Viv felt a pop in the air accompanied by a brief silence, and then they heard glass shattering. Was it the restaurant? Or the store?
Siena and Viv held hands. No one spoke. They were in the middle of it, the roar, the darkness. The lights blinked out. It was pitch black in the cellar.
But in an instant, the roar faded.
There was wind and maybe rain, but not the freight train sound of the cyclone above them.
Light poured in from the basement window. They were all here. They were in one piece.
Hope and Viv locked eyes. They’d been through this exact thing together.
They both knew that horror that could greet them the moment they walked out of this space.
What had the cyclone hit? What had it spared?
ChapterTwenty-Five
Siena
Her mother had run to her, wrangled her, and herded them to Hope’s, all while a vicious storm bore down on them.
Siena looked at her mother now and saw her anew. The shell of the woman she’d become, thanks to cancer, was gone. Her mother was strong. Even with her injury, she was bold. Even in the face of terror.
She’d run across the street to Siena. She’d taken charge.
Her mother was calm. She’d actually been calm throughout, but she’d been urgent. Siena watched a look pass between her mom and Hope.
“Let’s go,” Viv said, taking charge again, sure that it was time to go back upstairs.
As they climbed back up the steps into the restaurant, Siena’s positive feelings about this new Viv Blackwood turned to shock.
The entire front window of the restaurant had blown in, and the tables were upside down. It was as if someone had shaken the building like a snow globe.
“We need to get out of here. There could be a gas leak,” Hope said as she looked over at the big stove she cooked with each night.
“That means you, too,” Viv said. And she put her hand out to her friend.
They all carefully sidestepped glass as best they could and made their way out to the sidewalk.
It was hard to process what they were seeing. Downtown was a patchwork of things untouched, and others unhinged.
Siena looked toward her store.
Their side of Manitou Lake Road was littered with leaves, debris, and some glass, but it was okay.
It looked okay.
Her sign was gone, but unlike Hope’s window, Siena’s was intact. The buildings were all still standing.
It wasn’t until the wider view of downtown came into focus that Siena truly realized the power of the tornado.
On the other side of the street, things looked much bleaker. A tree that had been in the center of the street was uprooted. It had landed on the gazebo.
But across the street, where the new work was being done, it looked horrifyingly worse.
The buildings that lined Lake Manitou on the North Side had been designed as a lovely reflection of the South Side. There were eight, side by side. It was Libby’s next big project.
But right now, it was hard to process what was left.
