power goes out, I figured we could play a few rounds of Go Fish or do a crossword.”
Sadie makes a rhrrrumph sound deep in her throat, then lowers her chin to the top of the seatback and stares out the truck’s rear window.
Eddie forces himself to whistle a bar of “Singing in the Rain,” then gives up the effort. The dog is worried, and no amount of grinning or whistling is going to relieve her anxiety. He’s heard that animals can sense impending natural disasters—whether or not the rumor is true, Sadie has been antsy for the last couple of days.
Felix has been swirling around in the Caribbean for almost a week, but only in the last twelve hours has the storm drawn a bead on Tampa Bay.
When the cell phone on the seat buzzes, Eddie turns down the volume on the radio, then scoops up the phone with his free hand. “’Lo?”
“Hey, doll.” Charlene’s voice, crusty from chain-smoking, fills his ear. “Are they all squared away up there at Freedom Home?”
“You can scratch that one off your list, ma’am. Those folks aren’t going to be using the elevators anytime soon. The nurses have moved all the residents into the common room—the poor people who didn’t have anyone to pick them up, anyway.”
“Thanks for running up there, Eddie. I hated to call you out so early.”
“No big deal. I can go power ’em up after the storm passes, if you want.”
She croaks out a laugh as another phone rings in the background. “You must have gotten a look at my friend’s daughter. Did you meet Emily? She’d be the blonde, the one that looks like Pamela Anderson.”
Eddie brakes for a stop sign. “Yeah, I saw her. Pretty package. Nothing inside.”
“You’re too picky, Ed. Here I go out of my way to hook you up with a girl—”
“Give it a rest, Charlene, I’m doin’ fine.”
“But you’re too nice a guy to be livin’ all alone—”
“I’d rather live alone than try to talk to a woman who’s as shallow as a pie pan.” He catches a quick breath. “Don’t you have to answer that phone?”
Thankfully, the question derails the dispatcher’s train of thought. “Yeah, I’d better. Well, doll, you take care. Batten down the hatches and all that. Check in when you can.”
“You take care, too, Charlene. I’ll talk to you when it’s all over.”
He disconnects the call and tosses the phone back onto the seat. Sadie lowers her head to sniff at it as Eddie slants into the left lane, where the water isn’t as deep.
“Almost home, girl.”
Charlene’s well-intentioned meddling has turned his thoughts toward Alabama…and Heather. His memories of her are hazy now, blurred by time and the receding fog of pain.
Yet thoughts of Alabama still tighten his throat.
He turns up the volume on the radio. No music yet; the newscaster remains focused on the threatening weather: “Experts are saying Felix could wreak the kind of damage Charley did to Punta Gorda three years ago. The tidal surge could rise as high as twenty-two feet, enough to flood the downtown area, Tampa International Airport and MacDill Air Force Base.”
“Good thing we don’t live in Tampa, huh, Sades?”
Eddie clucks his tongue as he turns into his subdivision and peers through the pouring rain. His neighborhood seems deserted, which means people have either heeded the evacuation warnings or hunkered down inside their homes. Sheets of plywood or corrugated aluminum cover most of the windows and the seven dwarfs have disappeared from Mrs. Jackson’s flower bed. Jack Tomlinson has parked his wife’s minivan on the open lawn, away from the heavy oak tree that shades the south side of their house. Though the Tomlinson family’s garage is crowded with old newspapers, paint cans, sports equipment and tools (several of them on loan from Eddie), apparently Jack has found room for his Corvette.
“I’d like to repeat,” the radio announcer says, “that the governor has ordered the mandatory evacuation of ten coastal counties, warning that those who say behind face certain injury or death. If you’re not in a shelter and you live on the beach, you need to evacuate immediately to protect your own life.”
Eddie’s house, located on high ground in unincorporated Pinellas County, is part of a thirty-year-old subdivision built when contractors cared more for utility than aesthetics. The rainwater is draining properly on his street, a road lined by three-bedroom, two-bath structures of concrete block. Like its neighbors, his house isn’t fancy, but it has a fenced yard for Sadie, a small pool and a half-dozen shade trees to protect it from the sweltering summer sun.
Eddie hopes those leafy canopies survive the approaching hurricane. Last year even the storms that merely swiped at Pinellas County toppled hundreds of trees, which damaged cars and homes as they fell. Not even a house of concrete block can withstand a direct hit from a sprawling two-hundred-year-old live oak.
“Officials estimate that 487,000 people in Hillsborough County alone have had to seek shelter,” the newscaster continues, “and over 550,000 have filled shelters in Pinellas County. They’re fortunate—the Florida Highway Patrol has halted access to the interstate system, and those who haven’t made it across Pinellas County’s two bridges and single causeway are out of luck. Wherever you are, I hope you’re safely tucked away and not on the road.”
“You and me both, bud,” Eddie says, turning into his driveway. He pulls the pickup under the carport, then steps out of the truck. He doesn’t have to call Sadie—she leaps out behind him, a graceful golden blur on a beeline for the back door.
He laughs as he looks for his house key. “Ready to go inside, are you? Me, too. Let’s eat while we still have power to the microwave.”
Sadie scratches at the threshold, then sits back and waits for Eddie to slip the key into the lock. After opening the door, he takes one last look around before following the dog into the house. The garbage cans have been hauled into the utility room, the bird feeders tucked into a sheltered corner of the carport. He has covered his windows with plywood, turned the glass-topped patio table upside down on a mat of old towels and tossed his aluminum lawn chairs into the pool. He and Sadie have bottled water, a battery-powered radio, canned foods, a manual can opener, a stash of cash and a full gas can—enough supplies to get them through a couple of weeks, if necessary.
Satisfied with his preparations, he steps into the utility room and locks the door, securing the dead bolt, as well. The dead bolt would stop a human intruder, but he’s not sure it will hold against a category-four wind.
A year ago, when he left Alabama to escape an emotional storm, he never dreamed he’d be exchanging one kind of disaster for another. All things considered, though, the literal storms are easier to handle.
“God, help us,” he murmurs, one hand on the doorknob. Then he turns and whistles for the dog.
Because a man on the radio keeps insisting the police have blocked the downtown exits off I-275, Gina avoids the interstate and drives toward Sonny’s office along a less-traveled route. Several ominous clouds have swept in from the bay by the time she reaches the edge of the downtown district; a gray
