Page 71 of The Final Storm
“Why couldn’t you stand up to him?” I ask her. But it’s not her. This is a shadow of what she once was. A scared and weak woman, so different from the one riding her horse in my earlier vision, years before things spun so out of control.
“I’ll be back,” she calls in my mother’s direction. The screen shows the presumed path of the first big storm - the first global killer. The newscasters had it wrong, and the millions that fled ended up in its path, destined for death. Maybe the man talking on the screen knew and couldn’t bring himself to tell us. Either way, it doesn’t matter now. No one could imagine the terror the storms would bring, and no one would have believed it until the first storm hit.
My mother doesn’t respond. She sinks lower in her recliner and changes the channel.
I follow my sister out the door and see BeLew sitting on the steps. “Be good boys,” she calls as she gallops down. “Don’t go inside and bother grandma.”
“Okay,” they respond in unison, crashing their toy trucks together.
She jumps into our truck, and it roars to life. I slip in beside her and watch her put it in drive without a seatbelt. She’s going somewhere close. I spin around in my seat and see the damage the weather has done over the past few years.
Our field looks barren, and dead trees have fallen everywhere. I remember thinking it could only get better after this, but that was foolish. Things got so much worse.
I appear on her left, my horse galloping alongside her. I turn and smile, but she doesn’t look at me, so I canter left, leaving us. My sister keeps driving and pulls off into Dean’s drive, throwing the truck in park and stepping out. The laces of her untied boots flop at her feet, and she doesn’t close the driver’s side door, stomping toward his door.
I jog after her, looking over the building that Dean and his father built. It’s finished now, and I shudder, remembering my last vision from here.
She bolts into Dean’s side door without knocking, and I slide through myself, letting the door pass through half my body. The smell of coffee fills the kitchen, and Dean brings a cup to his lips, a sly smile across his face.
“Morning,” he yawns. “So kind of you to drop by at this fine hour.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she shrieks at him, the door banging behind us, slamming a few times before it comes to a stop.
Dean turns and leans against the counter, holding the cup with two hands. His expression is blank, unmoved by her emotional entry.
“It’s early. What do you want?”
“I want to know why you’re threatening to take my boys with you. They are my children, and you have no right,” she screams.
“There are lots of children being taken to safe havens, just until this storm passes. I’ll be with them on deployment. Don’t you want your children safe?”
“They won’t be safe with you. I won’t allow it. Do you hear me? You’ll have to pry them out of my cold, dead hands.”
Her finger points at Dean, but it shakes. She’s terrified, and I don’t know what’s going on. I think back to this time. Dean gets deployed again sometime around the first storm, and he doesn’t come back. I get an email from him after he leaves, instructing me how to get on board the Thalassa. There’s luggage in the room’s corner, and I try to find something with a date in the kitchen.
“Have you talked to your husband about this? I have his blessing.” Dean responds.
“Fuck my husband, and fuck you. I know why you want them, Dean, and you’re wrong.”
He sets down the cup of coffee and takes a step closer to her. She doesn’t move, but I see her flinch. “Now, Morgan. I just want to keep them safe-”
“It’s not them with the gift,” she cuts him off. She paces in a circle, her hands on her hips.
Dean’s lips form a tight line, and he takes another step closer. “I don’t know what you mean-”
“The fuck you don’t,” she seethes. “You fucking LIAR! I heard you and my husband, you know. I’ve been listening in. There’s an app for everything, and I’m not crazy. You can’t make me think I’m crazy. He lied about it being the boys because he thinks you’ll protect them, but I know better.”
Dean’s face grows pale, and the last step he takes brings him inches from my sister’s face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Morgan. Seems you’ve gotten worked up with the turn of the weather.”
She lifts her chin and doesn’t back away. “My husband told you the boys can predict the future. He told you the lighting would strike that tree that fell on your house before it did.”
“Lighting was bound to hit that tree. It’s the tallest for miles,” Dean argues.
“He told you the roadway would get washed out last month with your dad on it, and you didn’t believe him. Now he’s dead.”
Dean’s hand moves to her shoulders, and he yanks her against him. “Shut your fucking mouth.”
“It’s not the boys. You can’t take them.”
