They crossed the Mid-Bay Bridge behind a line of trucks that stretched south as far as she could see. Peter had texted them a route of cleared streets from a deputy’s map of where it was safe to drive and where it was not. Dusty followed it with focused patience even when the route was wrong, the detour was long, and Olive had to stop and go potty again.
The big black F-150 rolled them past one stripped subdivision after another. Broken trees and scattered branches were everywhere. Whole pines down across yards. Lanais collapsed into pools, screens hanging off frames like ripped curtains. Traffic lights dark. Stop signs gone. A boat stuck in mangroves in Bluewater Bay that made Tessa gush withgratitude that Dusty had taken the time to getGood Time Girlin drydock.
“Don’t look,” Dusty said, more than once, kindly.
“I have to look.”
“Okay, but you don’t have to look at all of it.”
In her car seat in the back, Olive currently had Wingo in a headlock under one arm and an empty Goldfish bag in her lap, looking out the window quietly. Poor angel, Tessa thought. How upside-down can one little girl’s world be?
Once they got off 98, they threaded their way along a warren of side streets lined with condos and townhouses leading to the beach. Here, the damage ranged from not-so-bad toholy heck, they lost part of their roof.
Twice, Dusty had to back up and attempt another route, which was surprising, considering they were only trying to go about six blocks. Very few people were around, since only the hard-cores stayed and everyone else evacuated.
Without the benefit of Peter’s inside information, they’d still be an hour away from Miramar Beach like everyone else was.
Finally, they reached the beach road, which was technically called “Scenic Gulf Drive” but only to tourists. With each passing second, Tessa’s stomach tightened.
She could see the water mark now on every house—a sickening brown line two and a half, sometimes three feet up the stucco of each home.
The same mudline was on every fence, on every garage door, on the side of a delivery van somebody had abandoned in a yard. The line was…everything. Proof of how high the water had gotten during the worst of the storm surge.
Most of the water was nearly gone, drained back to the Gulf or down into the storm drains or pooled in low spots. But the line stayed, like the tide had marked itself on every vertical surface for half a mile.
Finally, they reached the little cul-de-sac of humble and overpriced houses that they had been so proud to call home.
There were six houses on their street, and Tessa knew most of the neighbors in the ones that weren’t short-term rentals. The Bremers were two houses up—Mike and Millie? Mark and Mary? Tessa didn’t remember their first names. The young family with the twins next to them. A retired couple from New Jersey who bought around the same time Dusty and Tessa did. Two local guys who bought to flip and sell.
Every home on the street wore the line.
Standing water still lay in most of the street, not a lake, but several inches deep in some spots. Dusty rolled the truck through it slowly, the tires leaving a dirty wake behind them. Tessa watched a Tonka dump truck and a pink flip-flop and somebody’s plastic patio chair float aimlessly past.
The Bremers were out in their driveway. He was in waders and she wore a beach cover-up and soaked sneakers. They had already piled sodden furniture on the curb, enough that it looked like it could be the entirety of their downstairs.
Mr. Bremer raised one hand in a slow, tired wave. Dusty raised his back.
Next, the young father with the twins was walking the perimeter of his yard with a phone to his ear and a long stick poking at what Tessa hoped wasn’t a snake. Or…gator?
“Wingo see house?” Olive piped up from the back.
“We’re almost there, honey.”
“Okay.”
Dusty pulled the truck into the driveway and turned off the engine, but neither of them moved for a beat.
Their house stood, so that was a good thing.
The two stories of pale yellow siding and white trim that they had bought together a few months ago, the place she hadthought of as theirs almost before the ink dried, was still right where they had left it.
The roof looked intact from the front. The windows they had boarded were still covered in wet plywood. Somebody else’s patio umbrella was lying across what used to be a bed of flowers in the front.
And along the first floor, there was the line, three feet from the ground, smooth and level and exact. The siding looked a little greener than it had when they closed on the place, like the chlorophyll from all the trees had stuck to it.
Tessa opened the window and was immediately sorry. The world smelled…bad.
“Okay,” Tessa said, mostly to herself.
