She went to knock on the door and hesitated, her fist already raised. Getting on Harriet's radar in a situation like this would probably cause more trouble than good, and despite Cami's inclination to seek out the best in people, she lowered her hand and turned, ready to head home.
The door opened before she could take two steps. "Camilla? Camilla Lavelle?"
Cami grimaced at her formal name, then plastered a smile on her face and turned around. "Hi, Harriet, how are you? I was just taking a walk around the neighborhood and decided I'd stop by and see how everyone was doing."
"Why, whatever would you want to do that for?" Harriet asked, genuinely befuddled. She fiddled with her hair a moment. “Everything's fine. Traffic was atrocious, of course, and unless Henry gets home in the next couple of minutes, I fear we’ll miss our dinner reservations!”
"Oh, that’s dreadful,“ Cami said, unable to think of a better reply in the face of such callous ignorance. "You haven't had any problems with the tsunami?"
"Good heavens, no," Harriet said, placing a hand on her chest. “That wave nonsense is only affecting the coast, anyway.” She flicked her wrist, making the pearl bracelet clink softly. “We’re perfectly safe here. Really, it’s no different than a hurricane, if you ask me. As usual, the media is blowing things totally out of proportion. It’s embarrassing, really.”
“Embarrassing?” stammered Cami, unable to put a coherent sentence together when everything Harriet had just said flew directly in the face of what she’d experienced only hours earlier.
“Yes! If you turn on the news or listen to the radio—really, Camilla, I thought you were smart enough to pay attention to things like that,” Harriet said, adjusting her hair again and looking over Cami’s shoulder. “It’s all the same: breathless reporting about the disaster, everyone competing with each other to see who can have the most dramatic byline music and most shocking infographics. It’s disgusting, really, to use the suffering of a few people so callously.”
“A few?” Cami blurted, feeling heat rise in her cheeks.
“Yes, a few!” snapped Harriet, finally looking Cami in the eyes. “Our country has hundreds of millions of people, and a few thousand of which live along the ocean—”
“We saw hundreds of people drown today, Harriet,” Cami said quietly. “I don’t think their families would agree with you,” Cami added, her voice wavering, powered by the anger she felt growing with every word that dribbled between Harriet’s perfect red lips. “And my husband was on a deep-sea fishing trip…I haven’t heard from him since the waves hit…”
Harriet shifted gears and placed a gentle hand on Cami’s arm. “I’m so sorry to hear that, dear.” Harriet glanced over her shoulder inside her house. She turned back and appeared flustered. “I really must go now, Cami—thank you so much for stopping by, but I expect Henry will be home any moment and I simply must be ready to leave, or we’ll never make our reservation. It’s probably too late anyway, but one must remain optimistic in trying times…don’t you agree?”
Cami blinked as the door closed in her face. She turned, took a step off the porch, then paused and turned back to look at the front door. “What just happened?”
A curtain swished by the narrow window set next to the door and the porch light went out, plunging Cami into darkness. She spun, expecting to see all the lights in the neighborhood out as well, but Marty Price’s house was still lit up like a Christmas tree.
Cami laughed as she headed back down the Spalding’s driveway. She mimicked Harriet’s snobbish accent and muttered, “one must remain optimistic in trying times…”
She shook her head and laughed. By the time she was at the street again, Cami focused on running through the list of chores for the next day. The lights on her own house flickered as she approached the front door. She decided to put reactivating the solar power system at the top of her list.
“If I have to wait for Reese to come home with lights flickering every twenty minutes, I’ll go crazy…” she muttered, stepping back inside her own house.
Chapter 11
Summit Station
Cadillac Mountain
Mount Desert Island, Maine
The little radio in the ranger station turned out to be a shortwave rig that picked up a decent amount of regional frequencies. After listening to his fair share of distress calls and warnings put out by the Coast Guard, Reese cycled through the available radio channels with growing frustration. He kept hearing the same thing: the waves hit with tremendous force and obliterated everything along the coast, then pushed inland and swept the debris ahead like a continuous, miles long wrecking ball.
Reese pushed away from the table and stood, exasperated. The little radio chirped with the incessant emergency alert system, as the original tsunami warning message repeated for the thousandth time. Resigned to the fact that he would not find much news on the radio, he went to check on Ben.
"Anything?" Ben asked, trying to sit up on his elbows in the cot.
Reese collapsed onto a stool next to the cot and leaned back against the cool cinderblock wall. "Nothing. Just the same messages about the Coast Guard telling people to stay away from the shoreline, and how the shoreline is getting ripped apart. There’s no details about anything further than ten or twenty miles out.”
Ben stared at the ceiling. “I’m sure they’re fine,” he muttered.
Reese closed his eyes and contemplated sleep when the front door crashed open. A gaggle of excited voices erupted in the
