But it had not been leveled.
Houses throughout town were missing shingles, window glass. In one case, a metal shed had been picked up, wadded like an empty aluminum can, and slammed into the neighbor’s driveway. A few cars parked along the subdivision curbs had been pushed around, rearranged like a ten-year-old’s Hot Wheels.
No one was hurt, though. And once they’d picked up the broken limbs, Finley residents collectively shook their heads, muttering something along the lines of not being sure how it was—with ninety-plus-mile-an-hour winds and quarter-size hail—that no one had gotten hit any harder than they actually had.
The square had taken the brunt of the storm; that much became evident quickly. News crews appeared; Natalie stood behind her lens, filming the glittering shards of glass, the twisted signs, the demolished holiday decorations. A few feet away, Justin paced about with his own photographer, dictating notes into his phone.
The square, Justin thought, no longer smelled of pine, but dust. The dust of smashed rock. It clung to the air strangely, as though insisting it wasn’t ready yet to settle down.
Justin breathed it in, the odor reminding him of a sultry afternoon on Mary’s property last summer. He and Annie may not have succeeded in getting Mary to provide them with any Finley stories for their proposed book, but they had certainly disturbed the dust. Annie had said as much herself—if once then a hundred times in the last few months.
The dust had been disturbed again—but what did that mean?
The fronts had been blown out of the Cuppa coffee palace and Norma’s Relics. Jo’s bookstore had been roughed up—mostly, it had the look of an innocent bystander, suffering damage because it happened to be sitting next to the real target. Books lay scattered across the sidewalk, spines broken, hinges cracked, pages torn out and flittering through the air. Nathan’s web design business and the post office remained completely untouched. But tornadoes were known to behave like that, often skipping one building completely only to destroy the one next door.
“It’s a bit early to start rebuilding—gotta wait for the insurance adjusters, blah, blah…” Justin told Norma through a crooked grin. “But you’re already figuring out your next move, aren’t you? I can see your mind spinning.”
Justin took another step closer to her, the soles of his sneakers grinding against the tiny shards of glass scattered on the sidewalk. He made a mental note of his own to throw them into the Dumpster by his apartment before he headed inside and wound up scattering tiny bits of glass all over his floors—the kind of shards his bare feet would inevitably find again as he walked from the shower to his bedroom or shuffled toward the refrigerator during the wee hours to grab a snack. Glass was like that—it lay silent, tricking you into thinking you had cleaned it all up, when in fact, you had not. You had left the sharpest bits behind, ready to attack.
Norma took a deep breath. “Some dreams never die,” she said as she glanced across the square hopefully. The words didn’t sound natural to Justin—more like something rehearsed. And familiar.
Yes—Norma had said something just like that at the Corner Diner, right before the storm.
“You know,” Justin said, as a way to dig a little deeper as to why she’d chosen to repeat the phrase, “a few Finley residents reported strange noises preceding the tornado.” He held his phone beneath Norma’s chin to let her know her response would be on the record.
“I heard those words last summer,” Norma admitted. “From Amos himself.”
Justin lowered his phone. Was she being serious? Regardless, he couldn’t print that.
Norma smiled knowingly, squeezing the top of his arm.
“How’d the Powell place fare?” Norma called out to Natalie, ignoring Justin’s attempts to ask her another question.
Justin glanced up just as Natalie swiveled on her heel, the blood draining from her face. “It’s bad,” she admitted as she lowered her camera. “But I got called in to work. Damien is there with Mary.” She waved to the white news van, signaling that she had all the footage of the square they needed.
Justin was still gathering coverage for the paper; he didn’t quite feel he had the angle for his story nailed down yet. So he and his photographer drove to the Powell property. As they bounced down the dirt road trying to avoid debris and limbs, it became apparent that the farm had indeed been hit hard.
“It’s a disaster,” Justin muttered, parking the car along the outer edge of what had to have been fifty cars. And more were continuing to arrive. Because now that they had officially given their own places the once-over, Finley residents were arriving in droves. They had chipped in to fix this place up, after all. They had a stake in the house, in the wedding set to take place in two weeks. And they all had looks of disbelief on their faces as they stared at the new shingles scattered along the ground, the splintered boards of the replaced porch, the filmy curtains blowing out of the broken windows. Their expressions registered more than disappointment, somehow. It felt to Justin as though something other than wood and glass had broken in the storm.
A pickup bounced to a stop nearby. Cody emerged from the driver’s side already wearing his yellow hard hat. He climbed into the bed, where he had stacked sheets of plywood. A group of men immediately joined him, hoisting the sheets one-by-one to those standing beside the truck. The plywood was carried to the windows; hammers thundered the panels into place, securing the house from the outside world.
Michael caught Justin’s eye. He pointed toward the distant edge of the property. “Stones have fallen in front of the old cave entrance.”
“Amos’s statue got hit,” another voice added. When Justin turned, he found himself staring at Mark’s face, twisted into an expression of pure agony.
“How do you mean ‘hit’?” Annie asked, having also approached the small group. “Maybe I can—”
“There’s no saving it,” Mark told her. “My tree house was spared, but I can see that statue from my porch, you know. It’s—well. It’s in broken, twisted pieces.”
“It’s bronze, though, isn’t it? How could that—?”
Mark shook his head, shrugged. “I don’t know. Seems it should have been indestructible. And yet…”
At Mary’s back door, Damien stood beside a pile of broken lumber, chewing on his lip. He looked as though he wished he could bite through the entire situation.
Justin squinted at him, remembering their childhood summers. How the two of them had grown up listening to Aunt Mary relate the legend of Amos and Finley as they’d sipped her lemonade and devoured her gingersnaps. He felt now as though he could read Damien’s mind: What if they were the last generation to hear such stories? What if this was it for their town? What if that intangible something-special was every bit as shattered now as the glass on the front of Norma’s Relics? What if the legend that had propelled its residents to succeed could crumble like the statue of Amos?
Yes, what if—now that everyone had surveyed the aftermath of the storm, seen for themselves that Finley was just comprised of plain old brick and mortar, like any other town, they would never again see it as being anything special? What if they believed they had simply misread a series of events that had appeared to be otherworldly? Like the shoppers he had sometimes heard at Norma’s Relics complaining they’d bought an antique at another store only to find out later on that it was a repro. Worthless.
What if they decided they’d all overestimated the value of their town? What if Justin began to feel the same way?
He sighed, breathing in another lungful of dirty air. He wished the dust would settle. If he could, he would put it all back again. One particle at a time, if that was what it took.
∞ ∞ ∞
In the days that followed the storm, Justin’s fears were realized. Nothing was the same. Cold arrived, as it should have. But the icy breezes didn’t ring any festive bells. The town seemed to sniffle rather than smile. Groan rather than purr. Kelly had to rip out the stitches along the new cuffs on the sleeves o
f Natalie’s wedding dress three times—like an amateur, unsure how to attach the pieces cut from a pattern. Nathan couldn’t get any of his cameras to work—the ones that he had promised Damien could be attached to some part of Natalie’s gown, to film the special day from her vantage point. Annie sat before an empty canvas, finding no inspiration in the skies above the Powell land. The Steeles lost their can-do spirit, opting not to begin another house flip. Every time Michael and Gary tried to rehearse the song Michael had written for Natalie and Damien’s wedding, they were out of tune. Like some sort of ongoing strange atmospheric pressure was affecting their guitars—tightening the strings, making tuning pegs swell. Turning every note they tried to play sharp.
Off. Everything was off.
And then—out of nowhere—the letters began to arrive.
Natalie was the first to receive one: a time-worn, yellowed envelope that shot into her apartment through the space beneath the door, just as she was about to leave for a Saturday afternoon jog. She’d sighed like a schoolgirl as she’d opened it and began to read, believing it was from Damien. The handwriting was unfamiliar—far lovelier, almost like calligraphy. But true to form, he was telling her how much he loved her—through any and all horrible events the world could throw at them, that much would remain the same. Always.
His poetic lines assured her everything would be okay. They’d simply reschedule the ceremony, he seemed to be implying. And with that letter in her hands, she thought it was okay. Love was not something with an expiration date. It wouldn’t go sour over the next few months. It could only strengthen. Because they would have weathered something together. They would fix the house that Mary had given them; they would rebuild, and they would be stronger together than ever.
Until she got to the last line: “Love always, Amos.”
How could that be? Amos? She threw open her apartment door, but the hallway had long since emptied of the person who had delivered the letter.
A wild swirl of emotions spun through her heart. She wasn’t sure what to think. She needed to clear her head. So she changed her clothes, grabbed her camera, and headed down to the town square. The world always looked clearer to her behind the lens.
She began photographing the ongoing repair efforts—table saws let out high-pitched whelps. Nail guns pattered rapid-fire shots into roofs. She squatted, picked up a battered piece of pine, and attached it to the shoulder of her sweater with a safety pin.
“My wife used to say it was bad luck to change the wedding date.”
Her eyes popped wide with surprise. Mr. McKinney was looking right at her. Almost sadly, it seemed.
She and Damien had sent no announcements regarding a change of date. She had only considered it just a few moments ago, in her apartment, filled to the gills with moving boxes. Her landlord would have been fine with her unpacking those boxes again, staying the next few months until Mary’s house could be completely fixed—not just patched, as it was now.
But would Damien be okay with it? Would Natalie?
Her thoughts tumbled backward, to the unbelievable events that had unfolded shortly after she’d arrived to town last winter. She had met George Hargrove as she’d jogged in the cemetery. George, who had given her hope for lasting love, only to disappear. Last May, he had reemerged as a voice in her ear warning her of danger. As true as it was improbable. Finley was a town built on the promise of forever. And regardless of anyone’s current attitude, Finley was still Finley. The strange, yellowed letter she’d just received—it had been proof, hadn’t it?
Improbable but also true.
This epidemic of doubt—which had followed the tornado—had enveloped the entire town. All at once. Usually, such doubts were staggered, happening at different times to different people. And in varying degrees of intensity. It seemed to Natalie that the extent of this doubt would have a serious and lasting impact. Did miracles like forever love survive only as long as people openly believed in their existence?
She straightened her back. “I’m not postponing,” she shouted, loud enough for the entire square to hear. She shouted it as though she’d known it all along, even though the opposite was true: she hadn’t made the final decision until that very moment. Mostly because she hadn’t realized there’d been a decision to make.
While the townspeople on the square eyed her with surprise and slight concern, she pulled out her cell and began to make a slew of calls. The first was to Damien.
“It’ll take a miracle,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“Then let’s make one,” Natalie told him.
∞ ∞ ∞
But the miracle was already in motion. Letters were continuing to arrive. Later that very afternoon, Norma’s ears perked against the sound of the Relics entrance swinging open. Rushing to answer, her best customer-greeting smile on her face, she found her store empty. And a yellowed envelope waiting for her on the front counter. Another had been discovered by Michael when he’d climbed the stairs to the empty apartment above Cuppa and clicked his guitar case open, intending to practice between shifts—only to find an envelope had been slipped between the strings and the guitar’s neck. Kelly’d happened upon hers when she slid into her booth at the Corner Diner and opened her sketchbook. Annie found one pinned beneath her windshield wiper—just as she’d once pinned her latest sketch to Justin’s car in high school. Justin discovered one in his messenger bag after his mid-afternoon run to Cuppa, and Mark—of course his arrived in his flower box. The one perched on his porch railing. After someone knocked on his door.
The delivery person was long gone by the time each one of them opened and read the letters—some written by Amos, some by Finley. But that was maybe the most advantageous thing about being old, as Mary was well aware. No one paid much attention to you anymore. An old woman could be invisible when she needed to be.
Mark had still been reading his letter when his cell rang.
Natalie instantly began rattling into his ear. She’s talking about the bouquet, he finally realized, still staring in wonder at the brittle page in his hand.
“The florist shop got hit by the tornado, too, you know,” he told Natalie. “Their coolers aren’t working.”
“Who needs it? We were going to rely primarily on locally grown flowers, anyway.”
“But—I—you had specific colors you wanted and—”
“I’ll use what you make. I absolutely trust your judgment.”
“I might not have many choices. What I mean is, the flowers that I’ve seen growing out by the river in the past might not be there in time for the wedding. Especially after all this crazy weather. I thought it would stay warmer longer, and now, it—”
“I mean it, Mark,” Natalie said, her voice saturated with honesty. “I trust you.”
Natalie rattled on, telling Mark she’d already called Kelly and insisted on the tent being delivered, as they’d originally planned. A heated outdoor wedding tent with transparent sides, big enough for a reception. They would maybe not be looking out at a picturesque snow scene. They would instead be seeing repair work in progress. Piles of lumber. Windows boarded, making Mary’s house look like images on the news in hurricane season. But it didn’t matter. Not to Natalie. This wedding was happening. She and Damien would dance to the song Michael had written for them and…
Her voice grew farther away as Mark studied Finley’s letter. In it, Finley described the flowers blooming around her home. In the kind of vivid detail that would have allowed poor Amos—hundreds of miles away—to feel as though he was still close to her. Close enough to be holding her hand.
“The flowers are here. They’ll always be here,” Finley had written. “Just like my love for you…”
“Okay,” Mark said, believing, in that moment, in every one of Finley’s words.
∞ ∞ ∞
The rest of the hand-delivered letters were equally as pointed in their descriptions. Letters reliving the moments Amos and Finley had shared. Letters describing the melodies t
hat would fill their remaining years. About how they could see what no one else could, during days that were still being punctuated by cannon fire—that hardships would end, and they would be together…always.
Mary saved the best letters for last. She placed the first beneath one of the loosened stones in front of the cave—the last place she’d seen Finley, just before the tornado had touched down. A few of the stones near the entrance had been toppled and scattered; to Mary, it appeared as though someone had tunneled out from the inside.
The other letter Mary carried to the National Cemetery.
The caretaker was humming a strange mash-up of carols as she approached him, a few recognizable notes of “Silent Night” bleeding straight into “The First Noel” as he worked to attach a pine wreath to the wrought iron gate.
Mary inhaled deeply—a loud, raspy inhale. Mostly to take in its lovely perfume. But also to get the caretaker’s attention.
It worked; he swiveled, his eyes swelling with surprise. He didn’t speak—he simply smiled a tender greeting.
Mary handed him his envelope. She had placed two items inside—just as she’d done with the envelope left out by the old Powell cave.
When his eyes landed on Finley’s handwriting, Amos’s breath became rapid. His fingers trembled. He couldn’t get the envelope open fast enough.
Inside, he found an invitation to a wedding. With Natalie’s and Damien’s names written across it. Behind it, a letter he had read so many years before.
“Come home to me,” Finley’s handwriting begged. “Forever, Finley.”
When he looked again at the invitation, the calligraphy-style writing blurred and cleared, this time inserting his name and Finley’s in the place of the bride and groom.
Overcome with emotion, Amos began to cry.
As his tears fell, a breeze danced across the cemetery. It picked up the emotions swirling through Amos’s heart, just as easily as it picked up fallen leaves. And as it spun through the cemetery’s wrought iron gates, a much-needed rush of possibility swept across the town.
Forever Finley Page 34
