Only two more windows to go.
The wind gusts around me, swirling in a chaotic, blinding blur. Still, I reach the next window—higher than the others—and I have to stand on tiptoes to reach it. My fingers shake as I latch it closed, then feel the whoosh of something else ripping past me, just behind my head. I flinch away but feel the sting at my temple.
I touch my face, blood coming away on my fingertips. More debris tumbles through the air, ripped out to sea. I can’t tell what it is—maybe tiles from the roof.
I only have one more window to secure, when I feel a hand on my arm. I wince back instinctively, but Clay is there, grabbing me. He says something I can’t make out. He’s soaked, hair slicked against his forehead, hands muddied.
“Get inside!” he shouts again, and this time I understand.
But I shake my head, pointing to the window.
He steps around me, grabs the shutter forcefully and slams it into place, locking it closed. In the next motion, his hand reaches for me, and he’s pulling me toward the house. We scramble up the porch, ducking inside, the door banging shut behind us. I sink to the floor, rainwater dripping around me. But the house is not silent. There are still shutters clattering against the walls on the second floor. Clay makes for the stairs. I listen to his rushed footsteps across the floor, and then the clapping of windows being pulled open, followed by the thud of shutters secured into place. Everything goes dark.
A moment later, I feel his arms around me, lifting me up and placing me on the couch. “Yer bleeding.” He brings a damp cloth from the kitchen, presses it to my temple.
“I’m all right,” I assure him. The wind roars against the house, the walls rattle, the floor vibrates beneath us, like the whole thing is about to splinter apart. “Have you ever seen a storm this bad?” I ask, trembling beneath his hands.
He shakes his head. “This is no storm. It’s a hurricane.”
I remember watching news reports when tropical storms tore through the Caribbean, then made their way up the eastern seaboard. But I’ve never lived through one.
I imagine the warnings blaring across TVs back on the mainland,urging residents to evacuate their homes or to shelter in place, describing the carnage locals could expect to see. They’ve surely named this storm something like Bernadette or Rhonda, as if it were an angry woman, thrashing across the sea, seeking revenge.
But without these reports, we have no idea how bad the storm will get. Is it a Category 2 or 5? How dangerous are the gusts currently tearing against the house?
We stay in the living room, in the darkness, close to the front door, listening to the storm throw itself against the island, until the rattling groan from the walls changes pitch—becomes a deep splintering sound, as if the farmhouse is about to break apart under the weight of the wind. Clay shakes his head, looks resolute, then takes my hand and leads me down into the cellar, where the air is musty and cold and ancient.
The force of the storm is muted, but in an unnatural way. And it’s almost worse than the creaking and snapping of the house. A narrow window faces the back of the island, but it’s dusty, never opened, and it only allows in the faintest light—a watery grayness that makes the cellar even more unsettling.
“How long will it last?” I ask, perched on a wood bench against the cold stone wall lined with mason jars.
“No telling.”
He sits, pulling me into his arms. Still, I shiver, not just from the dampness of my skin, but from fear. Clay tries to appear steady, composed, but I know him too well, and I can see the strain in him.
He’s never endured a storm like this before, and he has no idea if the house will hold, or even the island. The whole thing might crack apart—rock and clotted soil, separating under the force of the wind and violent waves.
If the house tears away from the foundation, will we be ripped out with it? Two human forms, arms and legs flapping, sent out into the deep of the ocean. Even if we survived the storm, we wouldn’t survivebobbing alone in the sea, defenseless, without land, without water. Without a life raft.
I sink my forehead into his chest, absorbing his warmth. The broad weight of his arms is a cocoon protecting me from it all. As if he were strong enough to stop a hurricane.
We stay like this, silent, listening to the wind.
Occasionally he stands up, leaving me on the bench, and walks to the little window, looking out into the gray, trying to see something. But there is only the rain and the wet sky, and debris gusting past.
“If we don’t make it—” I start to say, but he pulls me against his chest, a hand at the back of my skull. He doesn’t let the thought materialize.
But he also doesn’t assure me that we will make it. He doesn’t say a thing.
I think about my funeral. Nana and James standing over an empty grave.
She surely died out there, people will say. In the cold, hostile Atlantic, no one could survive for more than a few minutes. They won’t know that I died much farther south, in the warm Caribbean Sea, caught in a hurricane, in the arms of a man who should have perished decades ago. A tombstone will mark my name, my birth, but the exact date of my death will be unknown.
Tears make soft trails down my cheeks until the fear in my chest is so heavy it pulls me into an awful, fitful sleep. I dream of a blue heron, perched on the highest peak of the house. I run outside, screaming at it, shouting for it to leave us alone. I’m not sure why I’m so angry. Why I’m so afraid of the bird.
My eyes snap open, and Clay is sliding his arms out from under me. “Tried not to wake ye,” he whispers.
I sit upright. At the window, a dull wash of light filters through the dust. Sunrise, I think.
