He crawled from his bed to sit beside her on the bench. She was shaking but he pretended not to notice. He peered through the windshield but couldn’t see anything; the storm clouds had blotted out the moon and the stars. He was about to assure her that it was only a thunderstorm when a flash of lightning lit the sky. Not a single, thick bolt: a bright point that spread sideways across the sky, lighting the clouds overhead like the metal skeleton of an umbrella that had been plugged into a light socket.
Mattie grabbed his arm, her fingers digging into his biceps.
“Wow,” he said. “I’ve never seen sheet lightning this intense before. It’s lighting up the entire sky.”
“Me neither.” Lightning flashed again, quickly followed by a crack of thunder that rattled the van in a rare moment when the wind had died off. “Did you know that statistically it’s the most common kind of lightning?”
“Actually, I did.”
She giggled softly. “Figures. Are we safe in here?” she asked.
“We could run for the bathroom building, but I think that trip would be just as dangerous as staying put,” Dave said. He wrapped his arm around her trembling shoulders. “We have some shelter from the trees dividing the campsites. This van is a lot heavier than a standard van. With the added weight from the trailer, I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere, even if the wind picks up.”
“Oh, no! My decorations!”
“You strapped them down tight. With those steel bases, they’re not moving,” he tried to assure her. Another flash lit the sky. “We might as well enjoy the show.”
Mattie took a deep breath. Then another. She relaxed against him the tiniest bit. “It is pretty spectacular.”
They fell into a comfortable silence. Each flash showed a new cloud formation. Fifteen minutes later, the lightning stopped. Then the skies really opened, rain falling in sheets so hard that they lost sight of the trailer beside them. It pounded on the roof like a drum, filling the van with noise. Eventually it began to ease.
Mattie stopped shaking under his arm. She tilted her head until it rested on his chest.
That was all Dave remembered until the sun in his eyes woke him.
Chapter 5
Mattie
Mattie was dreaming she was dancing, being held in a pair of warm arms as they rocked back and forth to beautiful music, when a spotlight suddenly shone right in her face.
When Mattie opened her eyes, she was greeted by early morning sunshine streaming through the windshield. But that wasn’t the only thing she saw. All thoughts of going back to sleep fled. “Dave! Dave, look!” Water drops shone on the water, refracting light into tiny rainbows on the dashboard. But she pointed past them to the leafy tree branch as thick as her wrist that lay in front of the van.
Mattie scrambled over Dave, who had fallen asleep beside her on her bench bed. She’d woken in the middle of the night to find herself sprawled across Dave’s chest. He hadn’t seemed to have minded; he had his arm around her, holding her in place. She’d been comfortable, and the van was too small for her to sleep anyplace else, so she’d closed her eyes again. Now, she accidentally stepped on his feet as she fumbled with the door handle. She had to see how much damage the storm had wreaked on her Christmas village pieces.
It was blindingly bright outside. Their neighbours were already packing and cleaning up after the storm. Apparently, she and Dave had both slept in, despite the storm having kept them awake so late into the night. She heaved a sigh of relief to find the trailer still firmly attached to the back of the van. After she cleared several branches that had fallen among the pieces, a quick count revealed that everything was still aboard. The crystal arbour at the front had been blown thirty degrees sideways and had pushed all the nearby decorations accordingly. One of the lampposts was missing its lantern top, but she found it under the trailer. “I think the rest is okay. Do you see any damage?”
Dave didn’t answer her. He was on the other side of the van, talking to the twins’ father. Rather than interrupt him, Mattie climbed onto the trailer and tried to haul the massive arch back into position. She’d barely budged it when Dave grabbed the other side. “Thanks.”
“This was no ordinary storm,” he said.
“Yeah, it was super windy.”
“No, I mean, the radio reports say that we were on the edge of a tornado,” he specified. “It touched down between Moose Jaw and Regina.”
She grabbed a lamppost for support. “What? Was anybody hurt?”
“Nobody’s being reported dead, but there are a lot of injuries. It sounds like there was a ton of property damage too.”
“That’s horrible.”
Dave offered his hand to help her off the trailer. It took both of them fifteen minutes to put the trailer and all the decorations to rights. They spent another fifteen piling all the branches from their site with the debris from the campsite next door so both vehicles had a clear path. When Mattie returned from changing and freshening up, she found Dave shaking hands with the father next door. He returned to her grinning.
“Dave the Magnificent has another gig at the end of the month. Curtis asked if I’ll be in the Calgary area at the beginning of September. I told him I would be, so I booked a show for the boys’ birthday party.”
“Congratulations!”
“Thanks.” His grin faded. “I’ve been listening to the radio. The TransCanada east of here is a real mess until the far side of Regina. It’s going to be a slog to get through, and the secondary roads aren’t in any better shape. I think we’d better start now. With any luck, we’ll make it to Hopewell by suppertime, even if it’s only a four-hour drive by the map.”
