“We were in the bathtub. My mom … my baby sister. It got real loud. My dad held on to me tight. Real tight. When it was over, he wasn’t holding me anymore. Our couch was upside down, and I was under it. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where any of them are.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll know to look for you here.”
Something slammed into a pane window and shattered the glass. Frightened cries barely registered over the sirens and blustering wind.
Jack buried his head into my chest, and I gently squeezed him with my good arm, holding my left against my middle.
“Where’s your family?” Jack asked, his eyes clenched.
“Not here,” I said, peeking over my shoulder at the broken window.
America
“How much farther?” I asked.
“Two miles less than the last time you asked,” Reyes grumbled.
Reyes was driving fast but not fast enough. Just knowing that Shepley was at the hospital, hurt, made me feel like I could jump out of the car and run faster than what we were going. We had exited off the turnpike to a road with a narrow stretch of houses that had somehow been missed by the tornado.
I’d rolled down the window, and I was resting my chin on my hand, letting the air blow against my face. I closed my eyes, imagining the look on Shepley’s face when I walked through the door.
“Landers said he was pretty beat up. You should prepare yourself for that,” Reyes said.
“He’s okay. That’s all I care about.”
“Just don’t want you to be upset.”
“Why?” I turned to him. “I thought you were the badass trooper with no emotions.”
“I am,” he said, squirming in his seat. “Doesn’t mean I want to see you cry again.”
“Doesn’t your wife cry?”
“No,” he said without hesitation.
“Ever?”
“I don’t give her a reason to.”
I sat back in my seat. “I bet she cries. She probably just doesn’t show it. Everybody cries.”
“I’ve never seen her cry. She laughed a lot when Maya was born.”
I smiled. “Maya. That’s cute.”
Huge drops of rain began to spatter on the windshield, prompting Reyes to switch on the wipers. The back and forth and drag across the glass began a cadence that echoed every beat of my heart.
One corner of his mouth turned up. “She is cute. Head full of black hair. She came out, looking like she was wearing a toupee. She was bright yellow the first week. I thought she just had a naturally great tan … like me.” He smirked. “But it turned out to be jaundice. We took her to the doctor and then the lab. They stabbed her heel with a needle and squeezed her foot for a blood sample. Alexandra didn’t shed a tear. I cried as much as Maya did. You think I’m tough? You haven’t met my wife.”
“Your wedding day?”
“Nope.”
“When she found out she was pregnant?”
“Nope.”
I thought about it for a while. “Not even happy tears?”
He shook his head.
“What about the women you pull over? Do you let them go if they tear up?”
“It makes me uncomfortable,” he said simply. “I don’t like it.”
“Good thing you married a woman who doesn’t cry.”
“Lucky. Very, very lucky. She’s not overly emotional.”
“Doesn’t sound like she’s emotional at all,” I teased.
“You’re not far off.” He laughed once. “I wasn’t sure she even liked me at first. It took me two years and a lot of hours at the gym to even get up the nerve to ask her out. I didn’t think I could love anyone more than I loved Alexandra until a few weeks ago.”
“When Maya was born?”
He nodded.
I smiled. “I was wrong. You’re not a jerk.”
A shrill tone came over the radio, and the dispatcher began rattling off a weather report.
“Another tornado?” I asked.
Then the sirens began to wail.
“The National Weather Service is reporting a tornado on the ground within Emporia city limits,” the dispatcher said in a monotone voice. “All units be advised, a tornado is on the ground.”
“How is she so calm?” I asked, looking up at the sky.
Dark clouds were swirling above us.