Page 48 of No Judgements

But then there were the mysterious explosions. Pop. Pop.Bang. When I’d asked Ed earlier what these sounds were, he said they could be anything—coconuts flying through the air and hitting houses or cars. Trees falling. Transformers exploding. Literally anything. That’s why it was important during hurricanes to keep windows shuttered, tree limbs trimmed, and people out of cars on which trees could topple.

Even farther away was another sound—a roaring, like a crowd in an enormous stadium, cheering on their favorite team or rock idol. That sound, Ed informed me, was the sea. We were fortunate that the storm had hit while the moon was waning, and at low tide. Otherwise, the surge would be much worse. As it was, businesses and homes close to the shoreline could expect to flood... including the Mermaid Café, which Ed and some of the busboys had sandbagged late in the afternoon, when it looked like Little Bridge was going to take a direct hit.

How was Drew faring in such high winds, so close to the sea, in all this darkness? He wasn’t tucked up safe, high on top of a hill, in a comfortable mansion, with a generator providing power for air-conditioning and DVD-watching, with pink-cushioned love seats and warm, delicious food.

Was he all right? What about poor Socks?

I found myself uttering up a little prayer as I stared out into all that storm-tossed darkness. Please take care of him, I prayed. Please take care of that stupid, stubborn, silly man. And his dogs, too.

And then I hastily amended the prayer to include all thepeople I knew in Little Bridge, lest anyone get the idea that I cared more about Drew than, say, Angela. Because that of course was not true.

“Bree!” Nevaeh called from the pullout couch in the living room. “You’re missing it!”

I dragged myself away from the window and joined the girls, though my head—and heart—were elsewhere.

Chapter Eighteen

Landlines and satellite phones can be a valuable resource when power and cell towers fail. It can help to invest in one or more of these if you live in a hurricane-prone area.

Iwoke to the ringing of my phone.

But that was impossible. When I’d gone to sleep the night before, there’d been no cell service.

Maybe service had been restored overnight. Why not? The storm was clearly over. The walls were no longer creaking, and I could see sunlight peeping in through the slats of the shutters over the library window.

I rolled over on the air mattress—disturbing Gary, who’d been curled up comfortably in his customary position against my legs—and grabbed my cell, squinting at it in the morning light.

But no. The screen was black. And my cell wasn’t ringing. Something else very near me was.

I sat up, looked around, and realized that the source ofthe ringing was an old-fashioned telephone sitting on a pedestal table beside the pink-cushioned chair. I hadn’t noticed it before, although beside the phone was, of all things, an old-fashioned answering machine, like Rachel and Monica had had on the television showFriends.

A moment later the answering machine switched on, and I heard Lucy Hartwell’s cheerful voice say, “Hello, you’ve reached the Hartwells! We can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name, number, and a message, we’ll get right ba—”

I heard a click, and then evidently the line was picked up on an extension in another part of the house.

“Hello?” Lucy Hartwell asked.

“Hello? Lucy?” A woman’s voice came on over the machine.

“Oh, Joanne!” Mrs. Hartwell sounded excited to hear from her friend. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, we’re fine, fine. No damage at all, except we lost a few trees. You?”

“Same here. That was quite a storm last night, though, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, terrible, just terrible. Though not as bad as they were saying it was going to be.”

“Oh, nowhere near.” Joanne and Mrs. Hartwell seemed to have no idea that their voices were being recorded, or that I could hear every word they were saying.

“Though my sister Gail called from Chicago. She says on the news, they’re reporting that Little Bridge has been wiped off the face of the map.”

“No!”

“Oh, of course. But not based on any actual reporting, since they never bothered to send any journalists here, before or after the storm. So how would they even know?”

Mrs. Hartwell’s tone was indignant. “Fake news. Was there even any flooding?”

“Well, the lobby of the Cascabel. But it always floods. How is the Mermaid?”