My phone rang, and I grabbed it. “Hey, Mama.”
“Hey, Baby. Why are you still at the shop?”
“Mama, are you tracking my location again?”
“Your daddy insisted on it. Girl, you’ve got this man over here worried sick about you.”
“Do I need to come out and bring ya li’l ass up out of that place?”my daddy asked gruffly in the background.
“No, Daddy. I’ll be leaving soon,” I replied with a soft chuckle.
“Baby, please get off the phone and head home.”
“I am, Mama.”
“If you don’t make it out in the next ten minutes, you need to hunker down in place.”
“Okay, Mama, and I promise to keep you posted,” I declared before we ended the call, knowing that she would be calling me again soon.
A loud tapping sounded at the front door startled me. I tucked my phone back into my purse as I rushed to the front of the shop. I saw Harlem peering through the door with a worried scowl.
I opened the door and let him in.
“Why are you still here?” he asked, walking into the bakery. “You didn’t hear that the tornado is close to our area? They asked everyone to take cover.”
“I know that. What I don’t know is why are you still here?”
“I had to make sure all my workers got out and went home, and then I decided to stay behind and check on some of the older businessowners and make sure they got out of here.”
“Did you get them out?”
“Everyone is gone but you, and that’s a problem for me.”
“I just wanted to secure everything before the storm came. I have too much to lose for me?—”
No sooner than I spoke those words, the power went out. The sound of a loud train whistle could be heard coming toward us in the distance. The power outage was punctuated by a shrill scream that hurt my ears but that I realized came from me.
Harlem pulled me into his arms, and he rushed me toward the rear of the shop for cover. My heart pounded in my chest as fear soaked up everything positive inside of me.
The moment that a tree crashed into the front window and broke it, I was bankrupt and void of hope and faith. I pulled free of his arms and paused, frozen with shock and disbelief because I couldn’t believe what was happening.
The men had just finished that window not even two weeks ago, and it had cost an arm and a leg to get a new plate glass window put in. Now it was no more, which also meant the shop was exposed to the elements, vandalism, and robbers.
“Tegan!” I heard him shouting, but my feet seemed to be rooted to the floor.
I willed them to move, and my brain screamed at me to run, but I couldn’t seem to walk. Thankfully, Harlem’s functions were firing off properly, because he lifted me in his arms and carried me to the storeroom and slammed the door closed behind us. He let me down to my feet as he moved to the rear shelving units.
“We have to get secure and make sure that we’re locked in here,” he explained as he tossed large sacks of flour off the bottom shelving units and onto the floor.
“What are you doing?” I asked, still confused.
“Come here, beautiful.”
I rushed to his side.
He helped me to lay on one of the shelves before he turned and cleared the unit opposite me and then he climbed on it. I was devastated and crying. Fear that we might not make it out poured through me, along with worry about what would happen to my shop, and if I would survive this.
“Baby, we’re going to be okay. Thank God, this happened when it did; otherwise, you and I might have been out there driving when that happened. For whatever reason, we were slowed down, and we were placed together. I know you might be scared, but nothing will happen to you, okay?”
