All a Man Can Be

by Virginia Kantra

  What should she do? She couldn’t afford to ignore the newscaster’s warning. But how could she be sure she was acting with appropriate caution and not overreacting from fear?

  The way she had with Mark?

  She pushed the thought away, but it kept returning like a persistent error message on her computer screen. She had followed all the outlines and strictures in her books, and she was just as frustrated and even more alone.

  Louis was still waiting for her answer. Think, Nicole. If the old plan wasn’t working, she needed a new one. But where would she be without her manuals and experts? At the mercy of her own heart, with only the guidance of her own judgment.

  She did not trust her judgment.

  But she was ready—maybe—to listen to her heart.

  “Where do you live, Louis?”

  He met her gaze. “Green Road.”

  On the west side of town. By the flooding river.

  “And your family…?”

  “My wife’s at home. She’s moving things upstairs.”

  Her life might be rushing out of her control. But here, at least, she had the power to do something right.

  “You go home and help her,” Nicole said. “We’re closed today.”

  She needed to call her employees, Nicole thought as she closed and locked the door behind her grateful cook. All her employees, to let them know they should not come in today. And she would start with Mark.

  Her mouth dry and her palms clammy, she punched in his number, while the television over the bar returned to its regular morning happy news program. Pressing the receiver to her ear, she counted the rings on the other end of the line.

  He didn’t pick up.

  Oh, well. That was okay, she assured herself. Maybe he was in the shower. Maybe he was taking Danny to school.

  Maybe he had caller ID and he’d decided she was too much trouble and he was never going to speak to her again.

  She sniffed and tried the next number on her list.

  “Yes, thanks, Deanna. Yes, I will call and let you know. Thanks. Take care.”

  “…from the Channel Seven Weather Center,” the television announced.

  She hung up the phone.

  “Students at Edenton High School are the only ones so far directly affected by the flooding, with two playing fields and a portion of the student parking lot now several inches underwater. An updated list of school closings—”

  Someone tried the locked door. She hurried toward the entrance to tell whoever it was that she was sorry but the Blue Moon was closed.

  “Nicole?” It was Mark’s voice, rough, impatient.

  Her heart beat faster. She yanked on the door. He was standing on the other side, dark and lean and safe.

  “I was trying to call you,” she blurted out.

  His brows flicked up. “I tried calling you, but your line was busy. What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I—” Not a lover’s greeting. She struggled to respond. “I was letting people know not to come in to work today. Where’s Danny?”

  “In the Jeep. I got called in to the hospital. I’m taking him to my sister’s.”

  “He could stay here,” she suggested tentatively. “With me.”

  “No.”

  His immediate dismissal hurt. “It’s no trouble,” she said.

  “He can’t stay here. You can’t stay here. You’re too close to the water.”

  She looked out the window at the lake, still reassuringly within its bounds. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t know that. You have no idea what the water is capable of.”

  He was right.

  And yet the thought of leaving her bar—her business, her livelihood, her second chance—to the whims of the weather and the likelihood of looters sickened her. Everything she owned and everything she’d hoped to make of herself was on these two floors. Everything she wanted was right here.

  Except for Mark and Danny, and they were driving away.

  “I’ll keep the TV on,” she promised. “If it looks bad, I’ll get out.”

  He scowled at her, thinking hard and not saying much at all. Typical DeLucca stuff.

  “Fine. Make sure that you do. I’ll be back,” he said, making her feel like Linda Hamilton being stalked by Arnold Schwartzenegger in The Terminator.

  He kissed her, a brief, hard kiss that for some stupid reason brought tears to her eyes.

  And then he left her, standing in the doorway as the rain began to fall.

  Tess wasn’t at her apartment.

  Mark hustled Danny back to the Jeep. Now what? He was supposed to be at the hospital. It wasn’t his regular call day, but every dispatcher, dog handler, ranger, firefighter, EMT and paramedic in the county who wasn’t already committed along the river had been mobilized for the emergency relief effort. It was what Mark was trained for. What he was good at.

  But before he could go, he had to get Danny settled somewhere safe.

  He punched in his sister’s cell phone number, but with phone lines starting to fail, all circuits were busy.

  “Why can’t Aunt Tess come to our house?” Danny asked.

  Because in a couple of hours, his place could be underwater.

  “Because she can take better care of you at her house,” Mark explained.

  Or Jarek’s. That was it. She had to be at Jarek’s. Jarek lived well away from the flood area. Tess was probably watching Jarek’s ten-year-old daughter, Allie, while he did the emergency management thing. Mark turned east on Old Bay Road, avoiding South Lake Street, where the puddles were turning into creeks.

  “Nicole could take care of me,” Danny said.

  Mark glanced at his son, his short legs sticking over the edge of the seat, his Mexican beaded lizard—one of only two poisonous lizards in the world—clutched in his hand.

  “We’ll be fine,” he told his son. “We can manage on our own.”

  “Then why do I have to stay with Aunt Tess?”

  Mark set his jaw. “Because I’m going to be busy, and Aunt Tess is family.”

  He pulled in front of Jarek’s house, looking for signs that somebody was home. His sister’s car was missing from the driveway. But the living room light was on, and, running up the walk through the rain, Mark heard the sound of a television from inside.

  Thank you, God, he thought, and leaned on the bell.

  The door opened. His prayer dried up.

  Isadora DeLucca, his mother, stood in the doorway, thin and dark and nervous as always. “Hello, Mark.”

  Danny clutched Mark’s pants leg. “Who’s she?”

  There was no way Nicole could carry the pool table upstairs to her apartment. Or the jukebox, or the long, polished bar. She wouldn’t even think about the condition of the refrigerator and the oven if water got back into the kitchen, although she supposed the sealed components might be protected.

  But she could save her laptop and the cash register. She filled the bathtub and sink upstairs in case her water supply became contaminated. She spent anxious minutes in the rest rooms searching for the check valves on the sewer traps. She stacked the tables in the booths.

  Gray light filtered through the windows. Was it her imagination, or was water beginning to creep up the pilings that supported the dock?

  But no urgent weather bulletins interrupted the station’s morning programming. Secure above the bar, a roundtable of women discussed whether the sexes would ever be equal in their ability to focus on and nurture relationships.

  Nicole started to stack her chairs and lug them two by two up the narrow staircase to her apartment.

  “You said a bad word,” Danny observed.

  “Yeah. Sorry. Don’t repeat it, okay?” Mark ran a hand through his hair. “Hello, Ma. Tess in?”

  Isadora DeLucca shook her head. “She’s out covering the flood. Would you like to come in?”

  “No, I—” Damn. “Jarek?” he asked without much hope.

  “Down at the station. They’ve had to divert traffic
around the flood. Did you have trouble getting here?”

  “No, we took Old Bay Road,” he said absently. “It wasn’t too bad.”

  What the hell was he supposed to do with Danny now? A first responder’s primary obligation was to get to the scene as quickly as possible. But he had new obligations now.

  His mother turned her dark, anxious gaze to the boy. “You must be Danny,” she said, a little tremor in her voice. “Allie and I are baking cookies in the kitchen. Would you like to join us?”

  “You’re kidding,” Mark said.

  Isadora straightened her thin shoulders. “I often stay with Allie when Tess and Jarek have to go out.”

  “Yeah, but you never baked a cookie in your life.”

  “Who’s Allie?” Danny asked.

  “Your aunt Tess’s little girl,” said Isadora.

  Mark shifted impatiently on the step. “I told you about her, remember?”

  Danny nodded. His gaze slid back to Isadora. “But who is she?”

  Mark looked from his mother’s anxious face to Danny’s curious one. He took a deep breath. “This,” he said tightly, “is your other grandmother.”

  Danny tightened his hold on Mark’s pants leg. “Nice to meet you,” he said politely.

  “It’s very nice to meet you.” Isadora smiled at Mark. “He has beautiful manners.”

  “Which I can’t take credit for.”

  She ignored him, speaking to Daniel. “The cookies are almost ready to go into the oven. Do you want to help?”

  Danny looked at Mark for permission. Or rescue?

  “We can’t stay,” Mark told his mother. “They’re evacuating the hospital. I’ve got to go.”

  “Then go,” Isadora said. “Danny can keep Allie and me company.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Mark, I know I wasn’t there for you when you were growing up. Let me be here for you now.”

  What could he say?

  Nicole’s voice, warm and firm, spoke up in the back of his mind. How about ‘I love you’?

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah, all right. Thanks.”

  Isadora beamed as if he’d handed her a bouquet or one of those stupid handmade cards he used to bring her in kindergarten before he figured out she didn’t save them like the other mothers.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Danny said.

  Poor kid. He was probably tired of being passed around his new relatives like potato salad at a family reunion.

  Mark hunkered down so he could look his son in the eye. “We don’t have a choice,” he said gently.

  “I could go with you.”

  “No, you can’t. Really. You’ll be safer here.”

  Danny clutched his lizard. “What if something bad happens?”

  Isadora stirred. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”

  Danny looked doubtful. Mark knew how he felt. And yet…

  He had a sudden, years-old memory of fear, of crouching in a corner while his father raged through the shabby living room. Where was Tess? He couldn’t remember. Tess had always protected him. But he remembered his own helpless hate, his sick terror as his father’s thick fingers curled into his shoulder and dragged him from his hiding place.

  And Isadora, white-faced, shrieking, fastening herself to her husband’s burly arm. “Don’t you hit him! Don’t you ever hit him!”

  The fingers slackened.

  He remembered dropping to the couch and scrambling away.

  And he remembered his father’s roar and his mother tumbling to the floor.

  God. He shook his head.

  Isadora’s face fell. “I will,” she protested, but quietly, as if she didn’t expect him to believe her.

  And affection for her eased his shoulders. Tess kept telling him their mother had changed. Maybe this was one more time his sister was right. “Yeah. I know you will. It’ll be okay,” he told Danny. “You bake cookies with Grandma. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  It was a promise. The promise he’d denied Nicole. And it wasn’t so hard to make after all.

  Danny regarded him solemnly. “Can I save you a cookie?”

  Love for the child swelled Mark’s chest and tightened his throat. But he didn’t want to foist his emotions on the kid, didn’t want to embarrass either one of them with a scene.

  “That’ll be great. Thanks. I bet I’ll be hungry.”

  From the window of the Jeep, he saw them framed in the doorway, watching him go. He’d never had anybody waving goodbye to him on the job before. Never had anybody waiting for his safe return.

  He saw his mother stoop to whisper in Danny’s ear. His son lifted his skinny arm, his high voice carrying clearly through the rain.

  “Bye, Daddy!”

  Nicole was on her fifth trip down the stairs when the lights in the bar flickered and went out.

  Her heart pounded. Things could be worse, she told herself. You’ve just lost power. Some lines are down in the storm.

  She made her way by feel down the narrow staircase, willing her eyes to adjust to the dark.

  Rain lashed the windows. The TV was silent. She felt as if she’d lost a companion, her last connection with the world outside. Was it time to go?

  The bar looked eerie. Empty. Dark. The tables stacked in the booths blocked the pewter light that filtered through the windows. Nicole held on to a table leg and peered at the lake outside.

  She sucked in her breath. The water had risen to the level of the dock. Wait or go? There were still things she could do. Things she could save.

  Echoes haunted the empty bar. Mark’s warning: You have no idea what the water is capable of. And her own promise: If it looks bad, I’ll get out.

  Go, she decided. Go now.

  She ran upstairs to grab her purse, her pulse thudding, her mind racing, as she felt her way a second time down the steps. She should call Mark.

  No, she shouldn’t, she would be fine. She had her car, her lovely new Lexus with four-wheel drive for winter and all the other bells and whistles. And he had work to do. He couldn’t be worrying about her.

  She left the bar and locked it, trying not to think of all she was leaving undone. All she was leaving behind. She ran through the rain—there were puddles in the parking lot—and unlocked her car door. The engine caught on the first try. She gripped the wheel, shuddering with cold and relief.

  Where should she go?

  South and east, she decided. Away from the river. Away.

  She pulled her cell phone from her purse and put it on the passenger seat beside her where it would be handy in an emergency. She was not going to become a flood statistic. She bounced through puddles and onto the street, turning left on Harbor, toward the center of town. Her wiper blades churned furiously to clear the windshield. Except for the parked cars and the water rushing in the gutters, the streets were deserted. The streetlights weren’t working. The buildings were dark. Nicole crawled forward through the rain, her tires throwing up water.

  At the intersection of Harbor and Main, the water stretched from curb to curb, brown and impassable. A truck, an oversize gray pickup, blocked the road, its windows rolled up and its cab empty.

  Nicole slowed, stopped, sickened. If a truck couldn’t make it…

  She looked around for light, for signs of life, for help. But on this side there was nothing. Only the traffic lights swaying above the street and darkened windows and a brown-and-white dog pressed into a doorway.

  Just half a block away the road rose solidly from the water. The lights from an emergency vehicle flashed strobe-like on the street. A single figure in a yellow slicker disappeared around the corner. Should she call for help? Get out and ford the street? But she’d read somewhere a person could be swept off her feet in six inches of water, if the current was fast enough. Better to stay in the car. Safer to stay in the car.

  Only the car wasn’t going anywhere, and the water was rising.

  She had to go back. She couldn’t turn around. Empty cars
lined the sides of the street. Water foamed along the gutters. Her pulse thrummed. She would have to back up.

  Now.

  Nicole undid her seat belt and twisted in her seat. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other gripping the upholstery, she eased the Lexus into reverse and started creeping through the water.

  A patch of white caught her eye. The dog had left the shelter of the doorway. It ran to the curb and back, to the curb and back, trapped by the rising water.

  It would be all right, she told herself. Dogs could swim.

  Only this was sort of a little dog: a little, wet, ugly dog, its short brown-and-white coat plastered to its skinny body.

  There was nothing she could do. She backed the car another two yards. The dog barked, its wide eyes dark and frantic. She could see some sort of collar, black, but no broken lead or dangling tags.

  She couldn’t possibly stop. Rain rattled on the roof. If the water surged— If the engine flooded—

  The dog barked again, and Nicole stopped the car, pulling as close to the curb as she dared.

  She opened the door. “Come on,” she said.

  Bark. Bark. The dog danced at the water’s edge. Rain soaked her sleeve and pelted her face.

  “Here, boy,” she called, feeling foolish.

  More barking, more dancing. Its tail wagged. Its whole body shook.

  “You have to come now,” she told it firmly. “Or we’re both going to be stuck.”

  The dog whined and ventured a few inches into the current. The water swirled around its stubby legs.

  Oh, dear. Oh, damn.

  Leaving her keys in the ignition, Nicole swung one foot out and dipped it in the water. The shock of it almost took her breath away. It was cold and dirty and moving alarmingly fast. She blinked water from her eyes. Holding tight to the door, she took a few tentative steps away from the car.

  “Come on, dog,” she said. “Here, puppy.”

  And the dog quivered and jumped.

  Twenty pounds of wet, frightened, frantic dog hit Nicole in the chest and knocked her back on her seat. Its nails scrabbled and scratched her thighs. Its sleek, wet head shoved at her shoulder. It pushed past her and scrambled to the passenger seat, leaving a nice long gouge in the leather.