Before the Storm

“That Queen song!” I said.

“Right!” He grinned. “‘We are the Champions.’”

“I’m impressed,” I said sincerely. “I could never play by ear.”

“You play?”

“I took lessons for a few years.”

He stood up. “Go for it,” he said.

I sat down and played a couple of scales to get the feel of the keyboard. Then I launched into one of the few pieces I could remember by heart: Fur Elise.

When I finished, I looked up to see Jamie standing in the doorway of the bedroom, a smile on his face I could only describe as tender. I knew in that moment that I loved him.

“That was beautiful,” he said.

“Yeah, you’re good,” Marcus agreed. He tipped his head to one side, appraising me. “Are you, like, a sorority chick?”

I laughed. “No. What made you ask that?”

“You’re just different from Jamie’s other girlfriends.”

“Is that good or bad?” I asked.

“Good.” Marcus looked up at his brother. “She’s cool,” he said. “You should keep this one.”

I heard the sound of dishes clinking together in the kitchen and left the brothers to help clean up. I found Miss Emma up to her elbows in dishwater.

“Let me dry.” I picked up the dish towel hanging from the handle of the refrigerator.

“Why, thank you, darlin’.” She handed me a plate. “I heard you playing in there. That was lovely. I didn’t know a sound like that could come out of that electric thing.”

“Thanks,” I said, adding, “Marcus plays really well by ear.”

“It’s his choice of music that makes me ill.” I had the feeling nothing Marcus did would be good enough for her.

“It’s what everybody listens to, though,” I said carefully.

She laughed a little. “I can see why Jamie likes you so much.”

I felt my cheeks redden. Had he talked about me to his parents?

“You care about people like he does.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I mean, I care about people, but not like Jamie does. He’s amazing. Three weeks ago, I almost killed him. I did. Now I feel like…” I shook my head, unable to put into words how I felt. Taken in. By Jamie. By his family. More at home with them than I’d felt in six years with my icy aunt and silent uncle.

“Jamie does have a gift with people, all right,” she said. “The way some people are born with musical talent or math skills or what have you. It’s genetic.”

I must have looked dubious, because she continued.

“I don’t have the gift, Lord knows,” she said, “but I had a brother who did. He died in his thirties, rest his soul, but he was…it’s more than kindness. It’s a way of seeing inside a person. To really feel what they’re feeling. It’s like they can’t help but feel it.”

“Empathy,” I said.

“Oh, that stupid tattoo.” She squirted more dish soap into the water in the sink. “I about had a conniption when I saw that thing. But he’s a grown man, not much his mama can do about it now. He doesn’t need that tattoo.” She scrubbed the pan the corn bread had been baked in. “My aunt had the gift, too, though she said it was more of a curse, because you had to take on somebody else’s pain. We were at the movies this one time? A woman and boy sat down in front of us before the lights were shut out. They didn’t say one single word, but Aunt Ginny said there was something wrong with the woman. That she felt a whole lot of anguish coming from her. That was the word she used—anguish.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, keeping my expression neutral. Miss Emma was going off the deep end, but I wasn’t about to let her see my skepticism.

“I know it sounds crazy,” she said. “I thought so too at the time. When the movie was over, Aunt Ginny couldn’t stop herself from asking the woman if she was all right. Ginny had a way of talking to people that made them open right up to her. But the woman said everything was fine. As we were walking out of the theater, though, and the little boy was out of earshot, she told us that her mother’d had a stroke just that morning and she was worried sick about her. Ginny’d picked right up on that worry and took it inside herself. She ended up with a bleeding ulcer from taking on too many other people’s worries. That’s how Jamie is, too.”

I remembered Jamie after the accident, when I wondered why he’d expressed no anger toward me. You already feel like crap about it, he’d said. Why should I make you feel any worse?

I shivered.

Miss Emma handed me the corn-bread pan to dry. “Here’s what happens with people like Jamie or my brother or my aunt,” she said. “They feel what the other person feels so strong that it’s less painful for them to just…give in. I knew when Jamie was small that he had the gift. He knew when his friends were upset about something and he’d get upset himself, even if he didn’t know what had them upset in the first place.” She reached into the dirty dishwater and pulled the stopper from the drain. “One time, a boy he barely knew got his dog run over by a car. I found Jamie crying in bed that night—he couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. He told me about it. I said, you didn’t even know that dog and you barely know that boy. He just kept crying. I thought, oh Lord have mercy on me, please. Here’s my brother and Aunt Ginny all over again. It’s a scary thing, raising a child like that. Most kids, like Marcus, bless his heart, you have to teach them how other children feel and how you need to be sensitive to them and all.” She pulled another dish towel from a drawer and dried her hands on it. “With Jamie, it was the opposite. I had to teach him to take care of himself.”

I bit my lip as I set the dry pan on the counter. “Are you trying to…are you warning me about something?” I asked.

She looked surprised. “Hmm,” she said. “Maybe I am. He likes you. I can tell. You’re a nice girl. Down-to-earth. You got a good head on your shoulders. He’s had a few girlfriends who took advantage of his kindness. I guess I’m asking you not to do that. Not to hurt him.”

I shook my head. “Never,” I said, thinking of how good it felt to have Jamie’s arms around me. “I couldn’t.” I thought I knew myself so well.

Chapter Six

Laurel

“I GUESS WE’RE SUPPOSED TO SIT UP THERE.” Maggie pointed to the front row of seats in the crowded Assembly Building. Trish Delphy’s secretary had called us the day before to say the mayor wanted us up front at the memorial service. I was sure our special status had to do with Andy, who was scratching his neck beneath the collar of his blue shirt. I’d had to buy him a new suit for the occasion. He so rarely had need of one that his old suit no longer fit. I let him pick out his own tie—a loud Jerry Garcia with red and blue swirls—but I’d forgotten a shirt and the one he was wearing was too small.

“We’ll follow you, sweetie,” I said to Maggie, and she led the way down the narrow center aisle. The air hummed with chatter, and the seats were nearly all taken even though there were still fifteen minutes before the start of the service. There’d been school buses in the parking lot across the street, and I noticed that teenagers occupied many of the seats. The lock-in had attracted children from all three towns on the island as well as from a few places on the mainland, cutting across both geographic and economic boundaries, tying us all together. If I’d known how many kids would show up at the lock-in, I never would have let Andy go. Then again, if Andy hadn’t been there, more would have died. Incredible to imagine.

I sat between my children. Next to us were Joe and Robin Carmichael, Emily’s parents, and in front of us was a podium flanked by two dozen containers of daffodils. Propped up on easels to the left of the podium were three poster-size photographs that I was not ready to look at. To the right of the podium were about twenty-five empty chairs set at a ninety-degree angle to us. A paper banner taped between the chairs read Reserved for Town of Surf City Fire Department.

Andy was next to Robin, and she embraced him.

“You beautiful boy,” she said, holding on to him three seconds too long for Andy’s comfort level. He squirmed and she let go with a laugh, then looked at me. “Good to see you, Laurel.” She leaned forward a little to wave to Maggie.

“How’s Emily doing?” I asked quietly.

Joe shifted forward in his seat so he could see me. “Not great,” he said.

“She’s gone backward some,” Robin said. “Nightmares. Won’t let us touch her. I can hardly get her to let me comb her hair. She’s scared to go to school again.”

“She had her shirt on inside out,” Andy piped in, too loudly.

“Shh,” I hushed him.

“You’re right, Andy,” Robin said. “She was already sliding back a ways before the fire, but now it’s got real bad.” She raised her gaze to mine. “We’re going to have to take her to see that psychologist again.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. Emily had suffered brain damage at birth, and I knew how far they’d come with her over the years. How hard it had to be to have a child who hated to be touched! Many FASD kids hated being touched, too, but I’d gotten lucky with Andy; he was a hugger. I needed to rein that hugging in with people outside the family, though, especially now that he was a teenager.

Robin looked behind us. “So many people affected by this…mess,” she said.

I didn’t turn around. My attention was drawn to the Surf City firefighters who were now filing into the seats reserved for them. In their dress blues and white gloves, a more sober looking bunch of men—and three women—would be hard to find, and as they sat down, a hush washed over the crowd. I saw Marcus glance at us, and I quickly turned my attention to the pink beribboned program I’d been handed when I entered the building.

Some people had wanted to put the memorial service off for another couple of weeks so the new Surf City Community Center would be open and the event could be held in the gymnasium. But the somber mood of the island couldn’t wait that long. In the week since the fire, that’s all anyone talked about. The part-time counselor at the elementary school where I worked was so inundated with kids suffering from nightmares about being burned or trapped that she’d had to refer the overflow, those whose fears showed up as stomachaches or headaches, to me. People were not only sad, they were angry. Everyone knew the fire was arson, although those words had not been uttered by anyone in an official capacity, at least not publicly.

Maggie hadn’t said a word since we walked into the building. I glanced at her now. Her gaze was on the firefighters and I wondered what she was thinking. I was never sure how much she remembered of her father. She had a framed picture of Jamie in his dress blues on her bureau beside a picture of Andy taken on his twelfth birthday. There was another picture, taken a couple of years ago at a party, of herself with Amber Donnelly and a couple of other girls.

She had no picture of me on the bureau. I realized that just the other day.

Andy started jiggling his leg, making my chair vibrate. I used to rest a hand on his knee to try to stop his jiggling, but I rarely did that anymore. I’d learned that if I stopped the energy from coming out of Andy in one place, it would come out someplace else. Jiggling his legs was preferable to slapping his hands on his thighs or cracking his knuckles. Sometimes I pictured a tightly coiled spring inside my son, ready to burst out of him with the slightest provocation. That’s most likely what happened when Keith called him names at the lock-in. It was rare for Andy to react with violence, but calling him names could do it.

“Hey, I know him!” Andy said suddenly.

“Shh,” I whispered in his ear. I thought he meant Marcus or Ben Trippett, but he was pointing to the third poster-size photograph at the front of the room. It was Charlie Eggles, a longtime real estate agent in Topsail Beach. Charlie’d had no kids of his own but often volunteered to help with community events. I’d been saddened to learn he was one of the fire victims. I looked at his engaging smile, his gray hair pulled back in his customary ponytail.

“It’s Mr. Eggles,” I whispered to Andy.

“He held on to me so I couldn’t hit Keith again.” I watched a crease form between Andy’s eyebrows as reality dawned on him. “Is he one of the dead people?”

“I’m afraid he is,” I said.

I waited for him to speak again, but he fell silent.

“What are you thinking, love?” I asked quietly.

“Why didn’t he follow me when I said to?”

I put my arm around him. “Maybe he didn’t hear you, or he was trying to help some of the other children. We’ll never know. You did the very best you—”

Somber piano music suddenly filled the room, swallowing my words, and Trish Delphy and Reverend Bill walked up the center aisle together. Reverend Bill stood behind the podium, while the mayor took the last empty seat in our row. Reverend Bill was so tall, skinny and long necked that he reminded me of an egret. Sara told me that he came into Jabeen’s Java every afternoon for a large double-fudge-and-caramel-iced coffee with extra whipped cream, yet there was not an ounce of fat on the man. He was all sticks and angles.

Now he craned his long neck forward to speak into the microphone. “Let us pray,” he said.

I bowed my head and tried to listen to his words, but I felt Maggie’s warm body against my left arm and Andy’s against my right. I felt them breathing, and my eyes once more filled with tears. I was so lucky.

When I lifted my head again, Reverend Bill began talking about the two teenagers and one adult killed in the fire. I forced myself to look at the blown-up images to the left of the podium. I didn’t know either of the teenagers, both of whom were from Sneads Ferry. The girl, Jordy Matthews, was a smiling, freckle-faced blonde with eyes the powder-blue of the firefighters’ shirts. The boy, Henderson Wright, looked about thirteen, sullen and a little scared. A tiny gold hoop hung from one end of his right eyebrow and his hair was in a buzz cut so short it was difficult to tell what color it was.

“…and Henderson Wright lived in his family’s old green van for the past three years,” Reverend Bill was saying. “We have people in our very own community who are forced to live that way, through no fault of their own.” Somewhere to my right, I heard quiet weeping, and it suddenly occurred to me that the families of the victims most likely shared this front row with us. I wondered if it had been necessary for Reverend Bill to mention the Wright boy’s poverty. Shrimping had once sustained Sneads Ferry’s families, but imported seafood was changing all that. There were many poor people living amidst the wealth in our area.

I thought of Sara. Ever since I’d heard that Keith had referred to Andy as rich, apparently with much disdain, I’d been stewing about it. Andy and Keith had known each other since they were babies and the disparity between our financial situations had never been an issue, at least as far as I knew. I wondered now if there was some underlying resentment on Sara’s part. God, I hoped not. I loved her like a sister. We were so open with each other—we had one of those friendships where nothing was off-limits. We’d both been single mothers for a decade, but Jamie had left my children and me more than comfortable. We had a handsome, ten-year-old four-bedroom house on the sound, while Sara and Keith lived in an aging double-wide sandwiched in a sea of other mobile homes.

My cheeks burned. How could I have thought that didn’t matter to her? Did she say things to Keith behind my back? Had Keith’s resentment built up until it spilled out on Andy at the lock-in?

Sara had been at the UNC burn center with Keith since the fire, so we’d had no good chance to talk. Our phone conversations were about Keith’s condition; he was still battling for his life. Although the most serious burns were on his arms and one side of his face, his lungs had suffered severe damage, and he was being kept in a medicated coma because the pain would otherwise be unbearable.

Neither of us brought up the fight between our sons. Maybe she didn’t even know about it. She had one thing on her mind, and that was getting Keith well. I’d offered to help her pay for any care he needed that wouldn’t be covered by his father’s military health insurance, but she said she’d be fine. Was it my imagination that she’d sounded chilly in her response? Had I insulted her? Maybe she simply resented the fact that Andy was safe and whole while her son could die.

Everyone around me suddenly stood up. Even Andy. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t realize we were supposed to be singing a hymn, the words printed on the back of the program. I stood up as well, but didn’t bother singing. Neither did Andy or Maggie, and I wondered where their thoughts were.

Long ago, Sara helped me turn my life around. When I got Andy out of foster care, he was a year old and I had no idea how to be a mother to the little stranger. After all, Jamie’d been both mother and father to Maggie when she was that age. It was Sara who helped me. Keith was nearly a year older than Andy, and Sara was a goddess in my eyes, the mother I wanted to emulate. Keith was adorable, and our boys were friends. They stayed friends until Andy was about nine. That’s when Keith started caring what other kids thought, and my strange little son became an embarrassment to him. Andy never really understood the sudden ostracism. In Andy’s eyes, everyone was his friend, from the janitor at school to the stranger who smiled at him on the beach. Over the past few years, though, I was glad Keith and Andy had drifted apart. Keith got picked up for drinking once, for truancy a couple of times, and last summer, for possession of an ounce of marijuana. That was the last sort of influence I needed over Andy. Andy longed to fit in and, given his impulsiveness, I worried how far he’d go to reach that goal.

We were sitting again and I felt ashamed that I’d paid so little attention to the service. Reverend Bill swept his eyes over the crowd as he vowed that “a new Drury Memorial will rise from the ashes of the old,” embracing everyone with a look of tenderness, skipping over my children and me. Literally. I saw his eyes light on the man sitting next to Maggie, then instantly slip to the Carmichaels on the other side of Andy. We were the heathens in the crowd, and Reverend Bill carried a grudge for a good long time. I was willing to bet his eyes never lit on Marcus either when he looked in the direction of the firefighters. Still, I felt for the man. Even though his congregation was planning to build a new church, he’d lost this one. I knew some families were talking about suing him for negligence. Others wondered if Reverend Bill himself might have set the fire for the insurance money. I was no fan of the man, but that was ridiculous.

My gaze drifted to Marcus. His face was slack and I could suddenly see the first sign of age in his features. He was young. Thirty-eight. Three years younger than me. For the first time, I could begin to see how he’d look as he got older, something I’d never have the joy of seeing in Jamie, who’d only been thirty-six when he died.

Reverend Bill and Trish Delphy were changing places at the podium. Trish licked her lips as she prepared to speak to the crowd.

“Our community will be forever changed by this terrible tragedy,” she said. “We mourn the loss of life and we pray for those still recovering from their injuries. But I’d ask you to look around you and see the strength in this room. We’re strong and resilient, and while we’ll never forget what happened in Surf City on Saturday, we’ll move forward together.

“And now,” she continued, “Dawn Reynolds has an announcement she’d like to make.”

Ben Trippett’s girlfriend looked uncomfortable as she took her place behind the podium.

“Um,” she began, “I just wanted to let y’all know that I’m coordinating the fund-raising to help the fire victims.” The paper she held in her hand shivered and I admired her for getting up in front of so many people when it obviously made her nervous. “The Shriners have come through like always to help out with medical expenses, but there’s still more we need to do. A lot of the families have no insurance. I’m working with Barry Gebhart, who y’all know is an accountant in Hampstead, and we set up a special fund called the Drury Memorial Family Fund. I hope you’ll help out with a check you can give me or Barry today, or you can drop by Jabeen’s Java anytime I’m working. Barry and I are thinking of some fund-raising activities and we’d like your suggestions in that…um…about that.” She looked down at the paper. “We’ll make sure the money gets to the families who need it the most.”

She sat down again at the end of our row. I saw Ben, his head still bandaged, smile at her.

Trish stood up once more at the podium.

“Thank you, Dawn,” she said. “We have a generous community with a generous spirit and I know we’ll do all in our power to ease the suffering of the families hurt by the fire.

“Now I’d like to recognize the firefighters and EMS workers who did such an amazing job under grueling circumstances. Not only our Town of Surf City Fire Department, but those firefighters from Topsail Beach, North Topsail Beach and the Surf City Volunteer Fire Department as well.”

Applause filled the building, and as it ebbed, I saw Trish drop her gaze to us.

“And I’d like to ask Andy Lockwood to stand, please.”

Beside me, I felt Andy start.

“Go ahead, sweetie,” I whispered. “Stand up.”

He stood up awkwardly.

Before the mayor could say another word, applause broke out again, and people rose to their feet.

“Are they clapping for me?” Andy asked.

“Yes.” I bit my lip to hold back my tears.

“Why did they stand up?”

“To honor you and thank you.”

“Because I’m a hero?”

I nodded.

He grinned, turning around to wave at the crowd behind us. I heard some subdued laughter.

“Can I sit down now?” Andy asked finally.

“Yes.”

He lowered himself to his seat again, his cheeks pink. It took another minute for the applause to die down.

“As most of you know,” Trish said, “Andy not only found a safe way out of the church, but he risked his own life to go back in and lead many of the other children to safety. Our loss is devastating, but it would have been much worse without Andy’s quick thinking and calm in the face of chaos.”

Andy sat up straighter than usual, his chest puffed out a bit, and I knew he was surprised to find himself suddenly the darling of Topsail Island.

Chapter Seven

Andy

MOM PUT HER VITAMINS IN A LINE by her plate. She ate breakfast vitamins and dinner vitamins. Maggie and I only ate breakfast ones. Maggie passed me the spinach bowl. Dumb. She knows I don’t eat spinach. I tried to give it to Mom.

“Take some, Andy,” Mom said. “While your arm is healing, you need good nutrition.”

“I have lots of nutrition.” I lifted my plate to show her my chicken part and the cut-up sweet potato.

“Okay. Don’t spill.” She put her fingers on my plate to make it go on the table again.

I ate a piece of sweet potato. They were my favorite. Mom made sweet potato pie sometimes, but she never ate any. She didn’t eat dessert because she didn’t want to ever be sick. She said too many sweet things could make you sick. Maggie and I were allowed to eat dessert because we weren’t adults yet.

“Andy,” Mom said after she swallowed all her vitamins, “your arm looks very good, but maybe you should skip the swim meet tomorrow.”

“Why?” I had to swim. “It doesn’t hurt!”

“We need to make sure it’s completely healed.”

“It is completely healed!”

“You’ve been through a lot, though. It might be good just to take a rest.”

“I don’t need a rest!” My voice was too loud for indoors. I couldn’t help it. She was pressing my start button.