The Carpenter's Bride

by Elana Johnson

  He sent the message, every cell in his body wailing. He couldn’t lose his daughter too. Not after they’d both lost Jo. Desperation clogged his throat, and he stepped through the glass doors and into the main building right behind Lisa, tapping to call Sierra again.

  “Dad,” she said breathlessly before the phone had even rung.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “We’re at the library,” she said. “They’re telling us to go to the roof.”

  Cal closed his eyes for a moment, everything going black. He couldn’t think. “How many stories is the library?” He should know, he’d lived on the island of Getaway Bay his whole life. But he couldn’t think.

  “Four,” she said. Clamoring came from her end of the line. Shouts.

  “Stay with Travis,” Cal said, his voice growing louder too. “I’m at Sweet Breeze. I’ll come get you two as quickly as I can after the waves hit.”

  A roaring noise sounded behind him, and pure fear gripped his lungs. “I love you, coconut,” he said, his voice choking.

  “Dad, I love you,” she said—and the line went dead.

  Helpless, Cal shoved his phone in his pocket and twisted to look behind him. A few people still stood at the wall, and one pointed. The man turned, horror etched on his face. He ran toward the crowd still pushing to get in the building.

  The water must’ve receded, which meant the tsunami was coming. That, or the man had seen the waves and realized the immensity of danger the whole island was in.

  Please let Sierra and Travis get to the roof quickly, Cal prayed. Keep me safe. Help me find them as fast as possible.

  “This way,” he said, tugging on Lisa’s hand to get her to go down a hallway. That would free up more room for more people to come in off the pool deck and get them away from the glass. Why everyone wanted to be in the lobby just outside the pool, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to see the tragedy about to happen.

  Lisa shivered, and Cal put his arm around her, pressing her into a wall as they met a group of people that had come this way before them.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re really high up.”

  “What if the building falls?” she asked.

  Cal didn’t want to answer that question. The anxiety in the air was almost to his breaking point, and he prayed again. Jo, baby, watch over us.

  His late wife just had to protect Sierra. Cal couldn’t lose her too.

  Moments later, screams filled the air from those still down by the doors. A rush of people flowed down the hall toward them, and Cal braced himself, his fingers tightening along Lisa’s upper arm.

  “Here we go,” he murmured, and the building shuddered again. It swayed wildly—at least in Cal’s opinion—and he pressed one palm into the wall as a cry of fright from the others lifted up. He groaned and grunted, trying to find a solid place to stand.

  It was a strange and scary feeling to have solidness beneath his feet and still be moving so much.

  Everything quieted after only ten seconds.

  “There could be residual waves,” someone said.

  “Stay put,” another woman called.

  Cal was glad no one had lost their heads. Everyone stayed still for several long minutes, and the building definitely moved a few more times. Nothing like the initial hit of the waves, and Cal could only hope that the roof of the library was high enough to protect his baby.

  “All guests should stay where they are,” the man on the intercom said. “Please, stay where you are.”

  Curiosity burned through Cal. He wanted to see how much water had come ashore. Needed to know. His fingers twitched, and his pulse beat too hard in his chest.

  “Well, that wasn’t the dance I was expecting,” Lisa said beside him, and he moved his gaze to hers.

  A chuckle started in his throat, and he kept it low—for her ears only. “No, definitely not.”

  She smiled at him. “Who’s at the library?”

  He swallowed, all the teasing and playfulness between them gone. He hadn’t dated since Jo’s death, so he’d never had to tell a woman about his daughter. “Uh, my daughter,” he said.

  Surprise entered Lisa’s expression, though he wasn’t sure why. No, he hardly knew her. But most people knew he’d been married with a family.

  Your friends know that, he told himself. And Lisa just worked at the company that hired him to build altars and trellises. She didn’t know him. They weren’t friends.

  Yet.

  “Oh,” she said. “How old is she?”

  “Fourteen,” he said. He didn’t mean to sound so tired when he said it, but fourteen-year-old girls were a special breed of human. “She tests me sometimes,” he said, as if Lisa had heard the weariness and asked about it. “But she’s a good girl. She’s with her boyfriend.”

  He pulled out his phone and started to text Sierra again, hoping the cell phone towers had survived the waves. We’re okay here at the hotel, he said. How are you?

  The circle indicating the message had been sent spun and spun, and he looked up. “No service.”

  Lisa had her phone out too. “None for me either.”

  Pure frustration filled Cal. “I need to get to the library.” Part of him didn’t want to leave her alone either. He looked at his message again, still trying to go through. He’d used the pronoun we.

  We’re okay at the hotel.

  He looked at Lisa again. “Would you come with me to make sure my daughter is okay?”

  Warmth filled her expression. “Of course,” she said. “And you can come with me to see if my little bulldog survived.” She ducked her head then, but not before Cal saw the emotion there. The fear. The hope. The pain.

  He threaded his fingers through hers and squeezed. “We’ll find him.”

  “It’s a her,” Lisa said, her voice a touch higher than normal. “Her name is Suzy.”

  “My daughter’s name is Sierra,” Cal said, the same hope-fear-pain moving through him. But he couldn’t disconnect. Not again.

  When Jo had died, his head had felt disconnected from the rest of him. He’d get texts and mean to answer them, but he never did. Things needed to be done for the funeral, with the house, with Sierra, and without the help of his parents, he felt certain nothing would’ve been accomplished.

  “We’ll locate the humans first,” he said. “Just as soon as they let us out of here.” He peered over the heads of the people next to them, wondering how long it would take for Sweet Breeze to deem the area safe enough to let everyone leave.

  Chapter Three

  Lisa checked her phone again, noting that seventy-five minutes had passed since she and Cal had agreed to stick together after they were released from the hotel. She hadn’t been able to send a text, and the irritation and frustration level on the twenty-sixth floor could be cut with a knife.

  In fact, Lisa wouldn’t be surprised if someone started freaking out any moment now. Or if she were that person. She’d moved down the hall to talk to Shannon and Charlotte, and then Hope, but there was nothing anyone could do until the powers-that-be said they could leave Sweet Breeze.

  She migrated back to Cal, reaching his side several moments later. A sense of comfort she didn’t understand moved through her. She was glad she wasn’t alone. That she didn’t have to go through this alone. That she didn’t have to go home to her bungalow alone, or look for Suzy alone.

  She smiled up at him. “It has to be soon, right?”

  “I’m going to lose my mind,” he said in the calmest voice imaginable. He shifted his feet and looked at his phone again, the only signs of his discomfort.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the area surrounding Sweet Breeze Resort and Spa has been deemed safe,” a man said. Probably Owen. “We advise extreme caution for those wishing to leave. Please use the stairs, and please don’t push or run.”

  “Let’s go,” Cal said, already inching away from the wall. Lisa grabbed onto his hand so they could stay together. Several long minutes later, they reached the stai
rwell and started down. The lower they moved, the more congested it got.

  But finally, she followed Cal through a doorway to bright sunshine. Odd, she thought, looking up into the sky. For some reason, she expected it to be gray and foaming with clouds. But it wasn’t. It was a regular day, as if nothing had happened.

  There was water everywhere, and Lisa glanced down at her ribboned wedges. They were ruined, and she didn’t even care.

  She kept up with Cal as he headed for the parking garage, but it soon became clear there would be no driving.

  “Six inches of water,” he said, craning his neck to see above the crowd. “Let’s walk.” He guided them to the boardwalk, which ran from Getaway Bay, under the canopy of trees, to East Bay.

  Everything felt surreal. People were yelling to one another. Or for one another. Fronds and garbage and debris lay everywhere. A woman bent over and picked up a towel laden with water and sand.

  Lisa couldn’t take everything in all at the same time, and her head spun. She stumbled, and Cal said, “Whoa. You okay?”

  She was not okay, but she couldn’t vocalize it. His arms came around her, enveloping her, steadying her.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s just shock. Take a minute.” They stood in the middle of the boardwalk, pure chaos around them, while she figured out how to breathe again. She kept her eyes pressed closed, and a sense of vertigo rotated through her.

  When it finally passed, she stepped out of his arms. “Okay. I’m okay.”

  “You’ve never been in a tsunami?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “It’s been a long time since one hit the island.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Probably fifteen years, I suppose.” He looked out toward the water, his face a hard mask of stone. He was still handsome, though, and when he looked at her again, his dark blue eyes sparked with lightning. “Are we okay to keep going?”

  “Yes,” she said, pushing away the sight of so much destruction. “Let’s go find your daughter.”

  The walk to the library took twenty minutes, each step becoming drier and drier. The water had definitely come up this far, but less of it. And it had already receded back out to the ocean, or gone into coves, streams, or lakes.

  A group of people stood behind a roped off section on the front steps of the library, and Cal headed that way. “Sierra?” he called, joining a line of other adults. “She has to be here. These all look like minors.”

  A man stood at the front of the line, talking to people, but Lisa wasn’t sure what he was saying. When she and Cal got close enough, she heard, “Everyone who was in the library is safe. There were no injuries and no deaths.”

  Cal’s relief beside her emanated from him. “So where are they?” he asked, stretching up onto his toes to see better. “How can we find them?”

  “We kept everyone here who couldn’t get in touch with a parent or loved one. We’re asking you for their names before we release them.”

  Cal settled back onto his feet and waited his turn, his agitation growing by the moment. Finally, he stepped up the man and said, “Sierra Lewiston and Travis Bear.”

  The man scanned his clipboard and said, “They’re at the top of the steps.”

  Cal took Lisa’s hand again and up they went. Her calves hurt, but she didn’t care. The man was about to be reunited with his daughter. Sure enough, he called, “Sierra,” let go of her hand, and bounded up the last few steps, sweeping a dark-haired girl into his arms.

  “Daddy,” she said, crying into his shoulder. Lisa stood there and watched, her heart filling and filling with…something. Emotion of some sort. It was touching to see and feel the love Cal had for his daughter.

  He set her down and grabbed onto the boy next to her, holding him close too. “You haven’t talked to your parents?” he asked.

  “No service,” Travis said.

  “Let’s go see if they’re okay,” Cal said, turning back to Lisa. He seemed to stall for a moment, as if he’d forgotten she was there.

  She put a brave smile on her face anyway. She really didn’t want to go home alone, and if she had to trek over to wherever Travis lived to find out about his parents first, she’d do it.

  “Guys, this is a friend of mine from work,” Cal said, his eyes shooting sparks at her. “Lisa Ashford. Lisa, my daughter, Sierra and her boyfriend, Travis.”

  “So nice to meet you both,” Lisa said, employing her wedding planner voice. She shook their hands as if they’d come in for a consultation and looked back at Cal.

  “We have to get over to Travis’s place,” he said. “I understand if you want to go on to your house first.”

  “I’m okay,” she said, though her stomach quivered. What would she find at her house? She wasn’t right on the beach, but her bungalow definitely sat closer to the shoreline than the library did. She’d definitely have water damage. The question was how much, and if Suzy had managed to stay safe.

  “Okay,” Cal said. “It’s a couple of miles, yeah?”

  “At least,” Sierra said, dread filling her face. “Travis has a car.”

  “They wouldn’t let us take our cars,” Cal said. “But we can try here.”

  Travis led them to the back of the library, and there was a line of cars trying to get out of the parking lot. “I say we try,” Cal said, and Lisa’s feet rejoiced.

  Covering the few miles from the library to Travis’s house took thirty minutes, but Lisa wasn’t complaining. She listened to Sierra and Travis recount what they’d seen. From the roof of the library, they could see the wall of water coming ashore.

  “They told us to get down,” Sierra said. “Brace our backs against the concrete. But we could see it, Dad.” She sounded half awed and half horrified.

  “I’ve been in a few tsunami’s now,” he said. “They’re all different.”

  “This one didn’t seem so bad,” Sierra said. “Is it a bad one?”

  Lisa looked around at the debris, the broken-off trees. Yes, it was bad.

  “Not so much,” Cal said. “The windows broke out at Sweet Breeze on the first and second floors, allowing the water to go through. And the library didn’t even have standing water left.”

  “I heard someone say it went halfway up the first floor,” Travis said, easing around another corner. There was definitely damage in this neighborhood, as the yards looked like someone had come through with a wood chipper and eaten everything in sight.

  “I see my mom,” he said, excitement filling his voice. He pulled up to a house where a woman stood in the front yard, picking up discarded foliage. Travis spilled from the car, saying, “Mom.”

  He ran toward her and hugged her. The woman looked like she was in complete shock, and Lisa stayed in the car while Sierra and Cal got out. She couldn’t hear their conversation, but Sierra hugged the woman too, and Cal put his arm around her shoulders.

  They went into the house without looking back, and foolishness hit Lisa in the chest. She should’ve gone inside too. Or just gone home herself. She felt like an imposition to these people whom she barely knew.

  She studied her hands, beyond ready to be out of her wet clothes. But everything on the island was wet, and she wondered if she’d even be able to stay in her house that night.

  The car door opened, and Cal got behind the wheel. “Travis said we can borrow his car,” he said. “You want to come up front and tell me where you live?”

  Her eyes burned, and she realized she’d started to cry a little. She swiped at her face, got out of the backseat, and joined Cal in the front. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You have a family to take care of, and—”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I asked Sierra to stay here with Travis and his parents. We’re going to check your house and then mine, and we’ll figure out a safe, dry place for everyone to stay tonight.”

  “Their house isn’t that place, is it?” Lisa asked.

  Cal shook his head and put the car in drive. “No, they can’t stay there until things dry out. Carpet w
ill need to be replaced. And all the walls dried out. They might have to be replaced too.” He sighed. “But hey, I’m a carpenter, and I’ll have a lot of work now.” He kicked a partial grin at her, and Lisa marveled at the optimism in him.

  “I’m over on Straw Avenue,” she said. “A couple of blocks behind the movie theater.”

  Cal maneuvered them in that direction, staying silent.

  “Are you divorced?” Lisa asked, partly because she couldn’t stand to be inside her own head anymore, and partly because she wanted to know more about this man.

  “My wife died almost three years ago,” he said without looking at her.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Lisa said, another wave of emotion rolling over her. She looked out the passenger window and didn’t ask another question.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Divorced? Widowed? Never been married?”

  “The last one,” she said quietly.

  “No kids?” he asked.

  “No kids,” she confirmed. “Turn up there where that stop sign…used to be.”

  Cal did, something squealing in the car as they went around the corner. “Boyfriend?” he asked at the same time she said, “I’m the fourth one on the right.”

  She swung her attention toward him. “Boyfriend? You think I have a boyfriend?”

  “I’m asking if you have one,” he said.

  “No,” Lisa said. She’d asked him to dance. What did he think that was?

  “Fourth one on the right,” he said, pulling to a stop in front of her house. They both looked at it, and she knew she wouldn’t be staying there tonight. “Looks like you got some damage.”

  “Yeah.” Lisa knew there probably wasn’t a house on the island that hadn’t sustained some damage. Maybe the ones clear up on the bluff. “Let’s go see what the extent of the damage is.” She got out of the car, and Cal met her at the hood.

  He took her hand in his, and while there certainly wasn’t a crowd here to separate them, Lisa held on. Holding hands with this man felt nice, and she needed the comfort as she walked toward the house, praying with everything inside her that Suzy was safe and sound inside.