At Frieda Mason’s little yellow cottage with the metal awning over the door.
They’d been frantic, our parents, when it became clear that no one had any idea where we were. Miss Beth-Anne had gone out on foot with a flashlight, headed for the big weeping willow that used to be our favorite hideout. She’d gotten only a couple of blocks before downed power lines meant she had to retreat.
Ellen’s dad had called a friend in the National Guard in Mobile, asking for advice, only to be told the best he could do right now was wait and “hope the storm wasn’t that bad.”
And my parents had gotten in our station wagon, buckled Sam into his booster seat, and started searching the rain-soaked streets until they’d made a turn onto Cottonmouth Avenue—an ugly name for a street, I’d always thought—and felt their wheels leave the road beneath them, the current dragging the car inexorably toward the rising waters of Shelton Creek.
It was fast, at least.
Not instant. Drowning never was, just like Ellen and I had always known.
But fast.
Wouldn’t have even known what was happening, one of the Red Cross volunteers told me later. They would’ve been overwhelmed before they even knew it.
I want to believe that.
My mom’s sister, Rebekah, moved to St. Medard’s to take care of me. She didn’t move into that yellow house with the metal awning, though. That was washed away by the same waters that took my family, like we’d never even been a family at all. No home, no evidence of the life we’d shared there. Just me and Aunt Rebekah and a boring brown house on Shell Drive near Lo.
It wasn’t Lo’s fault, what happened to my family. I know that. Itwas a freak of nature, literally, a hurricane that zigged when everyone thought it would zag, one that lingered too long in the Caribbean and picked up too much power, and this is the way it goes sometimes, this is the way the world works. She hadn’t known, when she came up with her grand plan for the three of us to spend the night in the woods, that she was setting something in motion that would destroy my entire life.
But after that, every impulsive, reckless thing Lo did—and Jesus Christ, did she do a lot—wasn’t cool anymore. It wasn’t fun or exciting or a chance for adventure. It just felt… selfish. Careless.
Because that’s what Lo was. Selfish and careless and thoughtless.
There’s no malice in her, or at least I don’t think there is.
But when someone’s left as much destruction in their wake as she has, does it even matter that she doesn’t mean to?
CHAPTER SIX
July 11, 2025
23 Days Left
I’m waiting on the front porch when Edie arrives the next morning.
She doesn’t see me at first—she’s not looking for me, not this early—and when I step out from the shadows, she startles, nearly dropping her keys.
“Lordy, Geneva, did you decide a heart attack would wake me up better than coffee this morning?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew Lo?” I ask, and then the words start spilling out too fast. “Actually, forget that. Why didn’t you tell me you knew mymom, Edie? That you grew up here?”
She’s very still in the early morning light, the waves making a quiet, rhythmic shushing sound in the background. Finally she sighs, stepping back to rest against the porch railing.
“I don’t know, kid,” she says, her voice soft enough that I lean forward to hear her better. “This place… St. Medard’s. When Ileft, I pretty much had nothing. Your mom had her family, had the inn. Lo had Landon and all these big dreams. Audrey had made sure I didn’t have any of that shit. No family, no home, certainly no dreams. I was… I was pissed off, and sick of everything, so I left and swore I’d never come back, and then…”
Edie sighs again, turning her head to look out at the ocean. Now, for the first time, I can see that she is older than I’d thought. Sixty, like Lo.
Like my mom.
“I don’t know. It’s like no one can ever leave St. Medard’s, not really. Look at Lo. Look atyou.”
She gestures to me, and I fight the urge to squirm as she goes on. “You left here for college, probably thinking you’d visit plenty but never planning on living here again. But it pulled you right back like the town is the moon and you’re the tide.”
“No, whatpulled me right backwas my mom getting sick,” I say, my voice rising along with the anger that’s been building up inside me ever since last night. “And never once, at any point in the lastthree yearsthat I’ve known you, that I’ve worked alongside you, that I’vecriedin front of you about my mom, did you bother to say, ‘Hey, neat thing, Geneva! I actually knew Ellen! I grew up with her and maybe could tell you some stories you’ve never heard, or—or things about her you never knew—or—’”
There are tears in my eyes now, and I scrub them away with a shaking hand.
