She’d been right behind them on the back stairs when she noticed the threatening sky, the greenish light in the window on the second-floor landing. She’d grabbed the boys and started downstairs to get to an interior room, but the storm hit suddenly. A fierce wind gust uprooted a sugar maple and sent it into the library. Branches broke the window on the landing below them, just missing them and blocking their route back downstairs.
She all but threw the boys up to the attic. They took cover in Daphne Stewart’s windowless sewing room. Hail pounded on the roof. Wind howled and whistled. The tiny room seemed to rattle with the booming thunder.
Phoebe had held on to her nephews, shielding them in case part of the roof blew off.
The storm finally passed, and now it was quiet except for the sirens.
“I need to let someone know where we are,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “That we’re safe.”
“We’re not safe,” Tyler said, the pragmatic Sloan.
Aidan sucked in a breath and pointed at her. “Aunt Phoebe…you’re bleeding.”
She saw that she was, in fact, bleeding from a cut on her left arm. She didn’t remember being hurt, hadn’t felt any pain until now. She took in a shallow breath. “It’s not bad. Are you boys okay? Let me look at you.”
“We’re fine.” Tyler stood up. “I’m going to yell out a window.”
“You won’t be able to open any of the windows up here,” Phoebe said.
“We can throw a brick and break the glass,” Aidan said.
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Where are we going to get a brick?”
“Then use something else,” his brother said, impatient, scared.
Phoebe struggled to her feet. “I’ll do it,” she said. “You two stay right there where I can see you and don’t move. Understood? Don’t move.”
As she crept to the corner door, she heard a creaking sound in the tiny room. A ghost after all, maybe. She opened the door, felt blood drip into her eyes. A cut on her scalp, too? At least the blood hadn’t reached her face and the boys hadn’t seen it.
She saw Christopher Sloan down on South Main, yelling past two uprooted trees to someone out of view. Olivia was there with her father, a volunteer firefighter, and Dylan. No Noah. Then she saw Maggie, looking stricken as she approached her brother-in-law, picking her way through fallen limbs and scattered leaves.
Phoebe tried to open the window, but she couldn’t get it to budge. What was wrong with her? Her head was spinning, aching. Her arm stung from the cut.
She glanced back at her nephews with a quick smile. “Everything’s fine. We just have to give your Uncle Chris time to get up here.”
“Because of the broken glass,” Aidan said.
“And the tree in the way,” Tyler added sarcastically. Phoebe saw that his toughness was a pretense, his own eyes wide with fear.
“Aidan! Tyler!”
Brandon. Of course. He was close, probably by the freestanding closets.
“We’re in here,” Phoebe called. “We’re okay.”
“Aunt Phoebe’s not okay,” Tyler yelled.
Brandon burst into the sewing room. “Aunt Phoebe saved us,” Aidan said, sobbing as his father scooped him up.
Her brother-in-law looked straight at her. “Sit, Phoebe.”
“I’m fine—”
“You’re not fine. Sit.”
Then Noah swept in behind him. “Phoebe.” He seemed hardly able to speak. “I know a bit about cuts.”
“From your fencing,” Phoebe said, then clutched his arm, steadying herself. “Oh, hell, Noah. Damn. I think I’m going to faint.”
“Then you’re right where you need to be.”
And she knew she was, even as she passed out in his arms.
Twenty-Two
Noah stood on Thistle Lane thirty yards from an ambulance as Phoebe reassured the crew that she was just fine. He’d hated to leave her but all eyes were on her. She’d regained consciousness almost immediately after she’d passed out, probably as much from heat and dehydration as anything else. She’d refused to wait for a stretcher. After firefighters had cleared the tree out of the way, she’d walked down from the attic on her own, Noah at her side.
“Phoebe’s right,” Dylan said, approaching Noah. “She will be fine. Her cuts are superficial. She doesn’t even need stitches.”
“You should know. You got cut in hockey all the time.”
“Regularly. Not all the time.”
They both grinned, but Noah could still feel the after-effects of the adrenaline rush. He and Brandon Sloan had arrived in the village center minutes after high winds had blown down trees and wires, ripped off parts of roofs. Brandon managed to park his truck on South Main, and he and Noah jumped into action, charging into the damaged library.
For a terrifying minute, they’d thought Phoebe and the Sloan boys were under the debris on the stairs.
Noah shook off the memory. Olivia was with Phoebe. Police and firefighters had cordoned off the library’s side yard where two trees had come down in what they believed was a microburst.
Maggie paced on the narrow lane as Tyler and Aidan told their story to their firefighter uncle.
“She’s blazing,” Dylan said.
She certainly was, Noah thought. “She’s had a fright.”