Street. People were wandering around in a state of shock.
A TV news crew from a nearby city had set up beside a mobile van and were interviewing survivors and filming the wreckage. Help in the form of firefighters, ambulances and heavy equipment had begun pouring in. The sounds of sirens filled the evening air.
Walking toward the park, Nicki saw that the Old Town Hall had been reduced to a pile of rubble. It broke her heart to see the historic site in ruins, but it wasn’t until she saw the leveled gazebo in the center of the park that tears filled her eyes and slid down her cheeks.
Her special place was gone.
An elderly woman, looking lost and confused, stopped beside Nicki. Grasping a broken umbrella in one hand and a battered fedora in the other, the woman said, “I can’t find my husband. Frank never goes out without his hat.”
Nicki put her own pain aside when she saw the woman was bleeding from a deep gash on her forearm. Ignoring the newsman that had run over to snap their picture, Nicki gently said, “I’ll help you find him, but let’s get you fixed up first.”
“I don’t know where he could have gone.”
Taking the woman’s elbow, Nicki led her back to the church grounds where the triage tent had been erected on the lawn. As Nicki turned her charge over to a paramedic at the scene, a tall gray-haired man with a bandage on his forehead rushed forward and engulfed the woman in a fierce hug.
Nicki swallowed around the lump in her throat.
Thank You, Lord, for this one happy ending. Please let there be many more.
Stepping out of the tent, Nicki saw a group of women manning tables of food and drinks for the rescue workers and residents. When one waved her over, Nicki gladly joined them. She simply couldn’t go home. Not when there was so much to be done.
Many long hours later, a bleary-eyed Reverend Garrison accepted a sandwich from her and said, “It’s after four o’clock in the morning, Nicki. You should go home. There’ll be plenty of work left to do tomorrow.”
Wearily, she nodded. “You’re right.”
“I’ll get one of the police to take you.”
“They have enough to do. It’s only a short walk.”
He started to argue, but someone called him away for yet another emergency.
Nicki left the churchyard and trudged toward her duplex with exhaustion pulling at every fiber in her body. She was only halfway home when her flashlight blinked out.
“Oh, not now!” She banged it against her palm, but it stubbornly remained dark. Like her town, or what was left of her town. She couldn’t remember ever seeing the city without a single light glowing anywhere.
When her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she realized the three-quarter moon in the sky offered just enough illumination to let her navigate. She started walking again, skirting the downed limbs and debris that littered the roadway.
The sounds of sirens and chain saws had finally begun to lessen. The prevailing odor of diesel fumes was beginning to dissipate, leaving only the smells of wet wood, churned dirt and mangled cedars to tint the muggy night air.
When she finally reached her apartment, she stopped and stared in disbelief. The tall maple tree in her front yard was lying uprooted as if pushed over by a giant hand. Its gnarled roots fanned into the air like a grotesque skirt. Part of its branches rested on her half of the duplex’s roof.
She glanced at her neighbor’s dark front window. She knew Lori Martin, a nurse at a hospital in nearby Manhattan, had gone to work the previous morning. Given the number of injuries that had been transported to the bigger medical center and the state of the roads, Nicki wondered if Lori had made it home.
Nicki decided against knocking to check. If her neighbor had gotten back into town, there was no sense waking her up at this hour to point out a fallen tree that Lori would have seen for herself.
Bracing herself to discover the worst inside her own place, Nicki walked around the gaping hole in the lawn and up her steps. Inside the house, it was so dark she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. Was that a blessing?
After locating spare batteries in a drawer in the kitchen, she managed to replace the ones in her flashlight. Holding her breath, she clicked the button.
The burst of light showed a room that looked exactly as she’d left it the previous morning when she hurried out the door to her preschool class. The sight was so welcome that tears stung her eyes.
Making her way through her small apartment, she found the living room and bathroom were also intact. Opening the door to her bedroom, she discovered she hadn’t completely escaped the storm’s wrath. A tree limb jutted through her window.
The branch had knocked everything off the top of her dresser. Cherished mementos, photos and odds and ends were broken and scattered about. The carpet was wet from the rain that had blown in. Wearily she gathered up her smashed treasures and placed them on her bedside stand. Those that couldn’t be salvaged she threw into the trash can along with the broken shards of window glass.
Straightening, her flashlight caught the reflection of something bright behind the leaves on the dresser top. She stepped closer and saw it was a silver heart-shaped frame—the one photo she should have tossed out years ago.
Picking it up, she turned it over surprised to find the glass intact and the picture undamaged. It was her senior-prom photo. Nicki sat on her bed and stared at the couple in the snapshot. Had she really been that young, that carefree?
The strapless blue dress and upswept hairdo were meant to make a giggling teenager look mature. In retrospect she looked silly, but Clay Logan, Maya’s brother, in his cowboy hat and Western suit looked incredibly handsome. His deep blue eyes surveyed the world as if he owned it all, including her heart.
Before now, all that remained of that magical high school night was this photo and the old gazebo in the park—the place where they’d shared their first kiss and experienced the giddy rush of teenage hormones. Even though she was the one who’d called a halt to their passion before it went too far, she believed that Clay understood and respected her. She knew in her heart that their kiss was the beginning of something special between them.
Her girlish, romantic illusions came to an abrupt end the following day, when she learned Clay had left town without a word to her.
To say she had been crushed was an understatement. More than anything, she had considered Clay her friend.
“Friends don’t run out on friends without saying goodbye,” she muttered.
But he had gone. Now, the old gazebo was gone, too. Blown to bits by the vicious wind.
Snapping off the light, Nicki pressed the cold metal picture frame to her chest. She was too weary to face an old heartbreak.
Yet maybe this was the time to face it. To let go of the last bit of hope that wouldn’t die. She was a practical, twenty-five-year-old woman not a naive eighteen-year-old kid. Clay wasn’t coming back.
Turning the frame over again, she removed the backing. A postcard fell into her lap. She didn’t need the flashlight to read it, she knew it by heart.
