Tak tried to imagine a life without Deena and found emptiness instead. There was nothing apart from her. No thing he wanted, no thing he wished for. She bore his name, his children. He couldn’t see a way to him without them.
He stood without knowing it. Found her in their bedroom without knowing it. Went to her, without being able to help himself. She was busy doing nothing, staring out at a window she couldn’t see through, thoughts so distant she didn’t bother to blink.
Tak lifted his hand, hovered, and then touched her arm. Just fingers, fingers, brushing her shoulder and then tracing down.
So many years. So many years, and still, she inhaled at his touch. His own chest rose and fell, as everything he saw, felt and knew, came down to his skin on hers. He didn’t know if they’d ever see home again. He didn’t know if they’d perish there, marooned, dehydrated, dead. But what he did know was that if he died on that day or another, there was no way he could go in peace without knowing that she loved him still.
With her forehead pressed to the glass, her chest rose and fell in uneven bursts, as if forgetting how to breathe then remembering, only to forget again. He thought of the first time he made love to her. Back then, they called themselves friends, but it was the sort of friend that roused bitter jealousy, that sparked flashes of loneliness in their absence, and stabs of want in their presence. The sort of friend that was never really just a friend to begin with.
So they were those kinds of friends when she saw him with another woman. Their gazes met through the window of a New York restaurant and Tak knew couldn’t figure out how to breathe anymore. Deena stared back at him, eyes glittering, a riot of emotion on her face. Tak toppled both his agent’s lunch and his, in his hurry to get to her. But she ran like she hoped never to be caught and he’d chased her down because he needed to. Chased her down and backed her into their bedroom, whispering all the little things he’d been too stupid and too cowardly to say. He wouldn’t be stupid anymore.
“Deena—”
“Tak.” She suffocated on his name. “Don’t.”
Thick lashes swept her cheeks once, twice, before she closed her eyes altogether.
Don’t.
Don’t think. Don’t breathe. Don’t be. Those commands were just as reasonable as what she asked of him, of what she wanted from him.
“I can’t help it,” was what he wanted to say.
“I need you,” was what he should have said.
Tak wanted to argue with her. He wanted to scream. All the compromises in the world, all the promises were hers, if only she could let them be. Why was she doing this? Why was she wrenching a stake through them both even as tears tracked her cheeks?
“How do I fix this?” he said. “Tell me.”
But it was the wrong thing to say.
She whirled on him, fury painting her face and darkening her features.
“There is no fixing life. There is no fixing what is. People are born, live miserably short lives, and die. Who are you to begrudge the amount of happiness you’ve been allowed? All things come to an end. You should have expected this. I did.”
Words wouldn’t come. Not for this…this confidence in the worthlessness of their love, this certainty that their vows would eventually mean nothing.
He left. Left her to her tears or muted screams or whatever it was that people who expected the worst out of life did when they got it.
He made up his mind not to care about her or their worthless marriage.
Chapter Fifty-Six
The rain came back in a whirlwind.
It seeped in under the door, slow but persistent, until they stood, upright as the carpet grew irretrievably wet. Hours passed with nothing but anger to linger on and the dawning realization that no one knew where they were, that no one knew to come, and that the wind would peel back their roof and the water would swallow them before any rescue would happen.
In an odd twist of fate, Tak and Deena stood shoulder to shoulder without touching, while Allison contented herself with John’s arms wrapped tight around her. Tak’s mother, who had hardly uttered a word since the storm began, sat pasty and drenched in sweat, the rigors of withdrawal having set her to shaking.
Tak swept Noah up into his arms, soothing him with soft tut tuts before rubbing his back in a circular motion. When his arms grew weary, he placed Noah on his shoulders. John did the same for little Elijah as Kenji’s torn rotator cuff prevented him from holding him up with Brandon on his back.
Water sat at their ankles, then at the hind part of their calves, inching upward as the children whimpered. By candlelight, Deena studied the water that pooled at her legs and thought too dark, too cloudy.
Pillows floated like ice floes before taking on so much weight they sunk. Plastic knives, forks, and spoons swarmed in a pooled vortex with trembling people at the center.
They were dying.
Every last one of them would drown.
When the water reached Deena’s hips, she reached out for Tak, and their fingers laced.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Deena’s pulse bled fear into her brain. Silence at last, after a barrage of cannon thunder, a Fourth of July’s worth of lightening. Wind screamed its fury like a scorned Medusa, clawing at the house, tearing for the fools inside. She could think of nothing but the snatch of scripture she’d whispered when Tak flat lined, when her world fell into a gaping black hole and knifed her for good measure.
Though he causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion,
According to the multitude of His mercies.
Tak, whose hand she clenched to numbness, began to whisper the scripture with her as they stood in the linen room, immersed in storm waters. At their feet, at their calves, at their thighs. The cries of children were all that pierced the fury of their hurricane. That and their prayers.
Though he causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion,
According to the multitude of His mercies.
No way out. Not through a too high roof with no way to reach it. Not while the winds of the storm could hurl them into the ocean. Not when the ocean waited outside their door. Scratch that. Not when the ocean waited at their feet.
Tak and Deena’s voices climbed, reaching for places the water couldn’t go. She hadn’t even known he knew that scripture. She didn’t know that he knew any.
They fell still when the storm abated.
His eyes were on her. Those eyes that saw everything, right down to the swallow in her throat. He saw her thoughts: both those she was thinking and those she hadn’t come up with yet. He saw through her. And knew her heart.
“Please God,” Tony said. “Send someone.”
His eyes were on his great grandmother, with her one hand clasped with Rhonda’s, the other with Caroline’s. Seated in her wheelchair, the waters met Grandma Emma’s chest.
Deena handed her oldest son her candle and went into action.
“Open everything,” she said. “Let as much water out of here as we can, now that the rain’s stopped.”
Grateful for something to do, virtually everyone dove into action. Prying open the French doors that led to the back patio took work. Once done, they saw what Deena already knew. Their property had been obliterated. They were surrounded by dark and ominous water. How high or how far this water stretched was impossible to know, but given their proximity to the sea, the worst seemed certain.
Tariq inched open the door to the hall and was rewarded with a great gust of water that knocked him on his ass. Sputtering and kicking and thrashing, he pulled up from the ink-like substance and gasped desperately for air.
“It’s foul,” he croaked and spat. “All of it’s foul. I can’t imagine what must be in the water.”
“Feces,” Daichi said. “Also Hepatitis, E. Coli, shingles, and an assortment of parasites, are very likely.”
Tariq stared at him, chest heaving.
They went back to work, more careful still. Wading through the house in pa
irs, rushing water out of every opening. When Lloyd and Remy went in the direction of where Tyson’s remains laid, Tak cut their path off and said it was dangerous.
Their children ventured out to the patios, where already a deceptive sun peeked out from the clouds. How such an abomination was possible, Deena didn’t know. Only, she felt the heat and steadiness of the sun, the glorious shine of a white too bright, and thought it mocked her.
They worked as that orb streaked the sky, burning from paleness to a brilliant furnace of fire.
Eventually, the whirr of a chopper sounded overhead. Those closest to the patio door rushed out, joining the handful of bodies already outdoors. Great blasts of wind and motor power whirred like the second coming of the storm. Deena looked up and saw the yellow belly of a great beast.
“Thank you, God,” she whispered.
She knew neither how nor why, nor did she try to understand.
A man spoke through megaphone directly into her skull.
“How many of you are there?” he chimed.
“Maybe 40!” Deena yelled back.
“What?”
“Maybe 40!”
A ladder descended from the aircraft.
“We can only transport 15 at a time,” he said.
“Then send a second helicopter!” Daichi yelled.
He received no response.
Fifteen. Fine. She’d send her sister, the elderly, the sick, and as many children as she could manage on the first round.
Deena held it together with wet glue resolve, as Yukiko went up, then Lauren and Lizzie, before a co-pilot came down and strapped up with first Noah, then Brandon, then Brandon’s younger brother Jacob, each child held in a harness as they winded up to safety.
Helicopter propellers whisked Deena’s hair and whipped it into wild knots. As her youngest child disappeared, as other children disappeared, she told herself that they were all safe, that they would all go home—all except Tyson.
A few of Tariq’s grandchildren went next and the knot in Deena’s chest grew tighter. It came undone when she insisted that Tony go up and he refused, giving the seat to a smaller cousin instead. When she pushed for Daichi go up, he too ignored her.
Deena knew they were right. Knew that the smallest and the frailest of them were to go, but in the secret chambers of her heart, in her secret selfishness, she had those she couldn’t do without. She needed her children, her sister and brother-in-law, she needed certain people safe even if she wasn’t. She needed Tak safe even if she couldn’t be.
So, she didn’t watch the helicopter ascend, slicing through the air on retreat. But once they were gone, she found herself grateful that Daichi had given up his seat.
“Where did they go?” she asked.
Daichi stood on the patio, face turned to the heavens.
“Probably the consulate in Curaçao. It would be ideal. Especially since I have a friend there.”
Of course he did.
They measured the seconds in heartbeats. They measured minutes in stares. Too many went by before the whirlwind of choppers returned.
A second helicopter arrived, smaller than the first and able to transport only ten. More Hammond children piled into this one, alongside Tony, who Deena forced, Kenji, who she also forced, Crystal, Rhonda, and Mary Ann. Their group had dwindled quickly. Those who remained clustered together, desperate for a once too-hot sun. Night approached, heavy handed and ominous. Before the last of dusk abated, the first helicopter returned and carried off another 15. Among them were Tak’s parents, his aunts and uncles, Tariq, and the help.
When night arrived, there was only Tak and Deena.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Standing out on the patio, husband and wife stared out at the water because it was a great deal easier than looking at each other. With family gone and their property in ruins, it seemed only poetic justice that their marriage had not escaped this storm. Far be it for Deena to begrudge what joy she’d been given only to have it melt away, she knew all things of this life were fleeting.
A decade and a half of marriage meant that she could always feel Tak’s presence, could sense the displacement of air when he shifted, and knew the ins and outs of his breathing as subtly as she knew her own. His hesitancy fell like a cloak around her.
Why wasn’t he defying the verdict she’d handed down? Begging her to reconsider? She’d been bracing for the full gauntlet of his determination.
It never came.
Deena decided that he didn’t care about their marriage and that she didn’t care either.
She decided that she absolutely wasn’t close to tears and blinked them away.
“Deena?”
She looked up at him with strength and defiance. She had survived so much. She could survive him.
“I’ll notify authorities about Tyson,” Tak said. “Just as soon as we’re somewhere safe. I’m not sure how they’d want to handle it.”
It wasn’t the conversation she wanted to have. Not when she felt half dead and wholly ruined. Not when every joyous second of her life seemed like a set up for the proverbial yanking of her carpet. In those instances, she always fell face down, in the hardest possible way.
But it didn’t mean she no longer loved him. In fact, her loving him was why she needed to leave. She couldn’t bear to watch them spiral down to nothingness, to the hatred of bitter divorced couples. Not when he’d once been her everything. Not when he was still her best friend.
Tak stood with his back to the patio railing, hands jammed into the jeans of his pockets, openly staring at her. Black wisps of hair danced in the wind, brushing the contours of his face. Ruggedness battled the faint hint of humor incessantly playing at his lips. Gorgeous. Born to laugh, born to smile, born for joy. He was all of that, though none of it was apparent at the moment.
A distant rumble, like thunder, made them both cock their heads.
Silence. Then the two looked at each other. It was Deena who dropped her gaze first.
Tak laughed bitterly.
“You know,” he said. “I don’t even know how to feel right now. Half of me wants to tell you that I can’t be without you. That I can’t be me without you. That there’s a part of me so yours, that if you take it, if you take it and leave, I’m afraid of what I’ll become.”
“And the other half of you?”
Tak looked at her.
“The other half says to let you go. That you came into this marriage expecting failure. Then you made sure you got it.”
“I made sure? You’re putting all this on me?”
Tak reared on her, a bull ready for battle.
“You’re damned right I am. When I said my vows, I meant every word.”
“So did I!”
“Yet, you give ‘em an expiration date. Amazing, the determination you have when it comes to the things you believe in. Your sister, our kids, your career. Yet a bad week has you deciding that we aren’t worth saving. So, yeah. The blame is yours. Own it. Be proud of it.”
There it was. The rumbling again. A thousand hooves in the distance, a thousand quakes en masse in their direction. Deena cocked her head.
“Tak—”
“I promised to cherish you, Deena. To be your truest friend, your unfailing confidante, the strength when you had none of your own. I promised to never put another before you, even when that other could have been me. That’s what I said and that’s what I meant. It’s what I thought you meant to.”
“I did!”
Words battled on her tongue for domination. Denials and explanations waged a fight to the death.
A deafening roar grew in size and sheer obnoxiousness, louder even than the chopper, and happening in her head, it seemed.
Tak started for the door. She followed him inside.
“Did you even believe any of this Aubree Daniels crap?” he shouted, whirling on her. “Or was it that convenient out your paranoia’s been looking for all these years?”
He careened around, searching left the
n right, irritation painted on his face. He heard the sound, the rollercoaster roar that came from nothing and everywhere.
“Tak,” Deena said and found her pulse strangely steady. “I don’t want an out. I’ve never wanted an out.”
“You—”
Tak opened his mouth and the house fell away around them.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Deena plummeted into the foul blackness of the first floor. Sinking, sinking, pitching wild as water filled her nose and mouth. An undercurrent suctioned her deeper. Eyes wide, she caught glimpses of plastic soda bottles and a red toy truck in her submersion, a Styrofoam cooler and a dead cat bobbing the murky waters. Bits of wood drifted up, where she imagined the second floor used to be, while glass petered down, settling on her floor. The west rotunda, she thought on sighting the Corinthian pillars. They were in the west rotunda.
Her lungs felt filled with gasoline, in a minute she would light the match. Deena jerked wildly as the panic set in. She needed oxygen. She needed it now.
Deena thrashed arms and legs, swirling, pivoting in her search for a way out. She fought upward, as the weight of water pushed her down, before realizing the sinking debris meant there was no second floor to go to. Large swaths of the area around her were filled with chunks of wood, plaster and roof tiles. The whole house, she knew, had come down on their heads.
Air.
Deena kicked wild, heart pounding in skull, lungs set to burst, before the sight of a bolder sticking into her house stopped her.
Moonlight streamed in.
Deena swam, making a strong pitch for the wood before yanking herself up to safety. She sucked on the oxygen in barbaric fierceness, inhaling more than she needed and coughing up the rest.
It wouldn’t come fast enough. The air couldn’t come fast enough.
Deena halted, then whipped around with a realization.
She was alone.
No.
Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale Page 22
