Page 37 of Chasing the Other Woman

I turn away before Brooks can see me standing there watching him.

Inside The Funnel Cloud, Petra’s eyes find me. She pauses when she sees my face.

“You okay?”

“No,” I say. “But I will be eventually.”

When I turn back toward the window, Brooks is watching me.

He came here because he wanted to know if I was okay.

He’s here now.

Looking at me.

And Luci is standing right beside him.

Ten

BROOKS

Twenty-four hours after the storm, there's still plenty of people who are damned and determined to find new ways to kill themselves. I stand in the parking lot of The Funnel Cloud watching a man holding a chainsaw and dancing too close with the grim reaper.

“Kill the engine,” I call across the street.

A man in a feed store cap looks up from the fallen pecan limb he has been trying to cut away from a crushed porch railing. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Then you see that hot line that's tangled up with those branches you're about to cut."

His gaze jumps to the power line tangled in the tree he's about to cut.

The color drains out of his face.

I nod toward Hershel, who is already waving two linemen over like he’s directing traffic at a rock concert. “Nobody touches that tree until they clear it.”

The man shuts the chainsaw off.

Around us, Muncie looks like the storm took a fist to it and dragged its knuckles down Main Street. Roof shingles glitter in the gutter. A stop sign leans sideways. Every few minutes, somebody calls for something they've just discovered they need. Water, a tarp, a hand.

And Sam knows where every single thing should go.

She stands outside The Funnel Cloud with a notebook in one hand and a pencil tucked behind her ear. A deputy asks her about the west side of town. A lineman asks about generators. An older woman with a bleeding scrape on her cheek grips Sam’s arm and says she can’t find her brother.

And not once does Sam break.

“Carl’s checking Oak Street now,” she says. “Go inside and get you some water and a snack, sweetie. We'll make sure we have everyone looking for him, okay?”

The woman only hesitates for a moment, then she heads in.

Sam turns before anyone else says her name, like she can feel the next problem coming.

I stand there with my injured arm throbbing and the stupid, useless urge to put myself between her and the whole town.

Except that's not what she needs. The reality is, she's never really needed me. At least not in the way I wanted myself to be needed.

She needs people who believe she can take care of herself. Someone who'll be there when she comes down from it all, but not someone who stops her from climbing the hill to begin with.

She needs a partner. I tried to be a wall that nothing could penetrate. Not even love. The realization is enough to make me sick.