by Sharon Sala
* * *
The first wave of rain that came through didn’t amount to much. But another round came through after midnight, and that one lasted for at least an hour.
Rowan wound up in a blanket, asleep on the couch, and when Bowie woke up and saw her, he carried her to his bed, laid her down as she was, still wrapped up like a baby in swaddling blankets, and crawled back beneath his covers.
Daylight brought a clearing sky and sun peeking through the clouds.
“It’s going to be nothing short of a sauna today,” Bowie said as he and Rowan were eating breakfast together. “I’m grateful that we now have air conditioning and working plumbing.”
“Does that mean the port-a-potty has to go?” she asked.
He nodded. “And probably none too soon for the neighbors. What are you going to do, honey?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t sleep much last night, so I might just take it easy for a while.”
“Call me anytime you want to, and I’ll stop by when we break at noon.”
“I will.”
“When this renovation is over, how about we take a little side trip to Savannah on our own and pick out rings?”
Rowan shivered from the joy of the turn her life had taken.
“Yes! Oh, Bowie! The proudest moment of my life will be becoming your wife.”
He pulled her into his lap, waited for her arms to lock around his neck.
“Sealed with a kiss,” he said softly and kissed her, then kissed her again because he could.
He left a few minutes later, and Rowan stretched out on the sofa and dozed off. She was dreaming about the flood again, and watching her daddy go under, when the sound of a car door slamming woke her up. It was already after nine and the girls weren’t up, but they’d slept later than that before so she thought nothing of it.
The door was still shut to the bedroom, and she didn’t want to make any noise. She was also sure she didn’t want to go back to sleep and dream that again. Maybe all she needed was a little fresh air. That would wake her up.
She left the girls a note that she was going for a walk and not to lock her out if they left. Then she got a bottle of water, dropped her phone in the pocket of her shorts, and slipped out.
The morning was already warming up and the sky was clearing. Her thoughts were on that trip to Savannah to pick out rings as she stepped onto the sidewalk behind the motor home and started walking.
The first thing she noticed was the sound of rushing water coming from the creek. Likely runoff from last night’s thunderstorm, and she was thinking about breaking into a little jog when her phone rang. She saw Bowie’s name pop up and smiled.
“Hello, handsome. Miss me already?” she said.
Bowie’s chuckle sent shivers all through her.
“Something like that,” he said, and braked for a stop sign as he drove back home. “Did you happen to notice if I left a file folder on the table or the kitchen counter? It would have been a yellow one.”
“Yes! I saw it on the counter earlier.”
“Oh good. I was beginning to think I’d lost it. I need it, so I’ll see you in a few.”
“I’m out walking. I’ll head back.”
“You don’t have to. Enjoy your walk because I can’t stay anyway. I’ll just talk to you now while you’re walking, how’s that?”
She smiled. “Good. Oh…you should hear the water down in the creek! I haven’t gone to look, but it must be run-off from last night because it’s making a rushing noise and it never does that.”
“I think someone said this morning we got almost an inch. Are the girls up?”
“They weren’t when I left. I left them a note. Oh…I see the little redhead on her bike already. Only she’s riding on the sidewalk today, probably because the drive through the park is muddy. Oh, wait, Bowie, she just swerved and…oh my God! She just lost control. She’s still on her bike, but it’s rolling down that steep slope leading down to the creek. I need to—”
Bowie heard Rowan shouting, “Jump off your bike! Jump off!” and then he heard her running. All of a sudden Rowan was shouting in his ear. “She went into the creek! I can hear her screaming. Call 911. If she can’t swim, she might drown.”
Bowie didn’t want to lose the connection to Rowan, so he put her on hold, made the 911 call, and then was connected to her again. All he could hear were bits and pieces of what was happening. Rowan must be at the creek now. He could hear her shouting to the little girl to hang on.
Then there was a moment of silence, and then he heard a big splash and knew without seeing it happen that Rowan had jumped into the water. He stomped the accelerator and started to pray.
* * *
Lorene couldn’t believe she was in the water. One minute she’d been riding her bike like she always did, and then that snake had crawled across the sidewalk in front of her. All she remembered was swerving to keep from running over it, and then she was going downhill too fast. She heard someone screaming “jump off,” but then she was in the trees and over the edge before she knew it was happening. She hit the water, went under, and then bobbed up a few feet from a branch and grabbed it as the water was carrying her past it. Surprised that she’d caught it, she began screaming for help, and she kept screaming until she looked up, saw a lady waving her arms, and pointing up the creek. When she momentarily disappeared, Lorene cried out.
“No, no! Don’t leave me!”
Seconds later, she caught a flash of long legs and a red T-shirt, and then the woman was in the water.
Rowan couldn’t believe the water was over her head, but the moment her feet touched the creek bed, she pushed up and immediately surfaced. The little girl was only yards away, and Rowan began swimming with the current to get to her. Seconds later, she swam up behind the girl, grabbed onto another bush with one hand, and grabbed onto her with the other. The little girl was shaking so hard Rowan didn’t know if it was from pain or fear.
“Are you okay?” Rowan asked.
“I think so. I’m scared. Are we gonna die?”
“No, ma’am, we are not,” Rowan said. “What’s your name, honey?”
“Lorene, but my mama calls me Reenie.” Then she broke into sobs. “I want my mama.”
“I know, Reenie. And she’ll be here soon, I’m sure. But for now, you have me. My name is Rowan. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m a princess, and I have a knight in shining armor who’s coming to rescue us.”
Before Reenie could respond, Rowan saw a small branch coming toward them and swung herself around so that it would hit her back instead of the little redhead’s face.
The impact jarred both of them, and Reenie lost her grip. The only thing keeping her from going downstream was Rowan, and Reenie began screaming again.
“Put your arms around my neck!” Rowan shouted. “I won’t let you go, I promise. Just hold onto me!”
Reenie wrapped her arms around Rowan’s neck and her legs around her waist, and buried her face against her shoulder.
“I hear sirens!” Rowan shouted. “That means my brave knight has sent us a rescue! We’re going to be fine, just fine. You just keep holding onto me,” Rowan said, and then gasped. “Listen, Reenie! Do you hear the man shouting?”
Reenie nodded.
“That’s my brave knight! I told you he would save us!”
* * *
Bowie took the turn sideways into the trailer park, drove up to his home, killed the engine, and got out running, leaving the door open and the keys in the ignition.
Pearl had seen him drive up and opened the door to greet him, but he ran past her shouting.
“Rowan’s in the water. Rescue is on the way!” he said, and flew past the door and kept running.
“Oh lord, oh lord,” Pearl cried, and then saw his car and ran out to get the key and shut the door.
Ella
was right behind her. “What’s happening, Mama?”
“Rowan’s in trouble,” Pearl said. They took off behind Bowie, moving as fast as they dared while listening to the fear in Bowie’s voice as he began to shout. He knew something they didn’t.
“Rowan! Rowan! Answer me! Where are you? Rowan!”
Then he heard her. “Here! We’re down here!”
“I’m coming!” he said, and then saw a little bicycle in the trees about twenty yards farther. The first thing that went through his head was that the water would have already taken them downstream beyond the fall, and he leaped off the sidewalk and started running through the trees.
“We’re here! We’re here!” Rowan kept shouting, and then heard a voice above them. She saw Bowie standing in a ray of light coming through the trees and, for a heartbeat, thought it was an angel. Then she saw him kick off his boots and start sliding down the bank, then into the water.
His feet touched bottom, but the water was just below his armpits and rushing fast enough it was difficult to move against the flow. Moments later, he had them encircled within his arms, and the feel of her living, breathing body against him was the answer to his prayer.
“Sweet Jesus, Rowan. Are you two all right?”
The relief of him holding both of them was overwhelming. “We’re okay. Sir Bowie, this is Lorene, but you may call her Reenie. She knows I’m a princess and that you are my brave knight in shining armor.”
The pain in Bowie’s heart was so suddenly sharp that he lost his breath. Rowan had no way of knowing how hard he’d tried to save his mother after he found her on the floor, and that he’d lived with that guilt for the last twenty years. But Fate had just given him a second chance to save a woman he loved, and this time he’d done it.
He could see that the fantasy she’d given the little girl had helped keep her calm and he wasn’t about to screw up a good thing.
“It’s always an honor to serve you, Princess Rowan, and your friend, Reenie, as well. Listen! Do you hear how loud the sirens are?”
Reenie nodded.
“They will help us get out,” Bowie said.
Along with the sirens, Bowie began hearing a lot of voices and guessed a crowd was gathering above. Then he heard a scream and someone shouting the little girl’s name.
“That’s my mama.”
“I told you she would come,” Rowan said.
And then Bowie heard more voices, coming closer, and looked up just as Chief Pittman looked over the edge.
“They’re here!” he shouted, then gave Bowie a thumbs-up.
It didn’t take long for the firemen to get set up. When they sent the first rig down, Bowie fastened it around the little redhead and they hoisted her up. The moment she was safe up top, Rowan’s legs went weak.
“Oh my God,” she mumbled and fell against Bowie.
He couldn’t talk. He just held her.
They lowered the rig again, and Bowie fastened it around Rowan. Kissed her once hard and fast, saw forever in her eyes, and then waved his hand and up the bank she went.
He waited, buffeted by the water, while his heartbeat finally settled into a normal rhythm. And when they sent the rig down one last time, he fastened himself into it and they pulled him up as well, until he was out onto solid ground.
“Are they both okay?” he asked.
“It appears so, but the little girl’s parents took her to the ER to be checked out. Rowan’s up top with Pearl and Ella.”
He nodded, then looked around for his boots.
“Oh, Rowan saw them and took them up with her,” Lon said.
Bowie looked up at the gathered crowd and then started making his way up the steep slope, just as it began to sprinkle.
Raining again? And the sun was shining.
The crowd had mostly dispersed by the time he got back on the sidewalk. All three of his girls met him with open arms and then surrounded him without words, hugging him, holding him tight.
“It’s time to get you two warm and in dry clothes,” Pearl said. “Ella and I will go ahead to get some coffee going. I have Rowan’s phone. The chief found it. Where is yours?”
“Still in the car.”
“Are you two okay?” Ella added.
“We will be,” Rowan said, and slid her arm around Bowie’s waist as they started walking back.
Bowie was holding onto Rowan as if she were about to blow away, and yet there was nothing but the sprinkles slowly turning into something of a drizzle. The farther they went, the tighter his hold became. Rowan felt the fear he’d had of losing her.
“I love you, Bowie James, and you can’t lose me. I’m a princess, and they always live happily ever after, remember?”
He inhaled slowly. “How do you always know what to say?”
“I’m a little fae, remember, along with being a princess. What the faeries know, I know, and they always send signs. There will be one. Wait and see.”
They’d walked all the way out from beneath the shaded sidewalk, making their way to the door, when Rowan gasped and then pointed.
“Look up, Bowie! See that?”
Bowie looked and then stopped. “A rainbow. I see a rainbow through the rain.”
“Yes, yes! That’s our sign from the faeries. For all the rest of our lives, even when we can’t see it there will be a rainbow above us.”
He reached for her hand, and she gave it.
Epilogue
The day of the big reveal was at hand. Bowie’s crew had gone home, ready to be with their families again. Before they left, everything of value Pearl had put in storage after the flood had been cleaned up and set in place about the house. Her grandmother’s sideboard was in the dining room and somehow fit among the new furniture she and Bowie had picked out. Everything else in that house, except Pearl and Ella, was brand spanking new.
They’d moved in last night and kept walking through the house in all its glory, unable to grasp the fact that it was their home. And today, because Pearl wanted it so, they were having an open house for people to come see what Bowie had done for them.
Bowie and Rowan had spent their first night together without the chaperones. But with the engagement ring on her finger, and the man who’d put it there asleep in the bed beside her, she felt a quiet satisfaction that her world had stopped rocking and she was settled into place.
Pearl and Ella had given up on the idea of seeing them married in a church here in Blessings. They’d come to accept how deep the scars of life were on Bowie. He didn’t have enough happy memories in this town to have it mark the beginning of his and Rowan’s life together, and Rowan wanted nothing in life but to be with him.
“‘Whither thou goest,’” she said the day he put the engagement ring on her finger, and as soon as the open house was underway, they would be going.
* * *
Rowan and Bowie arrived in his red Cherokee and parked at the curb in front of the house so they could leave when they chose, then walked up the drive.
“It’s beautiful, you know,” Rowan said, eyeing the green roof and white siding and the welcoming porch with delicate spindles and matching porch posts of the same turn but bigger and stronger—the kind needed to hold up the porch roof for the next hundred years. The white wicker furniture with big, fluffy pillows invited you to sit a spell, and six baskets of dark-green ferns hung from the edges of the porch like oversize eyelashes the grand lady had chosen to wear for her unveiling.
Bowie walked up the steps with Rowan on his arm and then into the house he’d saved from dying. Subdued colors of off-white and pale-gray blended with a navy sofa and one bright armchair upholstered in a fabric of red and gold birds on a navy background.
Pearl met them at the door wearing a new pink dress, and the long braid of her hair wound on top of her head instead of at the back gave her the appearance of wearing a crown
.
“You look beautiful, Gran,” Bowie said and kissed her cheek, inhaling the scent of Estée Lauder powder that she’d always worn and a faint aroma of lilac.
Ella came running, kissed Rowan’s cheek, and threw her arms around Bowie.
“We’re still pinching ourselves that we live here,” she said. “Thank you for responding to my SOS. This is vastly more help than I ever dreamed.”
“You’re my girls,” Bowie said. “I love you both, and this is nothing more than you deserve.”
“Here come the first of your guests,” Rowan said, pointing to the trio coming up the walk.
“And there are more parking,” Ella said as she looked out the big picture window. “Mama, have we set out all the goodies?”
Pearl nodded. “Just calm down. Everything is perfect. Bowie, you and Rowan will stay for just a bit, won’t you? I want to make sure the people who come know it was you who did this.”
“Oh! There comes the photographer from the newspaper,” Ella said. “Good. We’ll get the picture taken before you two leave. And just so you know, we’ll be expecting all kinds of postcards and pictures. You can send them to us on our phones. And FaceTime. Don’t forget the FaceTime.”
“I didn’t forget you before and we’re not going to forget you now,” Bowie said, and then the first guests were at the door.
“Excuse me,” Pearl said and turned on the charm.
The picture was taken for the paper. The guests were beginning to gather. The women looked at the beautiful home with varying degrees of joy for Pearl, while envious they had nothing like it. Then they’d eye the big, dark-haired man with Rowan Harper on his arm, wondering how such a shy, introverted woman had managed to snag such a glorious man.
A stranger drove by and then braked to look, wondering what was going on in there. There were cars up and down both sides of the street, leaving only a one-way lane in which to drive.
He was looking for a certain house number when he saw a car coming up behind him and moved on, noting the recent flood damage and thinking to himself that if it hadn’t been for that DNA test kit he did on a whim, he wouldn’t be here at all. He still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that the woman he’d known as his mother was no relation, and the young girl who’d been his older sibling’s babysitter was.
