Night Winds (30 page)

“Break it, then, because not to would be the greater sin
.
You’re
the one who doesn’t understand. I’ll never make you happy unless you’re happy with yourself.”

He grabbed a remnant from a torn sheet, then stalked back toward the sewing room
. Once they reached it, he set down the coffee cup and started tearing strips as though it were the white cloth that had offended him instead of Shae.

But his words punished her
. “What do you know of keeping promises? What responsibilities does an artist have?”

“To craft each piece with care, even though you’ll never wear it
. To stay true to its nature and not to what the buyer thinks he wants. To paint what’s contained within the lines and not just the lines themselves.” Shae blinked, startled by an explanation that had long eluded her. Though she’d never been at ease with words, some quality in Phillip allowed her to unite them almost as effortlessly as the links of a gold chain.

His hand cut the air, dismissing her insight
. “I’m talking about real responsibility, like the kind you had to Ethan. You couldn’t even show up to your own engagement party.”

Shae stared at him, incredulous. Had her suggestion really hurt so much
? Why in heaven’s name was he being so unfair? Finally, she recovered enough to launch another question. “So I should have kept my word even though I realized it was wrong? You’re saying you’re
sorry
that I made that choice? You’re saying that the way he treated me was right?”

“Of course not,” he shot back
. “It’s just that a man’s word i
s
”

“

Your excuse to fail?” The moment that the words fell from her lips, Shae wished she hadn’t said them. But his remark about her irresponsibility made her far too angry to apologize, and his dismissal of her art brought to mind the satisfying crunch of Ethan’s nose beneath her palm.

“A failure
. So that
is
how you see me. I wonder, did you accept my proposal out of pity, or is there merit to that adage, ‘Any old port in a storm’? Did you merely accept my proposal to escape your household, Shae?”

Did he truly believe that she would sacrifice her maidenhead on the chance that he might have her
? Her ability to speak fell all to pieces, like a broken string of pearls. So instead of waiting for the fury in his eyes to coalesce into more harsh words, she resorted to a well-worn Rowan tactic. She stamped out of the room. If it hadn’t been so crowded, she would have slammed the door as well.

Tears of hurt and anger streaming down her face, she tried to find someplace else to go
. But people had crowded into the remaining three rooms, filling nearly every space. Eva and her boys were helping to stack furniture in an attempt to make more room. Finally, she squeezed into the room with the old people, who’d been joined by four women and two boys. The youngsters and the women held each other’s hands.

As Shae stood among them, an undercurrent of words rumbled, weak against the roar of wind, the groan of twisting wood
. After a few minutes, Shae recognized the litany, realized they were all repeating it. Though it gave her little comfort, she took the bedridden woman’s withered hand and joined the grim recital.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want . . .”

*

Though King’s eyes had narrowed against the wind, he could still make out houses that rose like buoys above an angry sea
. He saw no evidence at all of land now; even the highest homes in this neighborhood had flooded.

He glanced longingly at a tall three-story
. Maybe he should seek shelter inside, get to Mary after the worst passed. But that hope vanished when a mass of floating wreckage, swept on the current, crushed the house’s side as if it were no more than a snail’s shell underfoot. For a few moments, the house, knocked from its foundation, floated downstream like some strangely configured ship. Then it toppled all at once under the weight of its upper stories. He imagined he heard screamin
g
or was it just the wind’s cry in his ear?

He had to get to safety
. No choice now. Even if he found Mary Shae, demanded she return with him, he couldn’t take her out in this.

A sound caught his attention, a high-pitched, yapping cry
. He peered about himself and saw i
t
a doghouse that had floated up against a wrought iron fence. A black puppy with a white chest stood atop it. It barked frantically and stretched the rope that bound it to its former shelter. If someone didn’t help it, it would drown.

Despite the long hair matted to it, the pup’s flattened ears and huge eyes made it appealing
. King thought with some regret of the terrier he’d killed earlier today. Mary Shae had seemed so taken with that dog. Maybe if he brought this pup to her, she would forgive him. Or perhaps an act of mercy might help to soothe his soul.

Without quite knowing why, he waded toward the doghouse
. And then his foot plunged down into a gutter, one whose wooden cover must have been dislodged by the flood. Suddenly, the waist-deep water rose to his neck. If he could just jerk loose his foot . . .

Panic squeezed his chest
. His foot was caught in some debris and tangled tightly. He struggled to free it while the damned pup yapped and whined as if in sympathy. And while water rose still higher. A wave rushed over his head. He coughed in its wake, coughed too hard, each breath dragging in more water, the salty taste of it swamping mouth and lungs.

Water
. Choking water. All over his head. He forced open his eyes, saw the swirling bubbles rising from him. Knew for him it was all over . . . but please not Mary. Mary Shae . . .

A last regret stole through his consciousness
. He wished, at least, he could have saved the wretched dog.

*

Phillip leaned against a wall of the sewing room and listened as a couple in their fifties held hands and sang. “Amazing Grace” seemed to be their favorite, judging from the number of repetitions. The woman’s tan dress had been partially torn from her. Pale flesh bulged through some of the large rents. The man’s attire had fared no better. A jacket sleeve was missing, and his shirt collar had washed off. Something must have struck his face, for one cheekbone was split and bruising. Yet when the two saw him watching, they offered him a smile and squeezed each other’s hands.

Their harmony was unimpressive, but between the two rose something greater
. Everything in their aspect bespoke a love, no longer a great conflagration, but a comfortable glow. The warmth of it made Phillip feel cold, excluded. Made him feel like an idiot for risking this with Shae.

Something thudded beneath him, almost gently
. He heard other bumping along the floor. Mrs. Jennings, who had squeezed in, nodded. “The furniture,” she explained. “It must be floating up against the ceiling.”

He felt equally adrift
. But he had more choice in this than loose chairs, didn’t he?

He thought of what he’d had with Rachel, how pallid and bloodless it seemed beside his love for Shae
. An image drifted through his mind: Shae moving beneath him, whispering her love into his ear. Her warmth, her sweet cry as he entered her, so gentle yet so urgent.

More than anything, he wanted her again, wanted to love her every day, to have her there as he grew old
. So what if it might cost him a fumbling apology, a more serious attempt to listen to a different sort of wisdom than he’d ever heard before? Wasn’t what he felt for her worth it, worth whatever he might have to accept to preserve it?

Though the room was almost too crowded for movement, he excused himself by pushing past a young black man who was trying to squeeze in.

He glanced up and down the hallway, but Shae’s face was not among the people standing, praying in the soft light of kerosene lanterns. Eva, who’d been taking a drenched girl a towel, caught his eye. She jerked her head toward one of the bedrooms as if his need for Shae were tattooed across his forehead.

Something huge slammed into the house
. Timbers groaned and the whole structure seemed to shift. A small table slid across the hallway and slammed against two men as the floor canted toward the impact. Toward the room Eva had indicated Shae was in.

Like an enormous battering ram, whatever pounded struck again, again, and with each collision, the house leaned further.

Cries of terror rose against the sounds of wood and mortar buckling, glass exploding, and furnishings smashing into both walls and people. Phillip was thrown against the wall on the hall’s opposite side. Another body thudded heavily against him, though, turned as he was, he couldn’t see who’d struck him.

More screams, and people struggled from the room which seemed to be the point of impact
. In their panic, several clogged its opening. After an old man and a younger woman forced their way out, he saw Shae near the exit, her eyes rimmed white with terror. Struggling toward the doorway, he reached for her. She saw him, shot out her bandaged hand toward hi
s
and then amid a great deafening crash, she vanished.

He stared in shock and horror toward the spot where she’d been standin
g
and saw only the near-blackness of the roiling sky. The whole room had been shorn away.

“Shae!” he screamed into the void and looked down, down into the foaming swirl of water
. He thought he caught a glimpse of her lavender dress amidst the churning wreckage, but he might have imagined it, so desperately did he wish to see Shae.

He had to find her, had to help her back to safety
. Knowing he would likely drown in the attempt, he nonetheless rushed toward the place where he thought he’d seen her, readied himself for one great leap.

Strong hands clamped on his arms and wrenched him back, away from her.

“Shae!” he screamed, trying to fight the two men. He couldn’t let her die, couldn’t risk a chance to undo his angry words. “No!”

In the struggle, one man clenched his wounded shoulder
. Pain and dizziness rushed over him, mingled with raw grief.

She’d drown, drown if she hadn’t died already in the fall, or if the collapsing room’s debris hadn’t struck and killed her
. Though he continued to fight blindly, he knew he’d never reach her, even if he tried.

He’d never see her whole again
. Never touch her warm, smooth flesh. Never hear the honeyed richness of her words, nor run his fingers through her wavy red-gold hair. Dear God, how could he survive it?

He had lost her
. Lost her.
Shae!

Something dragged her down, down, deep amid the timbers. Dazed and battered with the sudden drop, Shae wondered why she held her breath, why she did not fill her lungs with water and end this misery. But neither her body nor her spirit would allow it, and by wriggling about, she found that only her borrowed dress’s tail was caught.

The fabric wouldn’t tear, and she soon grew desperate, then tried to shrug it off her shoulders
. Her chest ached, and she thought her lungs would burst if she did not release the air pent up inside them. As she fought the wretched garment, silvery bubbles escaped her nose and mouth, trickled upward to the surface, nearly shouted to her,
Follow!

Seams at last gave way, and she struggled free of the tangled dress
. Swimming upward, she was struck by what felt like another swimmer’s flailing limbs. Pushing away from them, she finally broke the surface, coughed and sputtered in the salt-spray air.

The current caught her in its vise-like grip and swept her around the leaning remnants of the Jennings house, toward an area of unbroken blackness
. Toward an emptiness away from Phillip, Eva, and her boys.

She paddled desperately to remain afloat, choked on breaths that drew in nearly as much foam as air
. Her eyes snapped tight against the insults of wind and water, and it was only blind luck when she was driven into a floating section of what appeared to be a porch roof.

She scrabbled atop it and grabbed at whatever handholds she could find, despite the torment of her wounded hand
. But the ferocity of the wind soon drove that injury from her mind, as flying branches and debris were hurled into her. Her makeshift raft, too, was unstable. As she lay prone across it, it spun top-like in the wild current, and with every move she made threatened to flip over. The edge beneath her right foot disintegrated, and she wondered how long she had until the whole thing fell apart.

God help her when that happened, for she didn’t think she had strength left to swim another stroke.

*

Phillip couldn’t bear to see the gaping hole again, couldn’t bear the memory of Shae’s frightened face in that split second just before she fell
. Yet the gap pulled at his gaze like the world’s edge pulled the sun, and he stared, half-expecting to see some sign, some disturbance of the empty space that showed Shae had been there. But she had left no trace, and the howling wind, funneling around the void, stung his eyes and made them close against his will.

Grief closed in on him, a great black maw, so much darker, even, than when his father died
. Still, he forced himself to turn away, toward those still living. The storm obliterated sounds of wailing, but even so, he saw the faces contorted in both fear and grief. Those who had rushed forward to see the damage now crushed back along the corridor, as far away as they could get. The cacophony overwhelmed a girl’s scream when a heavyset man with a thatch of straw-blond hair trod on her foot and refused to move.

Phillip pointed downward, then shoved him when that failed to rouse him
. The blond man raised ham-like fists and might have struck him had not the house chosen that moment to shift yet again. As both struggled to keep their footing on the slanted floor, the stranger’s snarl sagged and then collapsed into unchecked weeping. In other circumstances, it might have been amusing, but not now, not when deep inside, Phillip wanted to join the man, to howl with rage and grief.

Dear Lord, how he wished he’d grabbed Shae’s hand in time
. Failing that, he should have leapt after her more quickly. Why had he hesitated for those few moments while he’d watched debris swirl? He told himself he’d taken that moment to try to see where Shae had gone, so he might have some chance to reach her. But there’d been fear, too, hadn’t there? Had some part of him balked to allow the others a chance to save him from a leap that would have likely proven fatal?

If only he had jumped, even if he’d drowned too
. For what sense was there in living when the joy of it, so freshly discovered, had been irrevocably destroyed?

He might join Shae yet, he thought
. Unstable as it was, this house could not long stand. Surely, he would be killed. They would all die, wouldn’t they?

The acrid scent of smoke jarred him from his worries
. Mrs. Jennings and two young boys were beating out a small fire with a quilt. Apparently, the house’s shift had knocked over one of the lamps. The three of them extinguished the flame before h
e
or anyone els
e
could move to help.

Phillip turned his attention from that scene to scan the frightened faces of those who lined the hallway
. Most had their eyes squeezed shut against the onslaught. Eva and her two sons stood among them, huddled tightly, miserably. The small, black woman’s hands were clasped in an attitude of prayer.

She
hadn’t given up, if she could pray. At least for her sons’ sake, she had hope. As a poor black woman, one who’d recently lost both her child and her job, she had less cause for hope than a wealthy man like him. Phillip edged closer to Eva and promised himself that, if possible, he would see to it her prayers were answered. He would help both Eva and her two boys to survive.

Shae would think that a far better tribute than self-pity.

Nothing could obliterate his last glimpse of Shae’s frightened face, and the echo of his harsh final words to her refused to die. Yet he thanked God for the task of helping Eva’s family, for by concentrating on it fully, he could at least partly shunt his misery aside.

*

Darkness had swallowed the last signs of land. Shae could no longer make out the dim silhouettes of buildings whose upper stories rose above the waves. God, how she missed the warm, yellow glow that reassured her that inside, people yet breathed in relative safety, undamaged by the wind-driven raindrops that struck at her like stones.

She’d been carried on the current out into the gulf
. She held onto the chunk of roof until her hands throbbed. Sometimes, she seemed to rise forever; then suddenly she slid, as down a steep ravine’s wall. Lightning flashes revealed the horrifying truth. She’d been sliding into deep troughs, with the rollers towering far above her head.

All in all, she preferred riding up and down those mammoth waves in darkness, where she couldn’t guess their height, couldn’t compare them to the largest buildings in the Port Providence business district.

Yet the darkness and the dearth of buildings frightened her as well. For when she could think at all, she realized the storm could drive her so far from the peninsula, she’d never survive to set her feet on land again. Mostly, though, her mind could no more hold onto that knowledge than a purse seine could hold a catch of jellyfish. She was too occupied, instead, with surviving any given moment of the blast.

In an attempt to keep from drowning in the water that swamped her perch, she sat up, face huddled miserably against her knees
. Though that shift in position somewhat lessened the stinging torment of raindrops against her formerly prone body, now she was struck repeatedly with the chunks of the debris that rode the wind. She felt around the surface of the makeshift raft until she found a large board caught on a corner. If she could drag it toward the center and prop it up behind her, perhaps it would protect her from the worst blows.

Before she could put her plan into action, a thick tree limb slammed across her back and shoulders like a baseball bat
. The impact threw her from the raft, and she plunged headfirst into saltwater.

Her limbs moved reflexively, even as her mind wondered why she fought
. God help her, she was dying! Why couldn’t she accept her fate? Why couldn’t she stop fighting and end this torment?

An image of Phillip filled her senses
. His face loomed over hers, so full of his need for her, his touch so warm, so real. Did he love her still, or had he truly meant his hurtful words? In that last moment, just before she fell into the waves, she’d caught a glimpse of him as he’d reached toward her. Didn’t that mean that, at least on some level, he cared?

She had to know
. She would keep struggling, for if there were any chance, no matter how remote, of returning to his arms, Shae knew she’d fight her way through Hell itself to get there.

As she broke the surface and drew breath, a lightning flash lit the waves around her
. In its stark glare, she saw no sign of the raft she’d ridden here, so very far from land.

It was gone, along with her last, thin chance of survival.

*

Phillip indicated the sewing room to Eva, and the small group edged its way toward its outside window
. The leak there had become a fissure on a wall now slanting toward them. Water poured through it and stood up to their ankles all over the room’s floor.

He leaned over to shout beside her ear, “When it goes, we’re jumping through that window!”

She shook her head, and he noticed how her dark skin had taken on an ashen cast, despite the wholesome yellow lamplight. “Can’t swi
m
none a us.” Her reply rose just above the ravening storm.

“Then grab something, anything that floats.” Phillip explained to her, then to both boys.

Eva nodded, but wariness was etched into her features. “Why you worryin’ about us?” she asked.

To give himself a ladder to climb out of the abyss, he thought
. To shift his focus from his anguish so he could bear it. To give two boys and their mother half a chance. Yet he answered, “For Shae,” as if that would explain it.

Apparently, it sufficed
. Eva nodded, and a look passed between them, as each knew and acknowledged the raw pain of the other’s loss. Acknowledged it and yet continued, unwilling to surrender one more child to this storm.

The end, when it at last came, was just as he’d imagined over and over, in an attempt to steel himself against panic
. The house leaned further in the direction of the earlier impact, and then rolled over slowly, as precisely as if it had been choreographed in Paris. The sounds of Armageddon exploded all around them: the buckling of the structure, the shattering of glass, the deep roar of the wind as it tore the roof away.

As the house folded and collapsed, Phillip grabbed both boys and tumbled backward out the window
. Its glass had burst and left behind a frame of jagged shards, but he couldn’t tell if he’d been cut. He was aware only of thudding backward down the slanted side. In the space of a heartbeat, he lost hold of Eva’s sons. He saw them tumbling, twisting, then sweeping off the house’s side with the same wave that lifted him.

He never saw their mother leave the window
. The entire building submerged and settled, then vanished into darkness.

As debris from the house swirled about him, Phillip hoped the boys would remember to grab at floating boards before they drowned
. He followed his own advice, but the first he grasped spun and sank beneath his weight. He swam toward another, lit by lightning flashes, and bumped up against a woman’s floating corpse. His hand briefly tangled in her streaming locks, and for one horrible moment he was convinced that this was Shae’s dead body. But n
o
another flash revealed the old woman, the invalid who’d been abed inside the house.

He reached out for one end of a sturdy beam and draped his arm around it
. More lightning revealed a dark head above the other en
d
one of Eva’s two boys, though in the poor light, he could not say which. Neither did it matter; he was gladdened by the thought that someone, anyone besides him, had survived the house collapse.

But even though the two of them had come this far, it didn’t mean that they could live, adrift, upon these hurricane-tossed waters.

*

As Shae struggled to tread water in the darkness, something slammed painfully against her ribs
. Her raft! Despite the deep ache of fatigue, giddy relief gave her a burst of energy. She could climb aboard the chunk of roof and rest awhile. She might survive, even ease her suffering, for a few minutes more.

Hauling herself aboard the unstable span took several tries, and even when she managed, she had to struggle to find a spot where she could, sitting, keep her head above the water
. Only one narrow section of roof sufficed. No wonder she’d missed spotting it earlier, after she’d been knocked into the waves. Unmistakably, her refuge was sinking.

She couldn’t allow herself to think of it
. Couldn’t allow anything but whatever brief span she had to try to rest and gather strength.

*

Phillip’s hands ached from his long death-grip on the beam. His throat tightened as a result of his shouts to the boy at its opposite end, a boy he had now determined to be Eva’s eldest, Abraham. He hoped fervently that Jacob and Eva had managed to survive as well. He wondered, too, about Mrs. Jennings, who had opened her home to so many, and about the little boy who’d had the insect lodged inside his ear.

Dead, he imagined
. All of them. Just as they would be if this hellish storm did not abate.