Then, suddenly, miraculously, the headlights stopped about eight
feet from her car. Rain and lightning battered down, blurring the
headlights, turning them a sickly yellow. She stood there, the wind
beating at her, breathing in hard, soaked to her bones, waiting. Who
was going to get out of that car? Could he see her, huddled next to
some trees that were nearly folding themselves around her from the
force of the wind? Did he want to kill her with his own hands?
Why? Why?
It was Tyler McBride and he was yelling, “Becca! For God’s sake,
is that you?” He had a flashlight and he pinned her with it, the light
diffused from all the rain, pale, blue-rimmed, and it was right in her
eyes. She brought up her hand.
She opened her mouth to yell back at him and nearly drowned.
She ran to him and clutched his arms. “It’s me,” she said, “it’s me. I
was coining to your house. A tree branch crashed through the bedroom
window and it sounded like the house was going to collapse.”
If he wanted to smack her because she was teetering on the edge
of hysteria, he didn’t let on, just gripped her shoulders in his big
wet hands and said very slowly, very calmly, “I thought I saw some
car lights but I couldn’t be sure. All I thought about was getting to
you. It’s okay. That old house won’t fall down. There’s nothing to
be afraid of. Now, follow me back home. I left Sam alone. He’s
asleep but I can’t count on him staying that way. I don’t want him
to wake up and be scared.”
She got herself together. She wasn’t helpless, not like Sam was.
The wind tore at their clothes, the rain was coming down so hard
it hurt where it struck. Her jeans felt stiff and hard and heavy. But
she didn’t care. She wasn’t alone. Tyler wasn’t the crazy man from
New York. She took a deep breath and -watched as he drove at a
snail’s pace back to his house on Gum Shoe Lane. It took another
ten minutes to get to the small clapboard house that sat back in a
lovely lawn that was planted heavily with spruce and hemlock.
She jumped out of the car and yelled as she ran to the front door,
“Gum Shoe, what a wonderful name.” She began to laugh. “Gum
Shoe Lane!”
“It’s okay, Becca, we’re home now. We made it. Jesus, this is one
of the worst storms I can remember. As bad as the one back in ’78,
they said on the radio. I remember that one, I was a little kid and it
scared me shitless. I’ve got to say that your timing is wild, Becca,
coming to Riptide just before this mother of all storms hits.” He
gave her another look, then added, slowly, his voice calm and low,
“It’s sort of like the Mancini virus that came along last year and
crashed every computer in this small software company called
Tiffany’s. They called me in to fix it. That was a job, I’ll tell you.”
Becca stood dripping in the small entrance hall, staring at him.
He was trying to talk her down and doing a good job of it. “Computer
humor,” she said, and laughed after him when he fetched
some towels from the bathroom. A slash of lightning came through
the window and lit up the pile of newspapers on the floor beside
the sofa. “I’m okay,” she said when Tyler began to lightly rub his
palm over her wet back. He drew back, smiling down at her. “I
know. You’re tough.”
Sam “was still asleep, curled on his side, his left hand under his
cheek. The world was exploding not ten feet away and Sam was
probably dreaming about his morning cartoons. She pulled the
blanket over him, paused a moment, and said quietly to Tyler, who
was standing just behind her, “He is precious.”
“Yes,” he said.
She wanted to ask him why Sam didn’t talk much, was so very
wary, but she heard something in his voice that made her go still and
keep her question to herself. There was anger there, bitterness. Because