At Wave's End: A Novel

by Patricia Perry Donovan

  In Ashcroft, its final destination, the bus emptied of passengers, who raced through ankle-deep waters to cars, leaving only Faith and Tanya in the park-and-ride.

  “Is it me, or does it feel like we’re the last two people on earth?” Faith said, watching the menacing night swallow the departing coach.

  As the two women leaned against the locked ticket office, beside vending machines that rattled and swayed menacingly, Faith wondered if coming to Wave’s End had been the right decision. Not that she could turn back now, she reminded herself, yanking down the sleeves of her borrowed sweater.

  It took well over an hour and several calls to the dispatcher before the taxi arrived, its driver bursting with complaints about blocked roads and the storm’s wrath. “Atlantic City’s already underwater,” he said. “Those casino folks should have gotten out when the governor told them to. Now they’re sunk.”

  His grievances continued all the way to Bayport, where he turned to Tanya, her aunt’s address highlighted on his GPS. “Not sure how close I can get you, ma’am. They’re barricading the beach.”

  Tanya leaned toward the driver’s seat. “But my elderly aunt’s up there.”

  “Sorry.” He slowed to a crawl. “If I don’t follow the rules, I’ll lose my license.” They were passing a marina now, where abandoned skiffs bobbed atop whitecaps like targets in an arcade shooting gallery, while massive waves hammered the empty slips. Faith watched in alarm as the tin roof of a service shed peeled off like an orange skin, skimmed the surface of the water and whirled into the black sky, a metallic meteor.

  Beside her, a tight-lipped Tanya stared at the boats, the boarded-up windows of evacuated coastal homes, the hypnotic whirl of police lights punctuating the approach to Bayport, the paved road now gravel so close to the beach.

  “I don’t know what my aunt was thinking.” Tanya shook her head.

  “This is like the end of the world.” The driver pulled up to a makeshift checkpoint manned by rain-soaked emergency workers, their hooded citrus slickers glistening like hard candy. “End of the line for me.” He threw the cab into park.

  “Fine. I’ll get out here, then.” After grabbing her tote, Tanya handed him a fistful of bills.

  “But it’s not safe,” Faith protested. “Look at those trees.” Outside the car, thick-trunked oaks twenty yards away succumbed to the gale’s muscle, surrendering limbs and writhing in the manner of the Caribbean palms she had watched on the bodega television.

  Tanya stared at the trees a second, then got out of the car. “I’ve got to find my aunt. Faith, I hope your mother’s okay. Safe travels, you guys.”

  Out of the darkness, an emergency worker in waist-high waders twirled his flashlight, motioning for the cab to leave.

  “Please be careful,” Faith pleaded. Tanya clung to the wooden barricade as she talked to the workers, wind whipping her hair in every direction.

  As the cab pulled away, leaving Tanya negotiating for access, a Jet Ski manned by a wetsuited driver roared by.

  The road had become an extension of the ocean.

  “Think they’ll let her up there?” the driver asked.

  “Who knows?” answered Faith. “And who knows what she’ll find once she gets there?” Settling back in the taxi, she pictured Tanya’s tenacious aunt trapped in her home, threatened by churning seas, while her worried niece risked life and limb to get to her.

  With difficulty, they eventually rejoined the inland access road linking the shore towns and continued south. Faith tightened her seat belt as the taxi wove around fallen debris, and realized she still wore Tanya’s sweater. Turning around now to return the item was unthinkable. There were few cars on the road besides those of first responders, and her driver’s terse, monosyllabic responses to attempts at conversation reflected his intense concentration.

  Now nearly dry, Faith removed the borrowed cardigan and folded it in her lap, wishing she had thought to give it back to the generous stranger. She closed her eyes, her thoughts turning to Connie and Maeve and their level of storm preparation. Had Bruce equipped the two women for the duration as her mother expected? More likely, his journalistic responsibilities of covering the disaster would take precedence over tending to the two women.

  Faith pulled out her phone to try her mother again. Wondering how close they were, she tapped the driver as they stopped at a light. The question faded in her throat, however, at the sight of the towering fir tree to their left. The fir rocked and lurched violently, the lawn surrounding it rippling and undulating as though a legion of demons below the surface were hell-bent on uprooting it.

  Paralyzed, Faith could only stare in horror at the evergreen working its way out of the earth in slow motion, and she ducked instinctively as the tree headed straight for them.

  “Holy sh-i-i-i-t, lady. Hang on!” The driver floored the cab through the red light, throwing Faith against the back seat as the taxi hydroplaned through the intersection.

  16

  The crack of timber on macadam slammed through Faith like a gunshot. Curled fetus-like in the back seat, she pressed her hand to her pounding heart.

  “Shit. That was close.” Having expertly maneuvered them out of harm’s way a split second before the tree crashed across the road behind them, the cab driver wiped his forehead with his forearm. “Somebody must be watching over you.”

  Faith slowly raised her head, making herself look out the back window, where the massive tree bisected the road, simultaneously grateful and incredulous that its trajectory had spared them. “And you, too, apparently.”

  “I’ll tell you, I can’t wait to park this baby tonight. Go home and kiss my kid.” The driver caught Faith’s eye in his mirror. “Give me a second here for my heart rate to return to normal, and I’ll get us out of here.”

  With no desire to spend another minute in the cab, Faith felt around the floor for her bag. “It’s okay. I’ll get out here. My stop’s just over there.” As they sat catching their breath, Faith had spotted the inn up ahead on the corner. “And thank you. For reacting so quickly.” Adding a twenty to her fare, Faith handed him the bills over the seat with a shaking hand.

  “Think I’ll go buy me some lottery tickets right now.” Grinning, he slipped the money into his shirt pocket and patted it.

  “You do that. And get home safe,” she said as she climbed out of the cab. An onlooker spotted Faith exiting the taxi and headed toward her. Raising a hand to deflect any assistance, Faith bent her head and ran toward the inn, feeling like Dorothy heading home before the tornado as she bucked the gusts to swing open the inn gate and scurry up the front steps. On the darkened porch, she paused, listening to the curious black shell on the mailbox rattle against the house, relieved that, for better or worse, she had made it to Wave’s End.

  Faith leaned hard on the doorbell of The Mermaid’s Purse. When no one answered, she pressed the bell again, peering through the glass pane beside the front door. Had Maeve and her mother decided to evacuate after all? Wishing Connie would have told her, Faith pounded on the door.

  A few more seconds passed. Why weren’t they answering? She ran down the steps to check the side driveway, finding an ancient station wagon parked there, but unsure if the vehicle belonged to Maeve. And with the memory of the downed tree fresh in her mind, she had little desire to remain outside and investigate.

  Back on the porch, she tried the front door, found it open and let herself in, battling a determined gust to shut it behind her. A clamshell nightlight beneath the stairs offered the only illumination.

  “Mom? Are you here?” Faith felt her way to a hall light and switched it on. “Maeve? Where are you?”

  No response came, not even a hiss from the petulant Pixie. Calling out again, Faith frantically toured the downstairs. As she headed from the salon to the kitchen, the wind escalated, and something struck an outside wall with an earsplitting crack. The house felt like a tomb, and Faith suddenly realized why: Bruce’s boards covered every window, creating blackout
conditions.

  She continued through the house, flipping lights on as she went, calling for her mother and Maeve. Upstairs, she found Connie’s things in one room, and the rest of the guest rooms empty.

  There had to be a simple reason for the women’s absence, she told herself once back in the kitchen. Someone, possibly Bruce, had picked them up earlier and taken them somewhere safe to ride out Nadine. If only her mother would pick up her phone and confirm she was safe!

  One ring, two rings; why couldn’t Connie keep her phone close in an emergency? Three rings turned to four, and still Faith’s mother didn’t pick up. It was premature to contact the police, and based on the chaos in Bayport and the cacophony of sirens outside, the authorities were no doubt overwhelmed.

  Faith found a glass in a cupboard and began to fill it at the sink, when a door behind her creaked—not the back door but one inside the kitchen. Still reeling from her near miss with the tree, Faith froze. At that moment, the wind wailed and the house went dark. A flashlight’s ghostly beam shined over Faith’s shoulder, illuminating her own shocked reflection in the boarded-up window over the sink.

  17

  Faith made herself turn around. “Who’s there?” she asked, shielding her eyes from the flashlight’s glare.

  “My goodness. Is that you, Faith?” The beam dropped. Faith recognized Maeve’s voice and sagged against the sink.

  “Yes, it’s me. I’ve been trying to call my mother. I’ve been so worried. Why didn’t you answer the door?”

  “We didn’t hear it. We’ve been hunkered down in the basement since this afternoon. Thought that would be the safest place. There’s some big, old trees near the property, in case you haven’t noticed,” she added.

  “Oh, I’ve noticed. A huge one just came down across the street.”

  Just then, the lights came back on. “Thank goodness,” said Maeve. “They’ve been flickering like that all night. Come with me. Your mother will be overjoyed to see you.”

  As Faith followed Maeve down the rickety stairs, Connie’s voice floated up from the cellar.

  “Who’s that, Maeve? Has Bruce come back?”

  “Not yet,” Maeve answered.

  How much time was the man spending at the inn?

  Connie’s mouth dropped open as she spotted her daughter. “Faith! What are you doing here? Did you come to Wave’s End to check up on me?”

  “Of course not.” Taking in the cozily lit cinder-block basement, Faith groped for words. “I just . . . Xander decided to close the restaurant, and I thought I should come down and help.”

  “That’s very thoughtful, but you didn’t have to. We’re snug as bugs here, and Bruce laid in all our supplies in case the power goes out for good.” Connie led Faith around, pointing out cases of bottled water, flashlights and fresh batteries, an exhumed television set on an old trunk and tuned to the storm coverage.

  “And look what Bruce brought for me!” Connie displayed a bottle of her preferred port. “My favorite. Said he went out of his way to find it.”

  “Very nice.” How did Bruce know her mother’s taste in wine? Had they gone on a date? How recently had the man’s wife passed, anyway? Bruce might only be seeking a little companionship, but Faith couldn’t help feeling a little suspicious of his largesse. She had her mother’s succession of suitors to thank for showing her that guys who hung around doing favors for nothing usually demanded something in return.

  It was an inescapable truth: in life, love and contests, you never got something without having to give.

  Faith glanced at two air mattresses made up with quilts.

  “As you can see, we’re prepared to sleep down here if necessary. I’m sure I’ve got another mattress upstairs I can make up for you,” offered Maeve.

  “It’s okay. I’ll make do with the couch.” Impressed by how well the women were coping, Faith began to feel foolish about her rash journey to Wave’s End. Cocooned as they were in Maeve’s cellar, you wouldn’t even know a hurricane raged outside, except for a flickering lamp that reminded them they could lose power at any moment.

  “We were just about to eat,” said Connie. “There’s plenty extra, if you don’t mind eating down here.”

  “Not at all.” As the shock from the tree run-in began to wear off, Faith realized how famished she felt. Accepting a plate of pork chops, mashed potatoes and green beans from Maeve, she sat down on the cellar steps to eat.

  “So tell us: How did you ever make it out of the city?” Connie asked.

  “We’ve been watching the news all day, and the situation in New York is quite disastrous,” added Maeve.

  The two women sat side by side in lawn chairs, eating from snack tables.

  “It wasn’t easy.” Faith had just started to describe the horrific scene in Bayport when a distinctive voice on the television caught her attention, and she paused to listen to the mayor of New York City.

  “The time to evacuate is over,” he intoned.

  Fork frozen in midair, Faith stared at live shots from lower Manhattan: torrential waters pouring into Ground Zero, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, a financial district parking deck. Swells of up to fourteen feet pounded Battery Park; some city skyscrapers swayed dizzily in the seventy-mile-an-hour winds.

  “Oh, my. Those poor people.” Connie tsk-tsked at the spectacle of waterlogged vehicles floating along Wall Street like bumper cars, the pounding deluge of storm water rendering the southern tip of Manhattan without power as they watched, as though someone had flipped a switch.

  Faith felt queasy. How had Xander possibly believed sandbags would protect Piquant? She had to call him. Surely he had found some added means of safeguarding the restaurant. She fumbled for her phone, then gasped at the screen: a selfie from Xander, waist-deep in swirling waters, captioned:

  We’re screwed.

  As Faith stared at the image, coverage switched back to the New Jersey governor. “The storm is moving twice as fast as when I spoke to you last time. It is no longer possible to evacuate, and we are no longer able to rescue people. And if you’re in one of the affected areas, and you can still hear me,” the governor continued, “we need you to hunker down and—”

  With that, the power cut out again, swallowing the governor in a pinprick of light and plunging the basement of The Mermaid’s Purse into darkness.

  18

  “I’m sure it will pop back on any minute.” Maeve lit several candles, including a dusty pine-infused Santa, then set a battery-operated transistor radio on top of the television and tuned it.

  But as the three sat in the candlelight, minutes stretched to a half hour, then to an hour. An upstairs grandfather clock chimed a faraway ten and eventually eleven strikes, and still they remained in the dark, along with hundreds of thousands on the East Coast, according to the crackly radio transmission.

  “I suppose there’s nothing to do but go to sleep,” Maeve said.

  “With any luck, we’ll wake up to the lights blazing,” added Connie.

  Saying her good-nights, Faith picked up a flashlight and headed upstairs.

  “There’s an afghan by the fireplace,” Maeve called after her.

  In contrast to the basement bunker, the wide-open layout of the inn’s main floor amplified the storm’s din. In the salon, Faith picked up the throw and sat on the sofa, pondering the resolute residents near the water like Tanya’s aunt, who naively refused to evacuate, as well as those who had left their homes as instructed, wondering if, in the end, their decisions would make a difference.

  Because, so far, this storm hadn’t rewarded the obedient or the prepared. On the contrary: as Nadine savaged the East Coast, she marked her territory, unilaterally claiming whatever stood in her way.

  Stretched out on the sofa, Faith burrowed under the blanket, trying to block out the wind’s plaintive wail, unable to dismiss the image of Xander struggling at the seaport. Despite the grand lead-up to the storm, she had never truly envisioned Piquant ending up underwater any more than she could
have imagined winds mighty enough to fell massive trees in her path.

  These were forces to reckon with.

  In the dark, she bit her lip, nauseated by the notion of saltwater saturating the restaurant’s Brazilian hardwood flooring and seeping into its imported cabinetry. Xander had painstakingly installed both over stolen nights and weekends prior to their opening less than a year ago. Up until now, the place had still smelled new.

  No one knew better than Faith the cost of this night: a fortune for repairs, disastrous ruin for a business owner already dangerously tapped out. Xander’s bare-bones, high-deductible insurance policy would not begin to cover the damage. For Faith, the destruction meant she would not soon see the funds she had foolishly lent him, swayed by his promise of a swift return on her investment.

  She hadn’t even asked him what the money was for before entrusting him with her savings.

  Now she likely had no job, no financial cushion to fall back on and soon no place to live.

  We’re screwed, Xander had typed.

  Yes, Xander, we are.

  Sitting up, she wrapped the afghan around her shoulders, straining for the sound of the wind. Though the scraping of branches against the inn’s exterior had all but ceased, she wasn’t fooled. The forecasters warned that Nadine would wax and wane overnight. In the uneasy quiet, she considered the irony of coming all this way to ensure her mother’s safety, only to find the two women coping quite capably, while things appeared much, much worse in New York.

  Faith lay back down and fell into a listless sleep, only to be roused by the wind’s scream and branches clawing the plywood on the windows, the sheets creaking in protest against the escalating gales. Spooked by the inky darkness, Faith grabbed the flashlight and tucked a couch cushion under each arm. With the afghan trailing behind her, she shuffled to the kitchen and down to the basement, throwing the cushions onto the floor a few feet from her mother and curling up on them.