chapter 25
Saturday, September 8, 6:45 p.m.
All day the winds had battered against the exterior walls, ripping storm shutters off their hinges and shattering windowpanes into the parlor. Bret’s great house shuddered, rattled, and swayed against the onslaught and still continued to retain its footings.
When the ferocity decreased for a few minutes, Gabrielle felt relieved that the worst was over until the brief reprieve gave birth to a renewed blast that shook the house and everything in it to their foundations.
“The storm will die down soon,” she said, trying to comfort herself as much as the rest. “It’s been hours. The wind can’t keep up like this.”
A sudden gust of wind shot open the shutters on the far wall. Philip ran to the open window. He pulled the swaying shutters closed and turned the latch from the inside. “Yes, Miss Caldwell, and that can’t come soon enough. We have more wood and nails in the cellar don’t we, Mr. McGowan?”
Gabrielle looked at Bret. He sat hunched, appearing to gaze into the crackling fireplace at some unseen expanse, some dark, hidden place that was meant to be seen by his eyes only.
Bret had taken the last of his medicine hours ago. He would have to wait until the storm passed before they could return to her home and fetch Caden’s remedy.
After everything that had happened and now being in the middle of the storm, she had almost forgotten about . . . Gabrielle gasped. My God. Could she really trust him now? She took a deep breath and put the idea out of her mind just as quickly as it had entered. No. How could you think that? Caden’s offer to help Bret had occurred days before Tim’s death.
Gabrielle brushed back her hair and thought of her wonderful lunch with Caden at the new seafood restaurant on the boardwalk. He had been sincere then and perhaps, after further reflection under the extraordinary circumstances, she had been too quick to judge his actions.
Robberies and murders took place in Galveston just the same as any other city. Perhaps Tim resisted, they struggled, and the weapon fired. But father said it was Bret’s derringer and Bret says he found it on the street next to Tim’s body.
Gabrielle shook her head. There had to be another explanation but that would be for the police and judge to decide after the storm.
She stepped beside Bret. “How are you feeling?”
“I was hoping the scotch would stop the chills.”
“I told you it wouldn’t.” She stroked his damp hair. “ But I’m glad you stopped after two when I said so.”
Bret took her hand and kissed it. “Looks like you picked a hell of a night to try and save me from my own pig-headed self.”
He gazed up into her eyes and smiled. “But I’ve been thinking about what you said. When this is over I want to get better and I’ll do anything I can to—”
A crackling volley of lightning ricocheted outside from the direction of the gulf. The roaring sound passed over and rumbled off into the distance.
The house creaked, its entire structure shifting and lurching to one side. The wind seemed to punch the house down with the storm’s fist as if it were nothing more than an old shipping crate.
Gabrielle screamed as she was thrown down on the floor by the force of the impact. Bret toppled over in the chair and fell beside her. The moment he reached out and grabbed her arm, she heard it.
The breaking sounds of snapping timber and smashing glass coming down from above. They looked up at the ceiling. Rapidly running cracks chipped off the plaster, first in a fine dust, then in large chunks, showering down upon them.
The four walls trembled, knocking down pictures and ornaments, overturning all the corner cupboards and casework furniture.
“Get up! Get up!” Philip was yelling at them from the open cellar door. “Quick, get down to the cellar!”
Within seconds, the ceiling fractured and popped along the top of the north and east walls, and as if the hand of God was reaching down, it lifted off the timber and hurled it in pieces over the east wall. Nothing visible of the roof remained. Their only remaining protection was the partially demolished ceiling above.
Gabrielle wrapped her arms around Bret’s chest and stared up into the whirling maelstrom of the hurricane. For one horrifying instant, as though she had been made privy to the enigmatic, malevolent secret of the Almighty’s wrath, she watched the murky, jagged chaos descend upon the remaining corner of the ceiling.
“Quick!” Philip yelled. “Over here!”
Gabrielle felt Bret pulling her toward the sound of Philip yelling. She could see the old man reaching out to her, his strong grip against her skin, then—
The grim torrent beat down on them; a sudden smashing force burst all around, blinding Gabrielle with pelting rain and gale winds.
A moment later she screamed and was ripped away from the men’s hands; the ferocious hurricane lashed out at her, hurling her across the disintegrating parlor through the open space of the shattered east wall.
The life that had always kept her safe vanished in moments behind the wailing, spiraling winds lacerating her face.
Gabrielle closed her eyes, feeling herself being thrown forward by the storm—tumbling through its terrifying space—until she felt her head fall back, submerged under cold, salt water.
Gabrielle splashed her arms, struggling to gain a foothold in the neck-high current rushing by her face. Coughing and gulping at the air, her drenched clothes wrapped around her shivering body like a heavy, soaked shroud. She bobbed on her feet, touching ground, but a few moments later she lost her foothold again.
She didn’t know which street she was on—the homes and buildings on either side were demolished or rapidly being torn apart by the merging fury of hell’s wind and water.
The screams of parents reached out from behind the thick, gray sheets of rain toward the cries of children, lost somewhere within the rising muddy waters.
People clung to broken pieces of their homes—furniture, anything that would float— while bodies of men, women and children were carried along with dead horses and livestock by the swiftly rising current.
At the last moment, Gabrielle gasped and ducked under the water as a flying piece of slate flew toward her head.
When she came up for air, something bumped into her back. Thrashing about in the cold, turbulent water, she saw the headless body of a boy float past.
She closed her eyes, clenching her jaw and mouth shut. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t afford to open her mouth only to have it filled with salt water a moment later.
On the far side of the street, in one of the alleyways, people struggled up the fire escape stairs leading to the upper floors of the last remaining brick building.
Gabrielle pushed herself through the flood water, kicking and paddling to keep her head above the waves the best she could, determined to reach the only thing standing fast against the monstrous upheaval roaring all around her.
She maneuvered around the drifting debris of shattered homes, sometimes holding onto a piece of wood to rest and get her bearings.
Floating, half-naked corpses of people, their bodies sliced and mutilated with pieces of wind-whipped glass and metal sticking out of their flesh, careened off the sides of the wreckage, then continued on with the current.
Gabrielle kept her eyes focused straight ahead, never turning to discover if any she had seen were someone would have known.
The hand railing leading up from the street level was already half under water, but it would only be another few feet before she could touch—
A crashing wave slammed into the front of her body, lifting her upwards and throwing her away from the building.
When she resurfaced, she was swimming on the far side of the road. In a matter of seconds it appeared as if the entire ocean had deluged from the gulf, spreading out over the city like the biblical flood.
Tossed about like the debris around her, Gabrielle fought against the rolling waves to keep her head above the breaking crests. Her limbs felt colder, heavier than they had only a few minutes before.
For a moment, she felt the frenzied urge to pray, to succumb to God’s will and make her final peace. Moving images of her impossible love affair with Bret, her family, and the life she had known glided through her mind carried on a current of uncontrollable regret and sorrow.
She could have had a family of her own, but she had waited . . . waited for the only man she had ever loved, only to lose him just at the moment his feelings toward her had . . .
The building seemed so far away now.
Gabrielle kicked and thrashed, trying to swim against the current to a large, raft-shaped piece of broken wall floating by. Dear God, no . . . She prayed. I beg of you. Not like this. Gabrielle clawed at the side of the passing remnant, trying to clutch the splintered wood and cracked paneling.
For a few moments, her grip was secure and she was pulled along with the wall by the increasingly swift undercurrent. She tried to lift her knee over the edge but a wave came crashing down, throwing her back underneath the surging waves.
Unable to catch her breath and her lungs almost bursting, Gabrielle struggled against the current and swam up toward the dark surface.
Finally bursting forth, she suddenly felt her wrist and forearm gripped by a pair of painfully strong hands. Somebody yanked her up and over the edge of the floating wall, her legs still thrashing in the water. She gasped for air.
“Don’t struggle! I’ll pull you over!” Bret yelled.
Gabrielle lay under his arms, her arms wrapped around his waist, shivering like a child. My God, he’s alive. Bret’s alive! She clung to his waist. If they were to survive, they would survive together.
Battered again and again by the waves, they almost lost their embrace, but each time Gabrielle squeezed her arms tighter against his steadfast body. “Bret . . . Oh God!” She was breathless, almost unable to speak more than a few words. “The house . . . I thought you were dead!”
Bret held her close. He lifted back the sopping clump of hair from her face. “When I opened my eyes again I was lying on my back floating on this . . . It’s all that’s left of my home. I saw you but you were too far away. The water rose again and I thought—”
Gabrielle kissed Bret. She buried her face against his neck and cried. “My father . . . Oh God. No.”
“It’s all right, Gabrielle, I’m here now.” He pulled her closer. “Your house is farther north. Maybe the water hasn’t gone that far inland.”
The flood lifted the wall up and slammed it down again, spraying water down on them from all sides. They lay flat on their stomachs holding onto the edge, their legs splayed out behind them.
The hurricane lashed and wailed against Gabrielle’s ears, a melee of screeches and screams that sounded human one moment, hellish the next. The wind blasted her exposed skin and the rain and flood drenched her shivering body.
For a few moments it felt as if their life-preserving wall was settling on smaller, more even waves, only to plunge and ascend a minute later into the next trough of the cascading deluge.
As far as Gabrielle could see, the flood waters had risen and engulfed Galveston in a stewing surge, spreading out in ever widening, frothy white caps to the four corners of the endless night.
Vanishing images of the dead and forsaken assailed her; bodies strewn in the waves, children clinging to wreckage, their families yelling and waving their arms from the roofs of buildings before the foundations gave way and collapsed, submerging all in the torrent’s merciless carnage.
“Bret . . . my hands. They’re so cold I can’t feel anything.”
He clamped down one arm over the back of Gabrielle’s neck and shoulders, gripping the edge again with his cut and bleeding hand. He smiled. “They’ll have to cut them off before I ever let go of you again. We’re staying together no matter what.”
Gabrielle pressed herself against his side. Bret felt like a rock, her last refuge from the drowning waters and the only hope she could cling to.
The broken section of the parlor wall climbed the waves, taking erratic, violent turns with each crash of the water against its four sides. At any moment Gabrielle was certain they would be swallowed up like the city in nature’s vengeful damnation of humanity. “If one of us lives they have to promise—”
“Stop . . . no. Don’t talk like that.”
“But we have to. I love you . . . I always have. I don’t believe you’d kill—”
Bret blew the water away from his mouth. “I know, I know. If we still have life left . . . we’ll have time for love again, Gabrielle. I promise.” A sharp wave sliced over the edge into their faces. “Just keep your head above the waves and hold on.”
Mute certainty possessed Gabrielle’s thoughts. There was nothing more to say or do now. If the hurricane didn’t blow them into the rushing water first, the waves might just as easily shatter the wall to pieces under their cold, stiff fingers.
No prayer could beat back her fear from the edge of hysteria, or hold more power of hope for saving their lives.
Bret’s words, his presence, his unwavering determination, these were her only beacons of hope in the roiling abyss. If there was a chance for them—this was it. Her old life had slipped away between the wind and water, but from them, a new one might yet rise up.
Bret’s arm pressed down across the back of her upper shoulder and neck. “Keep your head above the water and hold on!”
Gabrielle flattened herself as much as she could, pinning her body to the inside surface of the wall as if she were a figurine nailed to the wood. From out of the unseeing eye of night, a hurricane blast of uncontrollable, seething rage threw the wall forward, skipping it across the water like a flat stone.
The raft splashed down again into the flood, spraying salt water into their faces. They coughed and scrambled forward on their stomachs to regain their grips.
Gabrielle clutched the edge of the wall. The deafening shriek of the hurricane pierced her ears, and her silent prayers were snatched and carried away on the ferociously beating wings of the wind. But she would not allow her final terrified scream—death’s victory—to rise from her throat.
All hopes and horrors coalesced into one cold, numbing question. Are we going to live or die? Life might be mere seconds now. How could she expect anything more?
“Hold on, Gabrielle!” Bret’s voice was nearly drowned in the colliding waves. “Nothing else matters!” He inched one hand along the edge until he clutched hers.
Gabrielle tensed every muscle in her body again, pressing and rubbing herself against the grain of the wet wood paneling until she felt a splinter pierce her cheek.
Bret held her hand down tight against the wood. He raised his head as if trying to see something in the murky distance. “Some brick buildings are still standing. If the current carries us toward them . . . just keep holding on!”
Gabrielle shivered under her drenched clothes, her teeth chattering so much she feared she would bite off her tongue and choke before the saltwater should finally fill her throat.