Lots of hurricanes have hit St. Medard’s Bay over the years. It’s practically what we’re famous for, and the Rosalie Inn is a big part of that: the only beachfront building to survive the wind and waves for decades, the freak structure that’s somehow always standing when the water recedes. Maybe it’s missing a chunk of roof or a bunch of windows, but it’s whole and upright when other, seemingly sturdier buildings are piles of flattened lumber.
We even have pictures in the lobby, framed shots of the hotel in the aftermath of the storms, little placards on the bottom readingHurricane Delphine—1965, Hurricane Audrey—1977,that kind of thing.
Hurricane Marie, though…
That’s the one that nearly got us. I don’t remember it, of course—I was born in March of ’85, months after it hit—but Dad talked about it a lot. How a small sailboat ended up in the courtyard, its mast jutting through an upstairs window. How the whole front porch was ripped cleanly off, like some giant fish had swallowed it and taken it back out to sea.
How they’d been struggling to put the inn and their lives back together while reporters invaded the town because one of the victims was a politician’s son, and it turned out he’d been in St. Medard’s Bay visiting his teenage mistress, a local girl. They’d been without power for nearly a month, Mom had said, no running water for nearly as long, but all anyone had been able to talk about was Mrs. Bailey’s gorgeous daughter, Gloria, and the governor’s son—and how that governor wassaying he wasn’t so sure his son had actually died in the hurricane at all.
I didn’t know any of that until I was thirteen. There hadn’t been another big storm to hit St. Medard’s Bay since Marie, so I’d never had any real reason to think about the various hurricanes that had roared in before. Hell, I’d walked past the squat stone monument in the middle of the grassy square we call a “park” downtown thousands of times and had no idea it was a memorial for all the people we’d lost to rising waters and falling houses over the years.
But for whatever reason, one April day in 1998, as I cut through the park on my way to the used bookstore, I stopped at the monument to tie my shoe, and the words in tarnished bronze caught my eye.
“Thou dost rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, thou stillest them.”—Psalm 89:9.
Under that, there were years at first—1927, 1934, 1946—and lists of the deceased, and then, in 1965, the first named hurricane, Hurricane Delphine. Later, I learned that’s because they didn’t start giving hurricanes names until the ’50s, but at the time, I was mostly fascinated by how every storm listed was a woman’s name.
Delphine.
Audrey.
Velma.
Marie.
I was a dramatic kid, the first in my class to discover Ann Rule paperbacks and Dean Koontz hardcovers, and there had been something eerie about those storms, those long lists of names under each one.
I’d gone home from the bookstore still thinking about it, walking along the beach and looking out at the ocean, so glassyand calm you’d never believe it could “rage” like that Bible verse had said.
But rage it had—and rage it did again just a few months later in September of 1998. Hurricane Peggy didn’t kill anyone in St. Medard’s Bay, but it did destroy that used bookstore I loved so much and blew out the front windows at the Rosalie, soaking all the lobby furniture in a noxious mix of salt water and God knows what else.
Suddenly, those pictures on the lobby wall that I’d walked past every day of my life had new meaning for me, and I studied them intently, matching them up with the names of the storms from the monument.
They’d all been there.
My grandparents holding massive garbage bags but still smiling for the camera once Delphine was done in 1965.
My mom, a gangly tween shading her eyes from the sun on the front porch, the Rosalie basically pristine except for a few missing shingles, courtesy of Audrey in 1977.
Every window broken out in the wake of Velma.
And then nothing. No more pictures.
That’s when I’d asked Dad about Hurricane Marie and gotten the story of the sailboat and the porch, of Gloria Bailey and the governor’s son.
“We were living in a disaster movie, but everyone acted like we were in an episode ofDynasty,” Dad had joked at dinner that night, but Mom had only shaken her head, her lips pressed tightly together before she said, “I still have nightmares about that storm. I didn’t need any reminders on the wall.”
I’d assumed Hurricane Marie had been so rough on Mom because she’d been pregnant with me, and that had to have been fucking terrifying. She and Dad were barely more than teenagers, newly engaged, learning to take over the business from herfamily because her parents planned to retire to Vermont—some kind of reverse snowbird situation—and then the whole place nearly came down around their ears. I didn’t blame her for not wanting to be confronted daily with memories of it.
Which was why the cache of newspapers and magazines I found in the back of her closet when we moved her to Hope House had been such a surprise. Articles from thePress-RegisterandUSA Today, spreads fromPeopleand theNational Enquirer.All ostensibly about the destruction Marie had wrought, but most were much more intent on Landon Fitzroy’s death—and on the local girl whom Landon’s father was blaming for it. Her photo was always featured alongside those articles: Gloria “Lo” Bailey, glossy and beautiful in the way women were in the ’80s, almost painfully blond. The captions always made a point of highlighting her age, too—just nineteen years old—her big, innocent smile giving no hint that she was in the center of a different kind of storm, but one that was no less deadly.
Mom’s collection filled up a whole box, and I would have given anything to ask why she’d kept such a detailed account of an event that she never spoke about. But of course, by then, there was no asking Mom anything at all. So it had gone up in the attic with all the other things that had made up Mom’s life, things that had belonged to Ellen Chambers Corliss, a person who might still be here in body but is no longer here in mind or spirit. I’d filed the contents of that box away as just one more item on the list of things I didn’t understand about my mother.
That list is long.
I’m about to hit reply, not even bothering to finish the rest of the email because this August Fletcher could say he was coming to St. Medard’s Bay to write a book on how best to sacrifice virgins under the blood moon and I would’ve happily taken his money, but then I see a couple of lines near the bottom.
Due to the short notice, I’m willing to pay twice your regular rates, which, if I’m honest, seem too low for such a gorgeous place in such a picturesque location!
