fought the system to keep Maya out of foster care or that she’d cooked and cleaned and done the laundry while Maya rose to the top of her class.
The thing that really changed about Maya after the murders, though, was her transformation from a happy-go-lucky kid into a girl afraid of her own shadow. Totally understandable. She’d been right in the line of fire. Who could go through something like that and remain unchanged?
Rebecca closed the book on the Chinese earthquake, giving up. She hadn’t absorbed a single word in the past fifteen minutes. Swallowing the last of her Americano, she got to her feet. She’d go for a run. Lose the negative memories.
She left the store and headed for her car, walking quickly as though she could leave the memories behind, but it wasn’t so easy. The whole time she and Maya had been talking the night before, Rebecca had been thinking about the shooting in the restaurant. She hated guns, hated treating gunshot victims, although she did it, wanting to save their lives with a desperation that went beyond the simple practice of medicine. Two decades had passed, yet she still saw her parents’ bloodied bodies in every shooting victim she treated.
The incident in the Brazilian restaurant had to remind Maya of that night. Rebecca had seen the panic in her eyes. She’d still been trembling later, when Rebecca hugged her good-night. They never talked about their parents’ murder. It was an agreed-upon, unspoken rule between them. Yet she knew that Maya had to blame her for that night.
Maybe even more than she blamed herself.
11
Maya
“Holy shit, Maya,” Adam called from the sofa in THE FAMILY ROOM. “COME LOOK AT THIS.”
I closed the dishwasher and walked into the family room. Outside the windows, the rain created a dark, undulating curtain so thick I couldn’t see the woods behind the house. It was eight o’clock, so I wasn’t sure how much of the darkness was encroaching nightfall and how much of it was the storm. Either way, it was the sort of weather that made me glad to be inside. Chauncey sat at the sliding glass door, looking discouraged.
Adam pointed toward the TV. “They’re in Wilmington,” he said. “They’re saying now it’s a category four.”
I sat down on the sofa next to him. On the screen, a newscaster dressed in a slicker and hood held on to a lamppost to keep from flying away. He was trying to shield his eyes against the wind and rain, shouting to be heard above the din. I squinted at the TV. “Is he … where is he?” I asked. Wilmington was less than three hours from us, and I loved the charm of the city on the Cape Fear River. “Is that the Riverwalk?”
“Right,” Adam said. “He’s near the Pilot House. Listen.”
“… not moving,” the reporter said. “Just sitting at the mouth of the Cape Fear. There’s no one out here on the downtown streets, but most people didn’t evacuate. Some were starting to, because the next storm, Erin, is expected to make a direct hit. And that’s a problem—” He slapped his hand on his hood to keep it on his head. “A big problem,” he said. “We’ve got people who were trying to leave and are now stuck on the roads because of flooding and downed trees. They tried to. you know … get out, but it’s just too late.” The reporter was getting blown all over the place. His knuckles were white where he clung to the pole. “You know the next named storm was Donald, but that one sort of just. fizzled, but the big … but Carmen. no one expected this. This … strength. And of course, no one expected her to make landfall here.” He fiddled with his earpiece. “Some people are trying to leave the area, like I said, but there’s already flooding on some of the major roads and many, if not most, of the minor roads. And I tell you … if this next storm, Erin, packs this kind of punch while people are here … unable to evacuate …” Something blew past his head and he ducked, then recovered. “If it packs this kind of punch,” he repeated, “we’re going to have a major catastrophe on our hands.”
Chauncey had moved to my side. He rested his big head on my knees and I massaged my fingertips into the short fur on his neck. “I hope there’s enough of a break between the storms that people can leave.” I glanced out the window, but now it truly was dark outside and I couldn’t see a thing. I’d been worried about the rain and wind in our own yard. I could still remember Hurricane Fran, which hit North Carolina shortly after I moved to the state. I was in medical school and sharing an apartment with Rebecca at the time, and I remembered trees lying helter-skelter everywhere. “How bad is it supposed to get here?” I asked Adam. “Did they say?”
He shook his head, putting his arm around my shoulders, and I felt relief well up inside me. Except for that moment in the hallway of the restaurant after the shooting, he’d shown me little affection since the miscarriage. I was trying not to read too much into it, trying not to be neurotic and insecure. I snuggled close to him. I wanted our intimacy back. I wanted to be able to talk to him. We used to talk so easily to one another. Now, though, the things that were on my mind didn’t feel safe to bring up, because they would make me sound small and pathetic and I knew he wanted me strong. Worse, I was angry with him for the way he was shutting me out. I’d rarely felt anger toward Adam before, and I didn’t know what to do with it. My hormones were still toying with me, and the things that were on my mind, the things I couldn’t get out of my mind were: my lost child, Adam’s ex-wife, laughing about having children after all, and the abortion I’d never told him about. Sometimes I thought to myself: just sit him down and say, Adam, please, I need to get all this out. Please just let me talk without telling me everything’s fine, not to worry. Please. But I didn’t. I was afraid, and I wasn’t even sure what it was that I feared.
The guy on the TV screen was growing repetitive, but he was still riveting to watch. “Dorothea was right,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“This is why she told Rebecca not to go to Ecuador. She had a feeling about these storms. So I guess Rebecca will be going to Wilmington or wherever the damage is the worst once they let up.”
“… didn’t really have a chance to board up along the coast,” the reporter was saying.
“I may go, too,” Adam said.
I lifted my head from his shoulder. “Really?”
He nodded. “If it turns out they need DIDA down there, this would be a good first assignment. You know … in our backyard. Better than Ecuador.”
“Definitely,” I said, but I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want him to be in DIDA, period. But he was right. I would be far more comfortable having him in North Carolina than South America.
“… has the meteorologists scratching their heads, because this storm—this cat four hurricane—just wasn’t supposed to go down like this.”
The TV showed a satellite image. The hurricane was a stunner, huge and round with a perfect blue eye. It sat at the mouth of the Cape Fear and the projected path drove it straight up the river. A meteorologist with long, glossy red hair moved onto the screen and was about to open her mouth when the TV went dark, along with every light in our house.
“Knew that was going to happen.” Adam stood up. “I’ll get the flashlights.”
“I already did,” I said, getting to my own feet. As soon as the rain had started that afternoon, I’d taken them from the cupboard where we kept the emergency supplies. “The weather radio’s there, too,” I said, feeling my way toward the kitchen. “And the candles. They’re
