Hurricane Season

by Lauren K. Denton

  “What?” Anna Beth screeched. “How long’s a little while?”

  Betsy squeezed one eye closed. “Two weeks?”

  “Girl, you are crazy. And very nice.”

  “Anyway, I thought I’d be able to swing lunch, but I just finished up with Bankston, I’m dirty, and I have a million things to do before they get here.”

  “Well, I’m not having lunch by myself. Lucy and Jackson are squared away at friends’ houses, so I have the afternoon. Tell you what. Why don’t I bring lunch to you? I can help you with your million things.”

  “Oh, you don’t need to—”

  “Hush. I’ll get some chicken salad to go and I’ll be there in twenty.”

  Betsy exhaled and tossed the rag in the sink. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. And let’s see . . .” Anna Beth’s acrylic nails tapped the tabletop.

  “What is it?”

  “This is Jenna you’re talking about, right? Wild child, boyfriends, the whole bit?”

  That described Jenna’s younger days to a T, but now? Betsy shook her head. “She’s not like that anymore. She can’t be—she has Addie and Walsh.”

  “But she’s all of a sudden leaving them with you for two weeks?”

  “Well . . . yeah. I’m fine though.”

  “Mm-hmm. I’ll stop at the Pig on the way. I’m bringing you a bottle of wine. Sounds like you may need it.”

  Betsy took a quick survey of the house: The casserole dish from this morning’s farmer breakfast still in the kitchen sink. Two baskets of laundry on the couch waiting to be folded and put away. The back porch coffee table covered with printouts of Excel files, results of Ty’s and her last financial “state of the union” meeting. She glanced out the back window just in time to see Ty climb onto the seat of the tractor and crank it up. Carlos stood by directing him between the fence posts into the back field.

  She should go out and tell him about Jenna’s imminent arrival with the kids—especially since she hadn’t asked him first. In this case though, it seemed asking for forgiveness might be easier than asking for permission.

  Upstairs, the guest room was already made up with crisp sheets and an empty water carafe on the bedside table, ready for Ty’s parents in case they decided to come for an overnight visit. Uninterested in having any part in the family farm, they rarely did. Down the hall, she poked her head into the empty room. It had remained bare all these years except for a double bed with a sky-blue iron headboard salvaged from an estate sale, an old white dresser with glass knobs and an attached mirror, and a white rocking chair from Betsy’s grandmother. Addie and Walsh would need more than this.

  She rummaged through the hall linen closet and pulled out a set of sheets with tiny roses set against a white background. Roses always reminded her of Jenna. As sullen as she had been as a teenager, Jenna had helped their father tend his rose garden in the backyard with scientific precision.

  She also found the cream-colored cable-knit blanket her grandmother knitted for her before she was born. Betsy had draped that blanket across every bed she’d ever slept in, from her childhood home to Auburn then to Elinore. She couldn’t remember when or why she’d folded it and put it away. She held it in her hands now, thick stitches of cotton as soft as the fingers that made it.

  Her grandmother spent decades knitting, her nimble fingers purling and plaiting in ways Betsy never had a desire or inclination for. Spending weeks at her house during summer breaks with Jenna when their parents worked long hours, Betsy grew familiar with the vocabulary and shape of stitches, even if she didn’t pick up the knitting needles herself. As the older, calmer granddaughter, the one more concerned with making others happy, she was the one who sat and kept their grandmother company while she knitted. Jenna ran free on their grandparents’ four acres, laughing with kids from neighboring houses, sneaking kisses and cigarettes.

  Even if she never purled on her own, Betsy knew the significance of a dropped stitch. It would start with a little puff of air from her grandmother’s nose, a slight shake of her head, then her fingers quickly working backward to recover that disobedient stitch. She’d go back to just before things fell apart and make the necessary change to prevent the same thing from happening again.

  Betsy unfolded the blanket on the double bed and held it by the ends, gently flapping it to settle it across the sheets. Her grandmother’s stitches had held tight all these years, not a dropped stitch in sight. She smoothed her hands across the blanket, straightened the corners, and imagined the room holding two little girls after holding nothing but dreams and damaged furniture. She sat on the corner of the bed, across from the antique dresser, then reached over and ran her thumb across the crack in the top drawer.

  “Hey, girl,” came Anna Beth’s voice from downstairs, then a slam of the back door. “I ate some of this chicken salad on the way over here. Hope you don’t mind.” Her feet thudded up the staircase. “I was starving since you left me high and dry for lunch.”

  Her friend appeared in the doorway to the empty room, fanning her damp face. “It’s hot as two cats in a wool sock out there. And you wouldn’t believe the line at the Pig. They’ve got their chicken legs on sale ninety-nine cents a pound, and it’s brought out all the bargain shoppers. You know there’s nothing I hate more than bargain shoppers with their coupon binders. Now, how are you?”

  Betsy smiled. Anna Beth was always in a frenzy about something—the blazing heat that blanketed their part of Alabama for at least eight months out of the year, beachgoers invading Elinore for its “charming” dining and shopping, or how parents in their district always disregarded the deadlines for signing kids up at the elementary school. She was the school registrar and had to deal with the latecomers who insisted their child be registered, even after class lists had been posted. Talking to Anna Beth, you’d think those parents were late for tea with the queen.

  “I’m fine,” Betsy said. “Thanks for bringing lunch.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Anna Beth glanced through the bedroom. “Your nieces’ll sleep in here?”

  Betsy nodded. “It’s not much. I need to pick up some coloring books or something for them.”

  “I’ll bring a few things over. I have some toys up in the attic, and we still have a ton of books.”

  “Thanks, but I’m sure Jenna will pack some of their toys.”

  Anna Beth snorted. “From what you’ve said, Jenna might not come prepared. You’ll need something if it rains. Kids go stir-crazy when it rains. At thirteen and fifteen, mine still go crazy when they’re stuck inside all day, despite a whole world of electronic doodads all over the house.”

  Anna Beth turned toward the stairs. “You ready to eat? I got the chicken salad you like—the kind with all the grapes and nuts in it.”

  “That sounds great. I just need to grab one more thing.”

  She opened the top dresser drawer and pulled out Henderson’s Book of Fanciful Flowers. Written by Albert Henderson in 1918, the back cover was held on by threads and the corners were jammed and bent, but the pages inside were still crisp and flat. She’d bought the book years ago at a used bookstore, the first and only time she’d let herself buy something to decorate the room she hoped would one day be her nursery. Back then, she was in her garden every day weeding, pruning, and fighting off aphids. She used to love it—getting her hands dirty, seeing her hard work result in color and life popping up from the soil—but it had been a while since she’d visited. The garden was mostly full of dandelions and crabgrass now.

  The Book of Fanciful Flowers may not have been a true children’s book, but the dreamy watercolor loops and swirls, depicting everything from sunflowers and roses to peonies and forget-me-nots, seemed whimsical and childlike. Along the edges of each page, Mr. Henderson had written, in careful ink, descriptions of each flower.

  A peony bush full of flowers brings good luck, but if the flowers fade or fall off, prepare for disaster.

  While known to signify everlasting union, dahlias can also symbol
ize betrayal and dishonesty. Use caution when gifting dahlias to a beloved.

  Her plan had been to cut out the pages and frame them, but the pages remained between the covers, and the book had been shut up inside that dresser drawer since the day she threw it in there and slammed the drawer closed with enough force to splinter the wood. She ran her hand across the fragile cover, like reintroducing herself to an old friend, and propped it against the mirror.

  Anna Beth leaned forward and peered at the cracked drawer. “Gorilla Glue will take care of that. That’s what I love about antiques like this. You never know what troubles they’ve been through.” She patted the top of the dresser. “But it makes ’em tough.”

  Downstairs, they spread their lunch out on the table. While Betsy dragged one of the two laundry baskets from the couch over to her kitchen chair, Anna Beth retrieved two wineglasses from the cabinet and poured cold pinot grigio.

  “I don’t know, AB,” Betsy said, already bringing the glass to her lips. “It’s a little early for happy hour.”

  “Psshhh,” Anna Beth muttered. “Cheers.” She clinked her glass to Betsy’s. “Oh, this reminds me. I’m having a little get-together at my house on Wednesday for some new neighbors. I’d ask you and Ty to come, but we’re having margaritas and tapas from El Gato. Not exactly kid-friendly.”

  “What about Lucy and Jackson?”

  “They’ll spend the night with Tom’s parents in Elberta. They’ll eat a pound of Cheetos, drink a gallon of sweet tea, and come home with three kinds of stomachache, but it’ll be worth it for a night off.” She took a sip of her wine and looked pointedly at Betsy. “So what’s up with Jenna? Does she always make plans at the drop of a hat like this?”

  Betsy smiled. She was used to Anna Beth’s express train of thoughts, swerving and veering all over the place. “She’s spontaneous—or at least she used to be—but she just found out yesterday she was accepted at the retreat. I think she told me as soon as she could.”

  Anna Beth narrowed one eye. “How close are y’all, really?”

  Betsy hesitated, tapped her fingernails on her wineglass. “I don’t know. We were close once, but it was a long time ago. When I left for Auburn, she still had two years at home with our parents, which didn’t go over very well. They never appreciated her free spirit. Always wanted her to calm down, behave, sit still.”

  Betsy picked a pair of Ty’s socks out of the basket and folded them together. She passed them back and forth between her hands before tossing them back in the basket. “It was probably hard for her to be there without me. When I was home, I was sort of the mediator between her and my parents. Without me there . . . well, Jenna’s not naturally submissive.”

  “Who is?” Anna Beth asked around a bite of food. “Give me that.” She leaned over and pulled the laundry basket to her. “I already ate half a basket of bread at the restaurant waiting on you. You eat, I’ll fold.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Betsy popped a grape in her mouth. “Anyway, Jenna moved around a lot after her stint in college, had some boyfriends here and there. We just have different lives. But she does have those two sweet girls.”

  “How’d she let that happen? Seems she wouldn’t want to be tied down by kids.”

  “Oh, I don’t think having kids was her intention. She just . . . got lucky. Or unlucky depending on how you look at it.”

  “Humph.” Anna Beth folded a pair of blue jeans, then sat back in her chair, her eyes on Betsy.

  “What?”

  Anna Beth pursed her lips, then shook her head. She reached forward and grabbed a T-shirt.

  Betsy looked down and pushed the chicken salad around the plate with her fork. It had always been easy for others to dismiss Jenna because of her wildness, her disregard for rules, but Betsy never could. Jenna was her sister, after all. No one else had been through their particular childhood. Not that it was especially bad—in fact, it should have been pretty close to perfect.

  Their parents, Drs. David and Marilyn Sawyer, were models of professionalism in their respective fields—David as conductor of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Marilyn as the head of the UAB Cancer Research Center. Having had children much later in life, they were dedicated to their work with a single-minded passion and focus. They threw themselves into civic causes and charity work, were devoted to organizations that helped better the world, and generally tried to be good stewards of their money and influence. All good, noble things, but models of how to be an attentive, involved parent? How to cherish and encourage? Not exactly.

  With their parents always focused on their careers, it had been Betsy and Jenna against the world. Huddled together under Betsy’s bed. Hunched over rocks in the backyard looking for cicada shells and long, wiggly worms. Lying in bed together at night listening to their father’s concertos on the stereo downstairs, Betsy whispering fairy tales to Jenna into the wee hours. Betsy never asked to be pushed into the mother role, but it was a role she learned early to play.

  It had been a long time since Betsy had had a need—or a desire—to mother Jenna, but even so, she always felt the deep-down urge to defend her sister.

  “Jenna loves her daughters. I think she’s just still trying to figure out her place in the world.”

  “If you ask me, at twenty-eight and two kids, you’re long past the time of figuring things out,” Anna Beth said. “Best get your butt in gear.”

  Betsy shifted her chair to move out of a sharp ray of sun and caught sight of Ty standing just outside the barn doors, laughing at something she couldn’t see. It was always a treat to see him laughing and carefree. He was often so reserved, so focused on the task at hand, but when he laughed—cheeks stretched wide, blue eyes squinted, shoulders shaking—it was a gift.

  Anna Beth followed her gaze out the back window. “You two are such lovebirds. Big house, great farm, tons of room for kids. Life already figured out.”

  “We don’t have everything figured out.” She finished her last bite of chicken salad and reached for a shirt to fold. “Who does?”

  “Tom does. And Ty does too. Tell me your husband isn’t doing exactly what he wanted to do with his life. No farmer gets caught up in a life of farming, whether it’s cows or crops. You’re only in it if you chose it. Maybe you and I got caught up in it, but we did it willfully when we married these boys. They have it figured out.”

  Betsy glanced back at Ty again. He pulled off his cap, revealing his blond hair damp with midday heat, and threw it at Carlos. Carlos picked it up and dropped it in a bucket, causing Ty to shout. He pulled his cap from the bucket and wrung water out of it.

  “You’re probably right,” Betsy said. “I think he does have things pretty much figured out.”

  “Of course I’m right. That’s why you love me.”

  seven

  Ty

  At 8 a.m. EDT, a tropical storm warning has been issued for the south and southeast edges of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea. Interests elsewhere in the central and eastern Caribbean should closely monitor the progress of this system.

  Ty sat in his office, his grandfather’s old black radio tuned to the AM station that sent out a constant flow of crop stats, animal prices, and weather reports. That crackly radio usually made him feel like a real farmer, but today the steady stream of numbers and words annoyed him. He fiddled with the dial, turned it all the way to the right hoping for even a hint of real music—country, rock, something—but all he got was static.

  He turned it back to the left, slowly. Maybe he’d find that same music his grandfather used to play in the barn—wordless melodies, a river of gospel, bluegrass, folk. But even at the lowest end of the dial, there was nothing but politicians and rural Baptist preachers.

  He was about to turn the thing off when a computerized weather report crackled through. “Tropical Storm Bernard has taken a northwesterly turn,” said the robotic voice. “It is expected to continue to the north . . .”

  Ty swiped at the Off button, leaned forward, and rubbed his temple
s with his thumbs. The radio wasn’t the problem, and neither was Bernard. A tropical storm this early in the season wasn’t anything to get worked up about, especially one that would no doubt curve back out into the Atlantic. He’d been tracking storms long enough to know when to worry. But the alarming predictions about this year’s hurricane season—not to mention its similarities to another season years ago—had him on edge.

  The summer he turned fifteen was predicted to bring an especially severe hurricane season. Ty had spent every summer since he was nine working on the farm with his grandfather—along with any weekends he wasn’t busy playing baseball—and this one was no different. By August, his grandfather’s old radio had sent out so many alarms and beeps, cautions and warnings that it had become background noise. So far, none of the storms had affected the farm directly—just fallen limbs and debris and a few short power outages. As a result, Ty paid little attention to the reports about Hurricane Louis that came through the radio, and even brushed off his grandfather’s concerns and extra efforts to secure the farm.

  Louis roared through Baldwin County a few days later, damaging everything in its path and chastening Ty for having the nerve to doubt his grandfather’s ability to sense coming danger. Ty had always known his grandfather was a good man, but waiting up with Granddaddy as the storm blew through, seeing how worried he was about the farm, the land, and the house, changed his view of him forever.

  “Hurricanes have come and gone every season since my father built this place,” Granddaddy said by candlelight after the power had blinked off. Wind rushed and moaned outside, and lightning forked through the eerie gray-green sky. His grandfather was on edge, waiting for the winds to die down so he could get outside and survey his property. “Lord willing, the farm will be here for many seasons to come. And one day it can be yours. It’s a big responsibility. Are you up for it?”

  Ty nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s what I want.”