All Chapters of After the Storm, Goodbye: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter 1

A deafening crack tore through the apartment as the balcony door, already spiderwebbed with cracks, blew apart completely.Hurricane wind and rain came pouring into the living room in a single surge.In the space of a blink, everything in the room was swept off its surfaces and scattered across the floor.In the crib, my son, not yet two months old, jolted awake and started screaming.Still weak from childbirth, I picked my way through the dark and the broken glass, threw myself against the crib, and put my body between Owen and the wind."It's okay, baby. Mommy's here. Mommy's right here."I held him tight. My voice was shaking, but I couldn't let myself fall apart.Ten minutes. That was all it had been.Ten minutes ago my husband, Caleb Rourke, had pulled on a rain jacket and walked straight out into a hurricane the county had already issued warnings for, because Brielle told him her window was broken and she was scared by herself.Before he left, I caught the hem of his jac

Chapter 2

The morning after the hurricane passed, the whole complex was without water and without power.The rain that had flooded in overnight stood in a layer across the living room. Worse, after the fright and the cold of the night before, Owen's little face had gone red and his breathing had turned fast and shallow.I put my hand on his forehead. He was frighteningly hot.The ear thermometer read 100.8.A fever in a newborn is not something you wait out. I went straight to panic.Dragging my swollen, inflamed leg through the standing water, sweating, I tore through every drawer and cabinet looking for the cooling patches.While I searched, I used what was left of my phone battery to call Caleb."The number you have dialed is not available."The recorded voice bounced around the empty apartment. I wouldn't accept it. I called again. And again.All morning. Twenty calls. Every one of them dead air.Outside there were downed trees everywhere and floodwater up past my chest. No car, an

Chapter 3

The power came back to the building at two that afternoon.The air conditioning kicked on, Owen's temperature came down to 99.5, and he finally dropped into a heavy sleep.Caleb seemed to realize he'd gone too far that morning, and he threw himself into making up for it.He mopped the standing water, swept up the broken glass, and taped cardboard over the hole in the balcony door—a patch job, but it held.He even went to the kitchen and made oatmeal, brought it out to me, then knelt down and carefully peeled the blood-soaked gauze off my calf so he could put fresh antiseptic on it."Does that hurt?" His eyes were red when he looked up at me, full of tenderness and guilt."I'm sorry. I honestly didn't know the glass had blown out, and I had no idea Owen had a fever. If I'd known, I never would've gone."I swear to you, from now on you and my son come first. I'll start putting distance between me and Brielle. Just forgive me this once. Please."Maybe the guilt was real. So was th

Chapter 4

The tail of the hurricane was still over Rivermarch, and the rain kept coming down outside the window.Owen's fever climbed and broke and climbed again, and at two in the morning it turned into a febrile seizure.His whole body was convulsing, his face went blue-gray, his eyes rolled back, and he couldn't even cry."Baby! Baby, don't do this to Mommy!"I lost it completely. My hands went cold. I called 911 like a crazy person and was told that every ambulance in the area was out on hurricane calls and the soonest they could get a unit to me was forty minutes.For a newborn seizing with a high fever, forty minutes could be the whole story.Hands shaking, I called Caleb.This time he picked up.When he heard what was happening, he was clearly terrified too, and his voice shook. "Lena, don't panic! I'm getting in the car right now. Wrap him in a blanket and meet me on the ground floor!"Ten minutes later I had my convulsing son bundled tight inside my raincoat and I hauled my rui

Chapter 5

His hands were shaking. He drew back and kicked the half-open door the rest of the way in.The laughter inside cut off.Tessa screamed first, and the fondue fork clattered out of her hand onto the floor.Brielle jerked so hard the wineglass slipped and shattered on the tile, splashing red across her feet."C-Cale?"She clawed the sheet mask off her face, gone bloodless, and stammered as she tried to stand. "How—how are you here already? Let me explain, I really was—""You really were about to be electrocuted. That right?"He came into the living room one step at a time, soaked through, rain running off his hair and his chin and pooling on the floor.He fixed his eyes on her like he wanted to tear her open."'All I have to do is bring up dead Aaron and he won't even care that his own kid's headed for the ICU.'" Caleb repeated it back to her word for word, and then he started to laugh."Brielle. Have I been a complete idiot to you this whole time? Is that it?""No—no, Cale, it

Chapter 6

Outside the intensive care unit at Rivermarch Children's Medical Center, the corridor was empty and very quiet.I sat on a bench without moving.You couldn't tell what color my clothes had been. Mud, rainwater, and the blood from where Owen had bitten through his lip during the seizure.The wound in my calf had split wide open from running. The gauze had come off somewhere along the way, and cloudy fluid was weeping out of it. I couldn't feel it anymore.The elevator at the end of the hall chimed, and Caleb came out of it like a man who'd lost his mind.He ran the length of the corridor, stumbling, went down hard on the wet floor, and half crawled the rest of the way to me."Lena. Lena—"His knees hit the tile with a sound, and his voice was shaking so badly it barely held together."Where is he? How is he? What did they say?"I didn't lift my eyes. No hysterics. No accusations. No sobbing.I just felt sick. Even looking at him felt like something I'd have to wash off.When

Chapter 7

Caleb stared at the divorce agreement in his hands, his face white as paper.He shook his head hard and pushed the pages back down by my feet."No. I'm not signing. Lena, I'll die before I sign that."He looked up at me, his eyes shot through with red, making one last thrash before he went under."Babe, I'm a victim in this too. Five years of it! Brielle used my brother's dying words to guilt me into everything."I thought her life was actually in danger, that's the only reason I—"I love you and I love our son, I do. My only crime is caring too much about family. I was trying to look after them for my brother. What's so wrong with that?""Caring about family?"I'd never heard a better joke. The laugh came out of me cold.I leaned down and held his eyes. "Caleb, don't dump all of this on one manipulative woman."Brielle is disgusting, sure. But the person who destroyed this family is you."Every single time you walked out on us, was it really because of what your brother sai

Chapter 8

Caleb slumped to the floor with both hands over his face, but I wasn't giving him room to stall or beg."If you haven't signed in three days, I file a contested petition, and I bring the garage footage of you leaving your critically ill son to go meet your brother's widow, along with every hospital record and 911 log."And once that's on the record, think about how the big accounts at your company are going to look at their loyal, family-first Mr. Rourke. You do the math."Caleb knew me well enough to know I meant it.To salvage what was left of his name, and to save a company that was already wobbling, he signed with a shaking hand.The thirty-day waiting period ran out, and after that we were strangers.I took Owen and moved back to my parents' house. Caleb's reckoning was just getting started.Without me running every piece of his life behind the scenes, and now that he'd seen exactly what Brielle was, the resentment came up out of him all at once.He aimed all of it at her.

Chapter 9

When Caleb started out with nothing, it was my father, Gideon Whitmore, who made the introductions, put his name behind the loans, and got enough of a frame under the company for it to stand up.I never brought it up in front of him. I didn't want to bruise his pride.But when I came home with a son who'd nearly died and laid the whole thing out end to end, my father went white with fury."Something that low doesn't get to keep living off the Whitmore name."He didn't raise his voice. He made a few phone calls.Inside a week, the three biggest suppliers Caleb depended on all declined to renew for the next six months, citing a change in strategic direction.Right behind that, the four hundred and twenty thousand in working capital he'd lined up to plug the hole in his books got pulled at the final review stage.The reason given: material integrity risk on the part of the principal.His cash flow died overnight.Caleb ran in circles like a man whose hair was on fire, begging any

Chapter 10

Six months later.The whole thing had gone quiet, and time had smoothed the marks over.Thank God, the seizure didn't leave Owen with anything.Between me and my parents fussing over him, he'd grown into a plump, bright-eyed baby who babbled and grinned every time he caught sight of me.I cut off the hair I'd been growing for five years and restarted the study-abroad paperwork I'd shelved when I got pregnant.My parents decided to come with me to Asterholm and help with the baby while I was in the program.The morning we flew out was clear, which we hadn't had in a while.Sunlight came through the enormous glass wall of the terminal and lay warm across everything.I pushed the stroller and walked toward the priority security lane with my parents, all of us talking and laughing.And when I happened to turn my head, I saw someone behind a column at the far end of the hall—familiar and not familiar at all.Caleb.Six months, and he looked ten years older.He had a faded wooden

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