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“Do you need a ride to your place?” he queried.
“No, I have my bike, and it’s so close. But thanks anyway.”
“Just be sure to put that bike inside tonight and don’t be leavin’ it under the house. Tide at best will kill it with salt and at worse it will wash away. I don’t know what’s in store, but as the day’s gone on, I’m just feelin’ a bit uneasy. And the barometer doesn’t lie.”
Susan laughed. “I’ll be sure to take care of the bike. You go on now, and I will see you tomorrow.” She waved as Scott nodded, got into his car, and headed off. She walked back to the office, took a look around, and as an afterthought, grabbed the reservation book and the cash box and locked the door behind her. Only then did she realize she’d left the rocking chair on the porch. She turned it on its side, then pushed it up against the building.This will have to do,she thought and then said aloud to High Tide who was nowhere in sight, “If things get too rough tonight, High Tide, just crawl in here, and I’ll see you in the morning too.”
She carried the book and the box down the steps off the porch and placed them in the basket on her bike. She felt the wind in her face as she hopped on for the short ride home. She passed the two other motels located on the beach, all quiet and taped up as well. She was surprised at how little traffic there was, especially for a Friday night.People must be taking this pretty seriously,she thought.
She waved to Matt at Matt’s Friendly Grocery as she turned down the path to her home. “You take care, Mr. Matt,” she hollered. His front display glass had a huge “X” taped across it, the universal sign of an impending storm.
“You too,” he waved. “I’m staying open a bit later this evening ‘til folks get what they need, but I’m about out of bread and milk. You need anything?”
“Nah, I’m good, but thank you. See you tomorrow,” she called out over her shoulder as he disappeared from her view and she pulled into her drive. She looked up at the steps and, for just a moment, thought about leaving the bike underneath the house. But since it was her only means of transportation with her parents having the car, she thought better of it and lugged it up to the landing, reservation book and cash box and all. She opened the door and stuck the bike and its contents inside, and then took all the plants and shells off the porch railings and brought them inside too. She checked her mom’s infamous ‘Storm Drawer’ to get flashlights and fresh batteries, and she pulled the weather radio from the top shelf in the kitchen and put in fresh batteries there too, just in case.
Only then did she notice that she could hear the surf pounding, which was rare because she lived a good way from the oceanfront. She glanced out the window and saw an unbelievably gorgeous sunset, with purples, pinks, and an unsettling blood red color on the horizon. And there was a whistling sound, ever so softly, but persistently, that she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard before. The lights flickered for just a moment, and despite the warmth of the evening, Susan shivered.
ChapterOne
Present Day
Susan stretched out her legs on the old rocking chair and took a deep breath. The current cat-in-residence, Low Tide, hopped up on the porch railing and looked warily at her.
“What are you thinking, Low Tide?” Susan asked out loud. “In your cat family memory, are you thinking back like I am, back to seventy-five? Your great-great-great grandmother High Tide must have had one heck of a night that night. I remember finding her soaking wet and shaking like a leaf on the porch that next morning with no sign of that old rocking chair I had turned over to protect her. In fact, not much of the porch was left either.”
Low Tide only sat there, quietly, giving nothing away. Susan looked past her and out to the edge of the beach, which now, after so many years, was unfortunately clearly visible from the porch. The swell was definitely increasing and there was no question this time around that they were in for a bad storm. No need to guess with a barometer or achy joints. The Weather Channel had been all over this one since it was a wave coming off Africa. The first for the Cape Verde season, and it was headed for the North Carolina coast.
It was uncanny, she thought, that this storm, now christened Eva, was taking the same track, coming at the same time in mid-August, and was starting with the same letter as Hurricane Evelyn had done all those years ago. Halfway hypnotized by the crashing sounds of the waves, her thoughts drifted back to Evelyn, and as always, to Chris. Chris who had been there for her from the time the storm blew away up the coast to the time he seemed to blow out of her life. She thought of him making his way through the tide to the house the morning after, helping her navigate her way to the motel through the salt water, sand, and debris. How he held her when she saw the devastation, how he vowed to help her organize the cleanup, and how he was there every moment he could spare from the cleaning up the harbor, which was left a mangled pile of what had been fine fishing boats. The way of life for so many of their friends was destroyed overnight.
But then, her thoughts went to those nights after cleanup, when there was nothing more to do for the day. When the blood, sweat, and tears had all been expended for the time being, and they had just each other to commiserate with, and more importantly, to hold onto. With no power at first, it was too hot to stay inside anywhere, and the mosquitoes were bad everywhere except right along the oceanfront. That was their escape. There had been a first time, and then there were more. And in the confusion and chaos of those days after the hurricane, she had forgotten her pill. Maybe once? Maybe twice? It really didn’t matter because she wasn’t thinking of that at the time. Just always counting on Chris to be there and to make everything seem like it would be OK in the end. She could almost feel his touch, his lips, his strength, and hear his reassurances. Her shoulders sagged a bit with the weight of the memories, tears gathering at the corner of her eyes.
“Gran, we really need to get going.”
She heard the voice like from a dream. “Were you asleep, Gran?” asked her granddaughter Jo. “I know you worked way too hard today. You know we still have time to get off the island but that window is closing fast. We’d have to leave soon because they are going to close the Basnight Bridge in about two hours. We need to pack and then get on the road and…”
“JoBell Leonard, we are not going to evacuate and that’s that,” Susan pronounced. “You know as well as I do that our presence would only be an imposition on your mom and dad, and I don’t need that discomfort or drama right now. I will be here for the motel just like I was before. The house is strong, we have the generator now, and I am not leaving. Pure and simple.” Her hard demeanor softened a bit. After a tired sigh, she added, “But I wouldn’t blame you for going, so don’t let my stubbornness stop you, OK?”
Jo looked at her grandmother and saw in her everything she hoped she could become – strong and independent, and yet caring and understanding. These were supposed to be her golden years.
Her mother and grandmother had become estranged. Why that had happened was such a tangle she wasn’t sure it could ever be sorted out. But those same feelings seemed to apply to her and her mother as well, so she was in no way anxious to drive to Raleigh to be with her parents and be subjected to what she felt was their constant criticism of her and also of her grandmother.
“No, Gran. I’m staying here with you for all the same reasons you just said. We’ll be fine. You’ve been through this before and now you have me. And Dare too. And speaking of Dare, he said if we didn’t evacuate, he’d meet us at the Frisco Airport around half past six so that we can drop off the car and he’d drive us back and help us put any last minute stuff in the shed. It was great that you had him raise that shed last year. Hopefully, the sound tide won’t come up that far. Let me call him and tell him we’ll meet him there.”
Susan watched Jo carefully as she spoke of Dare. She wondered what the level of feeling was there between them. Jo only saw him when she would come by from school on breaks, or during the summers. They had known one another since they were kids, when Susan would drive to Raleigh to collect her and bring her for her annual month-long visit. How she and Jo both looked forward to that time, how they shared their mutual love of the ocean and the coast, and how they were always sad when it was time to leave. And Jo had met Dare Davis, the local boy, and their friendship, or whatever it was, had seemed to stand the test of time and frequent separations.
“Dare is a real sweetheart, Jo,” Susan replied. “And I will always be grateful for that work he did on the shed. But you know he comes around even when you’re not here to check on me when he can. He’ll pop into the motel on days when he can’t go out fishing, and when he does fish, he almost always brings me a little something.”
Jo grabbed her hair and re-did her ponytail in the wind.
Working at the motel for the summer had been good for her. She’d shed the freshman fifteen she’d put on her first year at school, and she actually gotten fairly toned from the physical work she was doing, from cleaning the occasional room to hauling laundry back and forth for guests who required extra towels or bedding, to sweeping the sand that constantly blew onto the porches and stairs. She was bright and engaging and the guests loved her. She had a smile that reminded Susan of Chris. But Jo didn’t know that.
“Let’s get that rocker inside and lock up,” Jo said, saying nothing more about Dare. “I remember you telling me about the rocker you left out for High Tide and that story did not have a good ending, so there’s one lesson learned from nineteen seventy-five.”
Susan laughed as they lugged the heavy rocker inside, and took one last look around the office.
“I debated on bringing the computers and stuff with us,” said Jo, “but with everything available on my phone, it won’t matter. Plus, from what they say, we’ll lose cell service, so it’s kind of silly to bother.”
Susan nodded as they got into her car, letting Jo drive as she often did these days. She glanced back as they pulled out onto the highway and wondered thoughtfully about what they’d find in the morning. The wind was beginning to pick up and shift, and clouds were already building on the horizon.
