Early afternoon he made the trek across the windswept yard to the house for a quick bite to eat. He was surprised to find Betsy alone in the house making peanut butter sandwiches. The girls were upstairs playing.
“She’s not here yet?”
Betsy shook her head. “She just texted from Pensacola though, so she won’t be long. Says the roads are packed.” She gestured to the sandwiches on paper plates in front of her. “Want one?”
“Sure. Thanks.” He washed his hands at the sink, then opened the fridge for something cold to drink.
“Everything going okay out there?”
“As well as it can. Ingrid’s wobbled a little farther east. Now they’re saying somewhere near Bayou La Batre.”
Betsy set down her peanut butter–covered knife and faced him, her hip pressed up against the counter. “That’s bad for us.”
He took a long swig of lemonade. “It could be. Then again, it could keep moving east. They have all these predictions, but I’d rather watch the storm and see what it’s doing. Once it hit the Gulf, it’s been pretty steady north-northeast. If it stays that way, it could skirt past us and hit Florida.” He set his glass down and rubbed his eyes. A few dozen miles could make a big difference in destruction to this town or another one. “I’d rather it not be us, but . . .”
“I know.” Betsy picked up the knife again and spread jelly on the other slices. “You don’t want it to hit anyone.”
“That’d be my preference, yes. It’s gonna be bad somewhere.”
They ate lunch in bursts, interrupted by phone calls and texts from friends and neighbors checking on each other. Before heading back to the barn, Ty found the girls in the den playing with Etta.
“You know what?” he asked.
Addie glanced at him as she rubbed the cat’s back. “What?”
“I think you two are my favorite little people in the whole world.”
Addie grinned but Walsh jumped up to her feet. “I’m not little. I’m strong.” She held her arms up in a muscleman pose.
He kissed them both on top of their heads.
A band of light rain and rumbling thunder was moving through as he descended the back steps. “Let me know when she gets here,” he called back to Betsy, who stood on the porch with one arm holding the screen door open.
She nodded, then glanced up at the rolling sky. With her hair loose around her shoulders and her hand on her hip, she reminded him of a woman carved onto the bow of a ship charging through open waters. Solid, firm, sure. A fixed point.
thirty-eight
Betsy
Hurricane advisory 36. Hurricane Ingrid continues northward toward the Gulf Coast. A warning is in effect from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Apalachicola, Florida. Conditions will deteriorate rapidly within the next 24 hours. Fluctuations in intensity are possible prior to landfall.
Two months ago, Betsy had sat on her front steps unsure of what the arrival of her sister would bring. She’d been nervous, waffling between her desire to love and her fear of withholding love at the same time.
Today was different. Today she knew what Jenna’s arrival would mean.
Anna Beth had come over that morning to sit with the girls for a bit while Betsy helped Ty secure a tarp over the henhouse.
“If I ever meet your sister, I’m going to give her a good talking-to,” Anna Beth said on her way out the door.
“Oh yeah?” Betsy smiled. “And what would you say?”
“Just a good woman-to-woman talk. I could say things you can’t because she’s not my blood. Anyway, you rarely say what you mean and I always do.”
Betsy laughed. “You’re right about that. But I’m trying.”
Anna Beth hugged Betsy and kissed her cheek. “I know you are.”
She walked toward her car in the driveway with a plan to head home and bake cookies. “It’s what I do when these storms come in. I bake till the power goes off, then I eat. It keeps me calm. And fifteen pounds over my goal, but calories consumed during acts of God don’t count. I’ll bring some by if we’re all still here after this thing blows over.” She pulled open her car door and a strong gust of wind blew it closed again. “I still can’t believe your sister is driving here today of all days. She has some timing.”
The air was always the same in the hours before a hurricane hit—strange and swirly, the sky a creepy combination of yellow and gray, the clouds zipping past each other in their constant counterclockwise motion. Bands of wind and rain kicked up, then tapered off, driving up the dense humidity.
Ingrid was still hours away, but late that afternoon, the farm was like a beehive. Carlos and Walker and a few of the other guys helped Ty move vehicles and equipment out of the barn and sheds and to the open fields. Betsy knew they were waiting until the last possible moment to milk the herd before the other men headed out in high winds to their own homes.
Just as a clap of thunder sent the girls running through the drizzle to the cover of the porch, the gravel at the end of the driveway crunched and Jenna’s car finally appeared around the curve. Behind Betsy, the girls gasped and darted back down the steps.
“Hold on.” Betsy put a hand on their shoulders. “Wait until the car stops.”
Jenna opened her car door and stood, then eased it closed behind her. The soft raindrops made dark spots on her blue tank top. Betsy scanned her little sister top to bottom, trying to
