Everything was as it had been. The only hint that the world had turned over was the slight scent of acrid smoke that wafted through the air. It was faint, but enough of a reminder that across town homes and cars had burned.
It had been two days since the tornado pounced on a section of Briar Falls Estates two miles away. It came almost without warning and left a jagged swathe of destruction that stole the hard work of homeowners and gardeners in ten minutes' time. Roofs had been peeled off. Play sets and bi cycles hurled into trees. There was no making sense of whose house had been spared and whose hadn't. Destruction reigned on the west side of Hawes Avenue, while the east side remained pristine. Across the street from a home that had been nearly ripped in two, a birdbath stood without a drop spilled over its chipped stone rim.
No one died. It was true that an elderly lady who had holed up in her bathroom was in bad shape and had been hospitalized. Emily expected that the woman, in her eighties, would survive despite her trauma. The lady was a retired junior high social studies teacher with a classroom assignment that indicated she was tougher than most. After all, if she could endure teenagers of the 1960s, she'd survive the tornado, too.
Emily stepped into the foyer. As she set down her purse on an antique walnut console table, its contents shifted. Her detective's badge holder slipped out along with a pink lipstick she wished she'd used up and could toss. But she was thrifty and, despite the fact that it didn't really work with her dark brown hair and eyes, she'd wear it until it was gone. She scooted the badge and lipstick tube back inside the pouch and called out for her daughter.
'Jenna? I'm home'
The scent of cinnamon toast and an empty glass of milk on the counter indicated Jenna was somewhere in the house. Emily didn't wait for a response.
'I'm going to take a shower. Then let's go out and get something to eat'
'Okay, Mom,' a voice finally came from down the hall. 'I'm on the phone. I'll talk to you when you're out. I'm hungry. Take a fast shower!'
Emily smiled. Jenna was seventeen, but still very much her little girl. It was just the two of them now. David had left for Seattle and become a somewhat shadowy figure since the divorce was final. There had been a few dates with new men even a kind of serious affair with a local lawyer. Cary McConnell was too possessive and controlling and Emily had enough of that with her first and only-marriage. Cary still called but she avoided him whenever she could. That wasn't easy. Cherrystone, Washington, was a town of less than 15,000 people. She was in the courthouse two or three times a week. So was he.
Emily snake-hipped out of her black skirt, unbuttoned her blouse, and let it fall to the floor. She was slender, blessed with long legs and a figure that looked more twenty than forty, which she was approaching on her next birthday. She twisted the shower knob with the red H all the way to the left. The C was moved a quarter turn. The old pipes clanked and steam swirled. Emily liked hot water.
'Pietro's?' she called out before stepping inside the whiteand-black tiled interior. 'I'm thinking pizza.'
Of course she really wasn't. She was thinking of the tornado and its aftermath. Twisters were rare occurrences in Washington state. Only a handful of damaging storms had been recorded there; the worst had been one that killed eleven people near Walla Walla in 1952. The twister that came to Cherrystone on Saturday had howled in the darkness and snatched up all in its wake. Houses and cars were shredded in a giant steel-toothed blender. A dairy near the junction of Wayne Road and U. S. 91 had been so pulverized that a magnifying glass was needed to determine what color the barn paint had been before the storm. The Cherrystone Granary was flattened, which meant already scarce jobs instantly had become even more limited. Five trucks, carefully parked in a row after the shift change, had been tossed to their absolute ruin. Power lines snapped like frayed jute. A semi was lifted more than a hundred yards and slammed into a hillside.
Emily tilted her head backward; hot water beyond a temperature most could endure flowed over her body, sending the stress of the freak storm, and the worries of a long day, down the drain. Stepping from the shower, Emily wrapped a thick cotton towel around her body. She bent over, wrapped a second one around her head, then flipped her hair back. She called once more to Jenna.
'You never answered, honey. Is Pietro's all right?'
Again, silence.
Steam swirled and Emily flipped on the bathroom fan. A moment later, she slipped on a terry robe and padded down the hall to Jenna's room-a space that had been her own bedroom when she was a girl. A rectangle of yellowed glue on the door revealed the spot were she'd once put up a 'NO BOYS ALLOWED' sign to keep her little brother, Kevin, at bay. With each step, a memory. Through a knife-slit of light in the doorway, she could see Jenna typing out a message on her silvery Apple iBook computer. Jenna was a little small for her age. Her stature didn't diminish her; it only made her stand out. Long hair like her mother's framed her delicate heart-shaped face. Her eyes were blue, the cool color of the Pacific. She tapped on the keyboard with frosted pink fingernails, chipped and ready for another mother/daughter manicure session in front of one of the Law and Orders on TV
Emily pushed open the door, startling Jenna, who looked up with a frozen smile.
'Oh, Mom, I didn't hear you' She closed the chat window and swung around to face her mother.
'Are you up to no good?' Emily asked, allowing a smile to come to her lips. Deep down, the very idea of her daughter chatting with anyone was more than she could take. She'd seen the way perverts worked the keyboards of personal computers and stalked their prey-unsuspecting children in seemingly safe and cozy homes all across America.
'Just talking with Shali,' she said. 'And yes, we were up to no good. There's a nice guy who wants to meet us at the Spokane Valley Mall next weekend. He says he looks like Justin Timberlake and Jude Law. Combined.'
Emily sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing out the sateen spread.
'He does, does he?' She knew when her daughter was pulling her leg and she started to play along. 'Maybe I could meet him, too?'
Jenna shook her head. 'Sorry, Mom, but you're too old for him. Shali and I are probably too old for him. He seemed to lose interest when we said we were old enough to drive.'
'That's not funny'
'Sick, I know.'
'You know how I worry.'
'And you know that you don't have to worry about me. I know the drill. I don't make mistakes. My mom is a cop, you know.'
'So I've heard' Emily removed the towel from her head and shook out her hair. 'I'm not going to dry this mess. Let's get out of here and eat. I'm beat'
Jenna grinned. 'Okay. Jude Timberlake can wait.'
With that, Emily returned to her bedroom, where she put on a pair of faded jeans and a cream-colored boatneck sweater. She looked in the mirror and gave herself a once-over.
'Not bad for almost forty,' she said, loud enough for Jenna to hear, which, of course, she did. 'Maybe this Jude Law lookalike of Jenna's would be interested in an old chick like me'
Jenna appeared in the doorway and put her hands on her hips.
'You're disgusting,' she said, a smile widening on her pretty face. 'Shali and I had him first'
Monday, 7:16 EM.
Twenty minutes later they were sitting in a maroon and black vinyl booth at Pietro's, the only place in Cherrystone that made pizza that didn't taste like it came from the frozenfood section of the Food Giant. Emily was grateful that Jenna had outgrown the 'cheese-only' topping option for something a little more adventurous pepperoni and black olives. Emily ordered a beer and Jenna nursed a soda.
'You know, you don't need to order diet cola, honey.'
Jenna swirled the crushed ice with a pair of reed-thin plastic straws. 'You mean I'm not fat? Yeah, I know. But I'm hedging my bets. I've seen the future. Look at Grandma Anna'
'Jenna! That's not nice.' Emily tried to act indignant, but Grandma Anna was her ex-husband's mother and it was true that she had thick thighs. 'Besides, your body shape is more from my side of the family.'
Jenna drew on her straws and nodded. 'Thank God'
The pair sat and ate their pizza, but their mood shifted when the conversation turned to the storm. 'We are lucky. All of us. The tornado ravaged those homes on Hawes, but no one was killed.' Emily swallowed the last of her beer, regarding the foamy residue coating the rim of the schooner. 'I don't use the word lightly, you know, but it
