Diane Chamberlain - Before the Storm

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.

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.