Belle laughed a little. “You don’t have to marry me to have sex with me, Meryl.”
“Yeah, I do.”
She stared at him, feeling confused, not sure whether to be disappointed or glad.
“We’re going to get married first,” Meryl told her, “if you ever remember to say yes.”
“What about your wet clothes?” she asked, feeling stupid the second after she said it.
“They’re going to get wetter because I’m going on home.”
“Did you come here just to ask me to marry you?”
“Yeah.” Meryl grinned. “Come hell or high water.”
“Are we in love?”
“I’m pretty sure we are, Belle.”
“Yes!” she said. “I’ll marry you, Meryl Tapper.”
He kissed her without holding her, for fear of soaking her, but Belle wasn’t having any of that kind of restraint. She pulled him toward her, wrapped her arms around him and got just as wet as he was.
WORKING ON his third beer can, Bobby peered through the heavy rain and recognized a truck that splashed by.
“What’s Hugh-Jay doing here?” he asked the storm. He was positive that was his eldest brother’s truck, the one that was supposed to be in Colorado by now. Bobby raised up out of the chair so he could follow the truck’s rear lights down the dark street. It was hard to see, so he could have been wrong, except there wasn’t another silver truck like that in Rose.
He watched Hugh-Jay’s truck turn left, toward the big stone house.
15
WHEN ANNABELLE AWOKE the following morning, with Jody warm and sleeping beside her, she knew by the blessed silence that the rain had finally stopped. The storm front had moved on to terrorize eastern Kansas. Batten down your hatches, she thought sympathetically. All night she’d been plagued by awful nightmares that she blamed on the storm. They had awakened her several times, and each time she’d felt an urgent need to do something, without knowing what.
It was a relief to wake up this time, even if she was still tired.
As soon as she looked at her bedside clock, she knew the power was still out, and when she quietly lifted a telephone receiver, she didn’t get a dial tone.
Judging by the slant of the sun, she gauged it to be around 5:00 A.M.
She slipped out of bed without waking her granddaughter and took a moment to look back and enjoy the sight of her, all rumpled and flushed with sleep, with her arms flung out. That vision of innocence smoothed the sharp edge of disquiet that followed Annabelle as she put on a robe and went downstairs. She made her first cup of coffee with water boiled on her gas stove, and then carried it out into her yard to check on the damage. She hated instant coffee, but any caffeine port in a storm, she thought as she sipped it and then made a face at it.
The morning had a mildewy smell.
She clasped the mug in both hands, not minding the heat of it.
She observed that her abandoned flower beds had finally been watered, albeit much too late and too heavily to save them. Their poor little root systems were drowned now, after having been parched first. The soil around them-the dirt she worked so hard to improve every single year-would turn to hard-pack clay again. It was the kind of ruined garden soil that cracked when it was wet and when it was dry. If she wanted to make bricks, she could do that with the hopeless soil; it was flowers that she wasn’t going to get this year.
Annabelle sighed with regret for all that beauty lost.
But she perked up at the sight of intact roofs on the house, barn, and other outbuildings. She felt astonished to see only a few shingles blown off and a slat of wood or two. She saw no fences down around the house, either, and thought bitterly that it took a man with wire clippers to do that, darn him.
“We got off easy,” she said to herself, feeling a little guilty.
She was sure that many people had not escaped so easily.
She needed to feed the dogs and horses, but the remainder of the daily chores could wait until her men came home. She tossed the execrable coffee onto the ground and hurried back inside. She was worried about Rose and anxious to get Jody dressed so they could drive into town to see how their little town-and their family-had weathered the storm.
ANNABELLE AND JODY had no problem getting past the low place in the highway. The high water had drained back into the creek by then, leaving only muddy traces of its raging self. She was shocked to see-by the vegetation clinging to fence rails-how high the water had risen over the road.
Whitecaps! she thought, but stopped herself from saying it aloud, because if she did, she’d need to explain to Jody what they were, and she was too tired to answer any “Why, Grandma’s?” Jody was cranky from being pulled out of bed sooner than her body wanted to rise. A big breakfast would help both of them. Annabelle’s plan was to round up Hugh, Belle, Chase, Bobby, and Jody’s mother and herd them over to the Leafy Green Truck Stop for breakfast. The place didn’t look like much, but it served the best pancakes in four counties, even better than she herself could make from scratch. The family rarely went out to eat all together, because why pay money when they could eat just as well-except for pancakes-at her table?
Why do it now? Annabelle yawned. So I don’t have to cook, that’s why!
In spite of her urgent need for better coffee, she took an alternate route to town so she could drive past a local landmark, a set of famous rock monuments that rose high above the ground, looking like a natural, bigger, taller Stonehenge, a startling contrast to the rest of the flat landscape. Testament Rocks, as they were known, attracted about the only tourists her county ever saw-archaeologists, geologists, and paleontologists, for the most part. A great inland sea had once surged through this area, an enormous body of water replete with prehistoric sharks and other seafaring creatures; later, a vast river took its place. Just to look at Testament Rocks gave Annabelle the sense of being part of something bigger, something almost incomprehensibly old that changed so slowly the alterations were nearly imperceptible unless you watched them for a lifetime. Only erosion, pollution, earthquakes, or dynamite could alter this landscape; cataclysmic change came rarely, but it did come now and then. The head of a high rock formation known as the King had been shattered by lightning a few years before, and she still mourned its disfigurement.
Annabelle didn’t drive out to the Rocks, which would have taken too long.
She simply slowed down when she could see them in silhouette in the distance. From that angle, they all looked as she remembered them; the storm had not visibly affected them.
As always, she felt steadied by the sight of them.
“Why are we going so slow, Grandma?”
“So we can see the Rocks, sweetheart.”
“I don’t want to see rocks.”
The early morning light was hitting the Rocks just right to turn them a spectacular white-gold that made them look as if they’d been painted there against the sky, because surely no rocks in nature could shine that brightly. Annabelle thought about insisting that her granddaughter look and appreciate their beauty, then remembered that the child was only three and that her tummy was probably hungry enough to feel as if it had rocks rumbling around inside of it.
“What do you want to see instead?”
“Daddy. And pancakes.”
Annabelle decided not to ask for trouble by explaining that Hugh-Jay wouldn’t be home for a while yet, and maybe not for a day or two.
“Do you want to see butter, too?”
“Yes!”
“Maple syrup?”
“Yes! And Mommy.”
“That we can handle.”
