style="font-size:15px;"> Before leaving the bedroom, she walks to Sonny’s nightstand. The small gun waits inside the drawer, a Rohrbaugh R9 her husband insisted on buying “to protect the family.”
Exactly what she intends to do with it.
She shrugs her way into the trench coat, drops the weapon into one of the pockets, then pulls her keys from her purse. Her shoulder feels empty without her handbag, but today she will travel without it. If she’s stopped at an intersection, she doesn’t want to be able to produce identification or a wallet. A policeman is likely to forget a flustered face, but he might remember the name on a driver’s license.
She looks in the mirror and practices her lines: “I’m here only for a minute. I have to run upstairs.”
A guileless face smiles back at her.
In the great room, she listens to the rising wind and swats at an insistent gnat of worry. Downtown Tampa may be at Felix’s mercy, but the suburbs are braced for the worst. This three-year-old house meets the tough new building codes and Sonny has stocked the garage with water, batteries, flashlights and packaged snack foods.
Before leaving, she tiptoes up the thickly carpeted stairs to check on her children. Matthew’s door is ajar; she gives it a gentle push and sees him sprawled over his bed, arms and legs akimbo. A handsome auburn-haired nineteen-year-old with amazing potential, according to his high school counselor, Matthew represents the best of her and Sonny. He has taken a year off to work and gather what he calls “life experience.” While Gina admires his practicality, she suspects he’s postponed college because he knows his leaving will break his mother’s heart.
Seventeen-year-old Mandi has fallen asleep with her television still flickering in the corner. While one of the Three Stooges snorts and wheezes into the depths of an enormous handkerchief, Mandi snores like a lumberjack, her head back and mouth open. In the room next door, Samantha, Gina’s youngest, is curled under a puffy pink comforter, her head sharing the pillow with a bedraggled stuffed animal.
Gina lingers in the doorway and smiles at her baby. Samantha would die if she knew Gina was seeing her like this; at fifteen, she pretends to be past caring for the sentimental treasures of her childhood. Gina knows better, though. A mother always knows.
She closes Samantha’s door and blows a kiss toward each of her sleeping offspring. If she’s delayed, Matthew will watch out for his younger sisters until she returns home.
After the initial shock, her kids will be fine. She and the children only have to weather this one storm.
Michelle checks her reflection in the mirror, wipes a smudge of gloss from the edge of her lower lip and hopes Parker will look up from his paperwork long enough to appreciate her efforts to look nice on a blustery Saturday morning. The man has a tendency to be testy when under pressure, and he definitely didn’t get much sleep last night.
But he has a surprise for her. If all goes well, his surprise and her decision will complement each other.
She leaves the bathroom and moves through the living room, picking up drink glasses and napkins left behind on the coffee table. After setting the dishes in the kitchen sink, she returns to the living room and stops to press the power switch on the television remote. Several channels of kids’ cartoons flash in a blur until she finds a weather map. The fresh-faced newscaster holds a rain-coated toy poodle on one arm while he points to what looks like a frosted doughnut spinning toward Florida’s central west coast.
“Pressed by a descending cold front, Felix is taking a more northwesterly track than initially predicted,” the weathercaster says. “The hurricane is now expected to come ashore near Madeira Beach in less than twelve hours. If you haven’t evacuated and you live on the water, forget about leaving the county. The interstates are congested and you don’t want to be trapped on the highway. Instead, get to a shelter right away.”
Michelle glances at the clock on the wall—the storm won’t arrive until day’s end, but the winds could become dangerous long before Felix makes landfall. Then again, the hurricane could veer north or south and barely ripple the air, making fools of the people who have spent the last week slapping plywood on their windows and loading their pantry with toaster pastries. Over the years she’s done that herself, stockpiling bottled water she eventually uses to mist the ferns on her front porch.
But at this moment she has something more important to think about. Whether or not Felix reaches Tampa Bay, Parker will soon finish up at the office and head home to be with his kids. If she’s going to talk to him alone, she has to leave now. She could wait, but she doesn’t want to lose her nerve….
The television camera shifts to a reporter standing in front of a pile of rubble. “Bob Ruffalo here,” he says, squinting into a spotlight, “in Puerto Juarez on the Yucatán Peninsula. Twenty-six hours ago Hurricane Felix blew through this place with winds of one hundred forty miles per hour. What you see behind me was once a thriving village—now the village has all but disappeared beneath a mountain of debris. Forty-four people are dead, scores of men, women and children are missing—”
Michelle clicks off the power and drops the remote onto the sofa. She moves toward the door, but the image of the ruined village lingers on the back of her retinas. When she tries to imagine what sort of diamond Parker may have picked out, the only picture her mind supplies is that of a big-eyed Mexican girl in a torn and muddy dress—
She stops at the door and rakes her hand through her hair. Okay, she’ll admit it. This may not be the most appropriate day for personal ultimatums, but what can she do about hurricane victims in Mexico?
“Get a grip, Tilson,” she says, her voice echoing in the empty foyer. “The Yucatán is in a different country. Rural villages like that don’t even have building codes, but we do and they’re tough. You need to be tough, too.”
Maybe Lauren is right and Felix won’t come here…but if it does, she’ll be ready.
Michelle walks to the large front window that overlooks Tampa Bay, tests the lock with her thumb, and is reassured to find the frame sealed tight. The accordion shutters wait at the right and left, ready for her to secure them. Nothing short of a Learjet, the installer assured her, could blast through those shutters when they are locked and loaded.
In an hour, two at the most, she’ll be back, ready to button up the condo and ride out the storm…unless Parker convinces her he is finally ready to get serious about their future. If so, she’ll come home only long enough to close the shutters and pack a bag.
Elated by her renewed determination, she pulls her keys from her purse, opens her front door and strides toward the elevator.
She’s thirty-three years old and she wants a family. If Parker doesn’t want to join her, then she’ll find someone else, but she will not be kept dangling.
If all goes well, she will spend this night with Parker’s children by her side and his ring on her finger.
And she will not have yellow mums at her wedding.
8:00 a.m.
CHAPTER 5
As the wind fires sharp pellets of rain at his windshield, Eddie Vaughn turns up the volume on his radio. On the seat beside him, Sadie, his golden retriever, shifts her weight and gives him a beseeching look.
“Almost
