The Storm

   At the grocery store, Melody and her two kids review the list together. A fair sized local store, mixed scents of fruit, bread, disinfectants, and somewhat of a sterile air, travels in Melody’s nose. The flooring is a white tile spanning throughout the store. A draft sneaks up on Melody, causing goosebumps. She pushes the basket, “Ok let’s look at the isle signs, to see where everything is. And start with more jugs of water.”

The isle with water is nearly bare, only a few jugs left. Melody quickly grabs them, as they move on down their list.

“Mom, flashlights and batteries are next on our list.” Leo mentions with authority.

“We will find, flashlights and batteries.” Melody glances around in a rushed manner as if the hurricane will appear while they’re at the store. Melody sees a man who looks similar to Blaze. She shudders, a wave of panic sweeps over her, her heart pounding in her chest, adrenaline pumping, she freezes, and nearly faints. Gripping the shopping cart, she begins breathing in deeply, through her nose, and releases through pursed lips, she briefly closes her eyes, clearing the image she just saw. Melody rubs her fingers together, just a her pointer feeling her thumb, the lined texture, desensitizing her nerves, focusing on her fingerprint pattern. Something she can feel and see. She glances at Pearl, and begins rubbing Pearl’s chest. Something she can see, also Pearl. A little grey stone in her sage green linen shorts pocket, she closes her hand over it, rubbing it’s smooth surface and looks at it. A mint in her sail cloth bag, something she can taste, Melody rummages through her bag and slips the peppermint in her mouth, the cool minty sensation, resting on her tongue, wedged between it and the roof of her mouth. Then she places her hand over her chest and stomach, feeling her breathing, her chest expanding and returning, listening to her breath, a new calm settles in. Melody takes a deep inhale, another pursed lip exhale, escapes.

"Flashlights," Leo says.

Melody breaks out of her thoughts and looks for flashlights. She takes two off the hook. Wavers in the thought. Then reaches for a third.

"Batteries — double-A and triple-A." Leo reads off the list.

"I see them." Mia bracing Pearl, shifting her weight, draping Pearl nearly over her shoulder, “They’re right here.” pointing with her finger.

Leo grabs a few packages of batteries.

"Candles."  Mia looks at the list.

"Near the cleaning supplies, probably." Melody mentions, sucking on the mint.

"Can I get the ones that smell like coconut?" Mia called from one aisle over.

Mia had zoomed to the other isle before Melody realized. Following her daughter’s voice Melody hurries to her. “They are for an emergency.”

Mia appears at the end of the aisle, Pearl hanging from her arms with the patience of a very old soul in a very young body. “Emergency coconut.”

Melody laughs hysterically. Mia, if we have to smell coconut for many hours it may make us sick or give us a headache. For emergencies, we want unscented long burning, ok.”

 "What about the color? Can they be a color?" Mia questions.

"They can be white, you can get a coconut candle for the nonemergency days. Ok. I will help you find the long burning. And Mia, please don’t wonder off. I need you two to stay by me in the store. Someone can snatch you up in a heartbeat, and with the hurricane coming in, we need to be extra careful.” Melody responds, simmering her nerves.

Mia weighs this. "Fine," she says, in a tone that concedes the point without conceding the principle.

Melody moves through the store the way she moves through a project — methodically, without urgency, item by item. There is comfort in list-making. There is comfort in the specific: this size battery, this many gallons of water, this brand of waterproof matches. The specific is something she can hold. It has edges. — inside the shapeless dread of not knowing which version of a day she is going to get — past thoughts.

“All we need left are some more snacks.” Leo reads the list one more time. After finding nonperishable food items. They find the checkout line. She pays. Leo carries the bag without being asked. Mia carries Pearl.

In the parking lot, the wind  picks up slightly — not dramatically, not yet, just a suggestion, a loosening —dry leaves scatter about across the cracked asphalt.

It is the quality her grandmother had described as the storm showing its edges — a yellowish thinning at the horizon, the clouds massed but not yet moving, the sun going down behind them with a bruised and source less glow that makes everything cast shadows in two directions at once. The temperature has dropped eight degrees since noon. The air felt close and faintly electric, the way it does before something releases. Upon returning to the cottage, they find Gage still laying sand bags for a wall. He inspects her cement pillars for any cracks, signs of wear and tear. The strength of waves rushing at the pillars can break them down, over time.

He works silently until he sees the family return. He has measured, marked, and fitted each sheet with a steadiness that makes her feel obscurely ashamed of the tape still stuck crookedly to her kitchen glass. He carries them of the cement steps.

“Melody, Leo mentioned you’re interested in staining and decorating your cement steps.” A smile exposes white spotless teeth. His sunglasses cover his eyes. Melody looks over at the steps from the deck.

“Yes, absolutely. I feel like they are boring, and adding ocean waves or colorful pebbles, something that won’t make us slip when it’s wet.” Melody thinks of Gage’s warm embrace, his lips, their kisses. Her cheeks flush, like a red tomato.

“I can help with that, there’s a process with staining cement. He also mentioned tiles against the back part, where feet don’t go. I think that would look neat.” Gage discusses watching Melody’s cheeks turn red, the breeze nudging her chestnut locks. She looks up at the sky, noticing the halo appearance of the clouds, purplish hues at the horizon above the swelling waves. The waves are bigger, the storm is on its way.

“You know what Gage, lets go ahead and board up now, just in case, the storm begins early, before the rain, before the eye passes over bringing a calm illusion then batters the coast.” Melody explains in a soothing voice.

“You sound like you’ve been in a hurricane before.” Gage winces behind his glances and gazes toward the waters and sky, seeing the changes which occur before a hurricane.

“Right, I’ve spent every summer growing up here until I graduated college.” Melody’s eyes dart at the deck looking for anything that needs to be put away. “I moved to Denver for a job made a family, and haven’t been here since.”

Gage lifts his sunglasses, tender eyes resonate on hers, safety, steady, kind, genuine. Words that came to Melody’s mind.

“Well, you’re here now, I’m glad you’re here. Your grandmother had a sturdy house built here. The dome shape, cement exterior  and pillars, it helps the wind wrap around and deflect. Mine is a normal little cottage for one with a guest room. Flat walls. Maybe I should buy a different one, with a dome shape so it doesn’t get wiped out.” Gage chuckles, Melody adds her own. “I grew up visiting a different coast, I thought this one was nice. It’s different from Savannah, we had storms there too.” Gage shakes his head as if to clear his mind from something distressing. Melody places her hand on over his muscular arm, rubbing it and his shoulder. A gentle notion of I’m here. He smiles. “Alrighty, Melody let’s get your windows boarded, an extra layer of protection.”

          Melody tries to lift the plywood, it begins to slip. Gage quickly intercepts, standing just behind Melody. His lime green tank top exposes his bulging arm muscles, he steadies the plywood against the window. Melody snugly caught between Gage and the board. He surrounds her, his arms block either side, one palm securing the left side, whilst the right palm covers the right side, enclosing Melody. She breathes him in, a woody ocean scent with a hint of honeysuckle, pours off his warm body, reaching Melody’s nares. She blinks, attempting to position herself holding the drill in her right hand. Gage’s face close to Melody’s hair, so close he can smell it and kiss her head. He waits, the kids are here. The temptation lingers. Her scent leaks his way, something like, coconut, and lavender. Melody feels hugged by Gage, his body gently grazes hers, he’s not directly behind her, nearly, slightly towards the left. If Melody steps back a centimeter, she will be against his body, pressing against him. The drill sounds a motorized buzz, bring a small vibration to Melody’s hand while she drives screws. Melody feels empowered now. A woman learning to hold her own and do strong things, things only men supposedly can do. Melody happy about her small accomplishment, turns around excitedly facing Gage, they’re faces a few inches apart. She halts herself, a spontaneous desire to hug and kiss him, right here, right now, she buried the feeling. He moves his right arm, stepping away still holding the left side. He smiles, he knows what she was thinking and feeling just now. He senses her attraction, her energy, the yearning for better than what she left. “Do you want to do this side too, or do you want me to get it.” Gage asks, stuffing feelings out of his mind. “I can do it.” She drills again, this time less surrounded by Gage, this time he’s beside her, ensuring the left side doesn’t fall.  She hands him things when he asks for them. Drill bit. Pencil. The two-inch screws, not the one-and-a-half.

Leo comes out and stands on the deck and watches with the focused attention of a child who is filing everything away.

"What's the load-bearing capacity of the plywood?" he asks, after a while.

Gage pauses, considering the question seriously. "Depends on the thickness and the span," he says. "This is five-eighths inch. Over Atlantic-proof panes."

Leo looks at the windows. "So the windows won’t break?"

"Not really." Gage moves to the next window. "The glass is hurricane-rated. The plywood's extra. It's belt and suspenders."

"What does that mean?" Leo squints, trying to understand.

"It means two things doing the same job so neither one has to be perfect." Gage smiles, speaking in an empathetic tone.

Leo turns that over. "That's redundancy," he says. "We learned about it in school."

"That's exactly what it is." Leo nods patiently.

She watches Leo smile. It is the same thing she noticed before — the way Gage speaks to him like a person, answering him like a person, Gage just talks to him, with genuine patient attention. And Leo, who trusts almost nothing, remains very still and pays attention.

Mia, meanwhile, has appointed herself the person in charge of supplies, and has been making trips between the house and the Rav4 Hybrid with great purpose, carrying water jugs she could barely lift, her face arranged into an expression of profound responsibility that keeps slipping into delight.

"This is like the show with the family that had a treehouse," she announces on her third trip. "Except we have a better house."

"Mia, that was a shipwreck," Leo said.

"There's still a storm." Mia responds.

"It's not—" He stops. Looks at his mother. "Is it approximately the same?"

"In spirit," Melody says.

Gage finishes, boarding the windows. “ Jet and I will be back to ride out the storm with y’all, Just in case you need any help.” He strolls down the beach, leisurely nearing the Pier, before Melody deters her gaze.

The storm room has no windows. This is the point of it — a concrete interior space Adalee had built into the middle of the dome after a rough season, cool and low-ceilinged, the walls painted a soft pastel blue years ago, someone’s idea of calm. A mural of the Atlantic runs along the longest wall: painted waves, a simplified horizon, a single pelican mid-glide. It’s quality art, meticulously painted by a professional. It is something to look at when the world outside has a mind of its own, deciding what it wants to do.

Mia is coloring at the small folding table, working through a book of ocean animals with a focus she rarely brings to anything that isn’t immediate and loud. Leo sits beside her with his own paper, drawing something in pencil — she can’t see what, from where she is, but his hand moves with the careful deliberateness she associates with him working something out. Jet has stationed himself between the two children with the bearing of a dog who has attended many storms and found them personally uneventful. Pearl, in Melody's lap, asleep, dead-weight and warm, her small sides rising and falling with that quick puppy rhythm, which Melody has come to think of as the most reliable sound in her life.

Gage sits on the foldable mattress along the near wall, a paperback open across his knee, reading in the way he did most things — without performing it.

The power went out at twelve forty-two. She knew because Leo said, "Twelve forty-two," the moment it happened, looking at his watch in the sudden dark. The battery operated lantern clicks on — Gage has set it up without discussion when they arrived— and the room rearranged itself into amber.

Outside, the wind is not howling so much as insisting. A sustained, pressurized sound, less dramatic than she anticipated. Relentless. It doesn’t  rise and fall. It simply presses. The rain come’s in waves against the exterior — she can hear it even through the concrete, a muffled percussion, something between drumming and erasure.

"The eye can take a few minutes to an hour to pass over," Gage says not looking up from his book. "After that the back wall comes through. That's usually the wetter, destructive half."

"Is the back wall worse?" Leo asked.

"Different." He turned a page. "The wind's coming from the other direction. Counterintuitive. Your instincts will tell you if it’s getting better — it's just changing."

Melody eyes the sliding door leading to the windowless and mirror less bathroom. Thinking at some point someone will need to use the bathroom. Mostly the children.

Leo writes something down in his notepad.

Mia has not looked up from her coloring. She is working carefully inside the lines of a sea turtle, her tongue at the corner of her mouth, a sign of deep concentration. She selects a new color — teal — and holds it up to the lantern light to verify it before applying it. Satisfied, she continues.

Pearl shifts in Melody's lap, twitching a little as if dreaming.

Melody's hand rests on Pearl's back and feels the warmth there, the small rapid heartbeat, and let’s it be what it is. Enough. Real, warm, breathing, and enough.

The wind presses on.

The lantern makes the pastel walls glow faintly, casting the painted pelican in soft gold. The ocean mural looks different in this light — As if whoever had put them there had understood that someday, someone would need to look at the ocean without being in it.

She looks at the painted horizon, listening to the storm  holding Pearl: we are in the right room.

Melody awakens, next to Gage on the mat. “What time is it?” She sources her phone, limited signal. She checks the forecast. Her eyes scan the amber tinted room, the children asleep on the murphy bed. No one stirs. An unpleasant aroma arrives. Melody looks over to see Pearl, relieving herself in the pine litter box, she set up. She places her shirt over her nose, gasping for fresh air. She quickly cleans it and disposes in the bathroom. She opens the metal door to the rest of the house, searching for better signal. The house quiet and still, dark. Pearl follows behind, trailing her heels.

The forecast reports, the storm is migrating north up the coast and inland, at this point, they will have some heavy rain, and some winds. The worst is over. However, they should remain inside. It’s six in the morning, everyone but Melody and Pearl are asleep. She fixes a blueberry lavender iced latte, up and ready for the day. She showers, refreshing herself from the small room. A pounding at the door is heard. She ignores, the sun room door is opened, setting the alarm off. Mia comes running to her mother, her bare feet tap the floor with each step. “Is Daddy here?”  

“I’m not sure, Mia.” Melody checks the camera, a man, not Blaze places a waterproof envelope by the front door. Gage appears by Melody’s side. “Do you want me to check?”

“Someone just broke in the sunroom or Did I forget to lock it.” Melody, shaken up, her eyes dart around looking for something to put her mind as ease. A photo on the fridge, her grandmother, sister and herself by the beach. Her parents with the golden retriever standing by calm waters on a sunny day. Tears surface in Melody ‘s eyes. She blinks them away.

Gage steps into the sunroom, assessing the lock, an attempt to determine if the lock was broken or left unlocked. “Melody, it looks like it was left unlocked. I don’t see any damage. Good news is you locked the front door. Perhaps they were leaving something they didn’t want damaged. If y’all don’t feel safe here, y’all can stay in my guest room for awhile. I don’t mind.”

“Gage that is very sweet of you, however between camera’s and alarms, this is my house, not Blaze’s. It was my grandmother’s. He is not going to scare me away from here. I’m going to deal with the monster and settle this. He may always be a problem.” Melody reaffirms with renewed strength as if the short time here, and low grade hurricane have empowered her. She has everything she needs here. She opens the document. “Its from my grandmother’s lawyer.” Melody relaxes. “I think we have days of rain ahead. The storm is moving up north, up the Atlantic coast and inland, the news says. Perhaps we should give some time before we go outside. Kids do y’all want a movie day?”

“Yes” The kids rush to the living room and plop down on the blue leather sectional. The wind howls, through the cement and boards, rain pours outside.

“I’m going to make French toast and eggs!” Melody stammers with joy, then sips on her blueberry lavender iced latte.  Gage chooses to brave the wind and rain, feeling confident Melody can manage from here. He braces the banister descending the cement steps, facing heavy winds and rain. Jet trots at his side as if racing to their own beach house.