but I haven’t checked the upstairs so you girls stay down here until I do.”

“You won’t find anything wrong with the house but bumps and bruises,” Bennie said matter-of-factly as she fingered the knobs on the gas stove and got the proper burner lit with a pop and a hiss. “I believe we’ve survived intact despite Mother Nature’s reminder of who’s in charge.”

“Strange,” Trudy said and stopped setting cups on saucers to lean toward the half-opened window above the sink, her nose wrinkling like a bunny’s. “I caught a strong whiff of lemongrass just now. I haven’t breathed that scent since . . . well, a long time ago. You know who that reminds me of, Gretch—”

“Yes, I know,” she said, cutting Trudy off, because her sister had often remarked that Sam Winston smelled of “truth and lemongrass.” The funny thing was, Gretchen had been thinking of Sam, too. She couldn’t help it, not with the way the storm had kicked up and blown through.

“Perhaps it’s an omen,” Trudy added.

“I hope it’s a good one,” Gretchen replied, her mouth dry.

“Me, too.”

But as Gretchen walked toward the window that faced the front drive, she didn’t feel very hopeful. Though the house appeared to have withstood the twister’s winds without damage, the rest of the property had not. Branches littered the lawn and the gravel drive; leaves had been stripped from standing trees. Farther off in the distance, she discerned black power lines and telephone cables that should have crisscrossed the sky but no longer stretched from pole to pole. Instead, they sagged like old clothesline. Despite the sun’s attempt to peek between scudding gray clouds, the aftermath was hardly heartwarming. It looked an awful lot like a battlefield.

Gretchen set aside the flashlight and went straight to the old Bakelite phone. Picking up the receiver, she put it to her ear and listened for a dial tone. “Hello?” she said, tapping on the reset buttons. “Hello?” she tried again, putting a finger in the rotary dial and giving it a spin.

She heard nothing.

“The phone’s dead,” she announced.

“Nuts.” Bennie sighed and felt her way along the counter, pausing at the stove and waiting for the teakettle to whistle. “Though I don’t feel much compelled to call into town at the moment, it’s not very reassuring that I couldn’t reach anyone beyond the fence if I wanted to.”

“You never did get that cell phone Abby gave you working, Gretch, did you?” Trudy asked.

“I couldn’t get a signal.” Gretchen sighed. Nothing wireless seemed to function on the farm, and they’d tried plenty of times to get connected. But they’d given up the idea of laptops or cells once they realized it was futile. One frustrated wireless technician had suggested there was something magnetic in the air interfering with the signals, and Gretchen could only imagine what that was, maybe the spirits that Abby had always blamed for anything odd that happened on the farm while she was growing up. Like when the doorbell rang but there was no one there, or when the lights mysteriously turned on and off, as though communicating in an otherworldly Morse code.