Page 65 of And Now, Back to You

“I guess I like how reliable it is,” he confesses quietly. “I like reading the data and figuring out what’s going to happen next.”

I grin. Of course that’s it. That’s so delightfully in line with every single thing I know about this man.

“And when the girls were young . . . did you ever talk to them about the weather?”

He nods. “All of the time. I couldn’t remember any good stories when they first came to live with me, and we didn’t have children’s books, so I used to read them weather reports to put them to sleep.” He swallows hard and a shaky, trembling smile curls the corners of his mouth. “It worked every time.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I bet it did.” I squeeze his arms through the thick material of his coat. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go on the air in a handful of minutes. You’re going to stand next to me and look into that camera and pretend you’re talking to your sisters. Easy as that, okay?”

He doesn’t look so sure. “All right,” he agrees. “I think I can manage that.”

“Good. Practice.”

He blinks at me. “Practice?”

“Pretend I’m the camera. What are you going to say?”

I watch as his confidence flags. “I don’t know, Delilah. Can’t we just go out there and get this over with?”

“Definitely not. No offense, but I don’t think you’re up to winging it right now.” I try to shake him back and forth, but he’s an immovable object, pressed up against me in this tiny, hidden corner. “C’mon. This will help.”

His jaw clenches. Then, very reluctantly he says, “Hello, Baltimore.”

I nod, waiting for more. He remains stubbornly silent.

“Great. What’s next?”

A short huff of frustration. “It’s about to snow,” he grinds out.

My god. This is about to be the longest broadcast of my life. “How much snow?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“Jackson, you took like forty-seven pages of notes this morning. Tell me about the shifting winds. What is it about this storm that’s different? What can the people in Baltimore expect? How do you feel about it and why are you—”

“Snowstorms happen when cold air, moisture, and lift combine,” he interrupts in a rush. “We know that. We’ve talked about it before. But this storm is different because the two air masses set to collide are wildly contrasting in temperature.”

His eyes are bright, his words slightly too fast. I don’t think he took a single breath during that entire bit.

I nod. We’ve managed to go from one end of the spectrum to the other. “Okay, and—”

“It’s weird that the front coming in from the north is as cold as it is. We don’t usually see such drastic temperatures so late in the year. With global warming forcing overall warmer temperatures, our climate has slowly been shifting away from snow to more rain. So it’s weird to see this level of snowfall at this time of year and—did you hear about the corn sweat?”

I can feel my face pinch in confusion. “Corn sweat?”

He nods. “It’s called evapotranspiration.”

Oh, boy.

“In the Midwest,” he continues, words somehow coming even faster, “millions of acres of corn have started simultaneously releasing water vapor into the atmosphere. Because of the high temperatures, you know?”

“Okay, yeah. But, Jackson—”

“This phenomenon can increase already elevated humidity levels, especially during peak growing season.”

“Jackson.”

“A single acre of corn can release approximately three thousand to four thousand gallons of water per day through evapotranspiration. That’s about the size of two concrete trucks. And that’s just in one day. Think about hundreds of acres, every day during the warm season.”