“This is an emergency,” he said.
“Which is why I think it would be better if I stayed with your mother,” Tracy replied, more firmly now. “You take Emma and go. Safely. Okay?”
At the desk behind us, all the phones were ringing at once as rain lashed the windows. Someone came in the automatic doors. No one yelled, “Welcome to the Tides!”
“Fine,” he said. Then he gave her a kiss. “We’ll call once we’re on our way. Stay here, yes?”
“Yes,” she said, walking to a nearby table and holding out a chair so Nana could sit down. My phone, in my pocket, buzzed again. Trinity.
“We’re coming,” I said as I answered. “Hang tight.”
“I can’t find her!” she said. Her voice was high, scared. “I’ve looked everywhere!”
“Okay, okay,” I said, glancing at my dad, who hadoverheard this. “Just... we’ll be there soon.”
It was, after all, only three miles. But when we went to the valet stand for the car, no one was there. The rain was coming down sideways.
“Well,” my dad said, glancing around for a moment. Then he opened the door to the valet stand, which held all the keys, scanning them until he found his own. “I guess we’ll go look for it ourselves.”
I followed him down a path to the parking garage. Inside, we looked up at the two stories of cars, some of them double-parked. “Any idea where to start?” I asked.
“At the beginning,” he said, starting to jog up to the next level. “Come on.”
The good news: we found his Audi at the very start of level two. The bad: it was parked right against a wall and blocked in by a huge SUV directly behind it.
“What thehell,” he said, eyeing it. “This is insane. We’ll never get it out.”
My phone was ringing again, but I couldn’t stop to answer it. Instead, I walked around to the Audi, which actually had some space ahead of it. “I think I can back it out.”
“You can’t even get in there!”
“I can try,” I said, gesturing for him to throw me the keys. He did, and I unlocked the car, then stuffed myself in the small space on the side away from the wall, inching down between it and the car beside it, a Mercedes. “I think I can crawl in the window, if I can get it open.”
“This is crazy and stupid,” he said. “We shouldn’t evenbe trying to get out of here. Doesn’t she have family that can come help her?”
“Weareher family,” I said.
He just looked at me as, although my insides felt compressed to the point of flattening, I finally made it to the passenger door. I eased it open about an inch, which was all the give there was, before sticking my hand in and wiggling it around until I found the window button. Because the key was in my hand, it went down. Thank God. I pitched myself in, crawling behind the wheel.
“There’s not enough—” my dad was saying, but I ignored him as I started the engine. We’d practiced parking endlessly before my test, in the garage under Nana’s building, before I’d hit that car and gotten spooked. No time for fear now. I put the car in reverse, easing back a tiny bit.
“Okay,” my dad said, coming around to the front. “That’s as far as you’ve got before the bumper. Now go for—”
I already was, inching up, the wheel turned as far as it would go. Then back. Then up again. Slowly, I began to make a space between the Audi and the SUV, although it took another ten passes or so before it was wide enough to reverse out entirely. But I did it. My phone was ringing the entire time.
“All right,” my dad said. He looked as surprised as I’d ever seen him. “Now, let me behind the wheel.”
“I’m already here,” I said. “Just get in.”
He paused, as if he was going to resist this, but then climbed into the passenger seat. I hit the gas as soon as hisdoor swung shut behind him.
Out in front of the hotel, it was crazy windy, the trees bent sideways, rain pelting the glass as I tried to peer through it. We passed a couple of Tides employees, running toward Campus, as I turned onto the road. A layer of water was running across it.
“Flooding,” my dad said. “Go very slow and don’t brake.”
I did as he said until we were past it, then sped up. My phone rang again. “Can you get that?” I asked. “It’s probably Trinity.”
He picked it up. “Hello? Trinity? Look, we’re on our way... Celeste? It’s Matthew.”
