to Charlie.”
“Miranda, it’ll be all right,” Dad said. “I’m in the hallway. There’s a pile of rubble blocking the door. I’ll get Matt. We’ll dig you out. Lisa, can you hear me?”
“Hal!” Lisa yelled. “Hal! It’s Charlie. I think he’s dead!”
“Lisa, I can’t get to you,” Dad said. “There’s too much debris. I’m going to get Matt and we’ll dig Miranda out first, and then we’ll get you. All right, darling? Is Gabriel all right?”
“Please.” Lisa sobbed. “Get us out, Hal, please.”
“We will, darling,” Dad said. “You’ll be out before you know it. But first we’ll get Miranda so she can help us. Miranda, relax if you can. You’ll be out in no time.”
“Is Mom all right?” I cried. “Daddy?”
“She’s fine,” Dad said. “So’s Syl. We’ll be back in a minute. Hold on, Miranda. Just a few more minutes.”
I hadn’t heard him come in, because of Lisa and Gabriel crying. But I could hear him leave, and the sound of his moving away from me left me even more shaken.
I told myself to calm down. Dad and Matt would get me out and I’d be fine. Mom and Syl had survived. Lisa might be wrong about Charlie. Alex and Jon and Julie had to be all right. They just had to be. We all did. We’d survived worse, I told myself. We’d get through this together.
I realized then how tightly I was grasping Alex’s missal, and I thought, I can’t let Matt see this. If Matt knew I’d gone for the missal instead of warning Mom and Syl, he would never forgive me.
I knew there could only be one reason why Alex had told me to get it. The passes to the safe town had to be there.
I was in complete darkness, and I didn’t have one of my flashlight pens with me. I held the missal upside down, and an envelope fell out.
I felt it. There were certainly papers in it, and something else, something like tiny buttons.
They were pills, I realized. The sleeping pills Alex had told me about. Pills to allow Julie to sleep through her death.
I slid the envelope under my shirt and tucked the missal into the corner of the closet. Matt would never know. I’d give the envelope to Alex, and we’d go off together just as we’d planned. Dad and Lisa and the baby were fine. Julie would be secure in the safe town, and when she was, Alex could throw the pills away. He and I would make our life together. We’d have our tomorrows.
I could hear them then, Dad and Matt and Syl. When I heard Syl’s voice, I knew Mom really was all right and I would be also.
“There’s a lot of debris here,” Dad said. “Miranda, we’ll get you out, but it’s going to take a few minutes. Just let us know you’re okay, and then don’t worry about it.”
“I’m fine, Dad,” I said, crying and laughing. “Take your time.”
Dad made a sound I decided was laughter. I listened as he, Matt, and Syl worked together, clearing a pathway to the door. In the background I could hear Lisa crying and Dad calling out to her, telling her everything would be all right.
I felt the envelope against my chest. I told myself Alex was alive, that I’d give him the envelope, and if he had ever needed proof of my love, he never would again.
I don’t know how long it took before I could hear Dad pull the door open. A few minutes maybe, or forever. I felt him before I could see him. Dark as it was in the hallway, my eyes still had to adjust to the dim light. But it didn’t matter. Dad grasped me and pulled me out.
“You have to be careful, honey,” he said. “There’s garbage all around, broken glass. Hold on to me, and we’ll get you outside.”
I followed him blindly, stumbling over the remains of Mrs. Nesbitt’s house, my second home. Slowly I realized there was no house left. It had collapsed all around me, only the staircase keeping me from being crushed to death.
After we made it outside away from the rubble, I held on to Dad and let his strength pass to me. Then I hugged Matt and Syl. Nothing that had been said last night mattered. Nothing mattered anymore except that they were alive.
“Jon?” I asked. “Julie? Alex?”
Dad shook his head. “We don’t know where they are,” he said. “We thought Alex was with you.”
“He went to warn Jon and Julie,” I said. “But Mom’s all right? You said she’s all right.”
“I’ll take you to her,” Syl said. “Come, Miranda, you’ll see she’s fine.”
“Come back as soon as you can,” Matt said. “We’ve got to work on getting Lisa out.”
“I know,” Syl said. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.” She put her arm around my shoulders and led me toward home.
Within seconds I was standing in the sunroom, in Mom’s arms. She held me so tightly I wasn’t sure I could ever move away. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to. I know she was crying, but that was all right, too.
“Miranda, we need you to help clear out the rubble,” Syl said. “You too, Laura. Come on.”
“No,” Mom said. “I’ll wait for Jon here. He’ll expect to find me here.”
“He’ll find us,” Syl said. “You can’t use him as an excuse, Laura. Lisa’s life depends on you.”
“If Mom wants to stay here, let her,” I said.
“Stop protecting her, Miranda,” Syl said. “Laura, you talk all the time about how the baby is the most important thing. Well, prove it, and come with us.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Mom said. “I know it’s crazy, but I’m so afraid if I leave this house, everything will collapse. I feel like I’m the only person holding things together.”
“Everything has collapsed,” Syl said. “You’ve done a sucky job holding things together, Laura.” She grabbed Mom’s arm and literally pulled her out of the sunroom. “See,” she said. “The world came to an end while you’ve been hiding. Now move!”
I stood absolutely still. But then Mom began running toward Mrs. Nesbitt’s, toward what had been Mrs. Nesbitt’s but was now nothing but a mountain of rubble. Syl and I followed her. I can’t be sure, but I think Syl was smiling.
The debris around the cellar door was much higher than what Dad and I had climbed over. It was taller than we were. And it wasn’t like you could take a piece from the bottom and work your way upward.
“Miranda, get the ladder from the garage,” Matt said.
I ran to the garage, glad to have a job I could handle. The garage looked completely untouched, but when I walked out with the ladder, I looked at our house. There was a tree limb lying across the roof, and I could see windows had blown out and part of the roof was missing.
Even so, we were the lucky ones.
I walked back with the ladder. Matt placed it against the rubble mountain.
“I’ll climb up,” Syl said. “Miranda, are you up to it?”
I nodded. We climbed the ladder until we were on top of the heap and began throwing what we could as far away from the house as possible.
“Shouldn’t one of us go look for the others?” I asked. “What if they need us?”
“They probably do,” Syl said. “But we don’t know where they are, and we do know where Lisa and the baby are. We have to take care of them and hope that the others find their way back home.”
I knew she was right, but I hated hearing her say it. Being outside, surrounded by mountains of debris, made me understand for the first time how devastating this tornado had been. Mrs. Nesbitt’s house had taken the brunt of it, but there was no way of knowing how things were farther downhill, closer to town. I began to shake again.
Syl grabbed my arm and squeezed it tight. “Don’t think,” she said. “Just work.”
There was room for three, and Mom climbed up also. She didn’t say anything, just worked alongside, being careful, as we all were, to toss the shingles and roofing as far as possible from where we thought the cellar door was. The mound felt solid beneath us, which was both a relief and frightening. We weren’t about to fall through, I knew, but it was going to take a very long time to remove enough of it to make a difference.
I don’t know how long we worked, throwing things down, while Matt carefully removed what he could from the outer rim of the pile. Dad worked on the side of the house, by one of the tiny cellar windows, clearing it out, so we could talk with Lisa and get things to her until we could get her out.
The hail had stopped and the thunderstorm had moved away. We could still see flashes of lightning in the
