Before the Storm Read online

  “Laurel!” she yelled. “They took Andy to New Hanover.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Not life threatening,” Patty called. “Asthma. Some burns.”

  I let out my breath in a silent prayer. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  “You go.” Sara tried to push me away, but I held fast to her. “Go, honey,” she repeated. “Go see him.”

  I longed to run back to my car and drive to the hospital in Wilmington, but I couldn’t leave Sara. “Not until you’ve heard about Keith,” I said.

  “Tracy Kelly’s parents here?” Patty called.

  “Here!” a man barked from behind me.

  “She’s at Cape Fear.”

  “Is Keith Weston on the list?” Sara shouted into the din.

  I was afraid Patty hadn’t heard her. She was speaking to a man who held a pair of broken glasses up to his eyes.

  “Keith Weston was just airlifted to New Hanover,” Patty called.

  “Oh, no.” Sara grabbed my arm so hard I winced. I thought of the helicopter rising into the sky above me.

  “Let’s go,” I said, pulling Sara with me through the sea of people. Tears I’d been holding in spilled down my cheeks as we backed away, letting other parents take our places. “We can drive together.”

  “We’ll go separately,” Sara said, already at a run away from me. “In case one of us has to stay longer or—”

  “Mom!” Maggie suddenly appeared at my side, winded and shivering. “They told me Uncle Marcus is here somewhere, but I couldn’t find out anything about Andy.”

  “He’s at New Hanover.” I grabbed her hand. “I’m parked over by Jabeen’s. Let’s go.”

  I took one glance back at the smoking church. The ragged siding that still remained standing glowed red against the eerie gray sky. I hadn’t thought about my former brother-in-law being there, but of course he was. I pictured Marcus inside the church, moving slowly through the smoke with his air pack on, feeling his way, searching for children who never stood a chance. Could he have been hurt when the roof collapsed? Please, no. And for the briefest of moments, I shifted my worry from Andy to him.

  Maggie and I barely spoke on the way to Wilmington. She cried nearly the whole time, sniffling softly, shredding a tissue in her lap. My eyes were on the road, my foot pressing the gas pedal nearly to the floor. I imagined Andy trying to make sense out of the chaos of a fire and its aftermath. Simply moving the lock-in from the youth building to the church had probably been more than he could handle.

  “Why did you say they moved the lock-in to the church?” I asked when we were halfway there.

  “The electricity went out in the youth building.” Her voice broke. “I heard some kids died,” she said.

  “Maybe just rumors.”

  “I’m so sorry I talked you into letting Andy—”

  “Shh.” I reached for her hand. “It’s not your fault, all right? Don’t even think that.” But inside I was angry at her, at how cavalierly she’d told me, Oh, Mother, he’ll be fine!

  I tried to pull my hand from hers to make a turn, but she held it tightly, with a need that was rare for Maggie, and I let our hands stay locked together for the rest of the trip.

  The crammed waiting area of the emergency room smelled of soot and antiseptic and was nearly as chaotic as the scene at the church. The throng of people in front of the glass reception window was four deep. I tried to push through, carving a space for Maggie and myself with my arms.

  “Y’all have to wait your turn,” said a large, wide woman as she blocked my progress.

  “I need to find out how my son is.” I kept pushing.

  “We all need to know how our children are,” said the woman.

  A man in the waiting area let out sudden gut-wrenching sobs. I didn’t turn to look. I wanted to plug my ears with my fingers. Maggie leaned against me a little.

  “Maybe it was the electrical,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You know, how the electricity was out in the youth building? Maybe that’s connected to the fire somehow.”

  The woman ahead of us left the window and it was finally our turn. “They told me my son was brought here,” I said. “Andrew Lockwood.”

  “All right, ma’am. Have a seat.”

  “No!” I wailed, the sound escaping my mouth like a surprise. “Please!” I started to cry, as though I’d been holding the tears in by force until that moment. “Tell me how he is! Let me go to him. He’s…he has special needs.”

  “Mom…” Maggie tried to pull me away from the window.

  The receptionist softened. “I know, honey,” she said. “Your boy’s okay. You take a seat and someone will come get you right quick.”

  I nodded, trying to pull myself together, but I felt like fabric frayed too much to be mended. Maggie led me to one of the seats in the waiting area and when I looked at her I realized that she, too, had dissolved in tears once more. I hugged her, unable to tell whether it was her shoulders quaking or my own.

  “Laurel?”

  I saw a woman heading toward us from the other side of the room. Her face and T-shirt were smeared with soot, her hair coated with so much ash I couldn’t have said what color it was. Beneath her eyes, two long, clean trails ran down her cheeks. She’d had a good cry herself. She smiled now, though, as she took both my hands in hers. I recognized the slightly lopsided curve of the lips before I did the woman. Robin Carmichael. Emily’s mother.

  “Robin!” I said. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” she said. “And Andy’s fine, too,” she added quickly, knowing those were the words I needed to hear before anything else.

  “They won’t let me see—”

  “What about Emily?” Maggie interrupted.

  Robin nodded toward the other side of the waiting area, where I spotted Emily curled up on a chair, hugging her knees and holding a bloodstained cloth to her forehead.

  “She’s gonna be okay,” Robin said, “but we’re waiting to get her seen. She cracked her glasses right in two and got a little cut over her eyebrow.” Robin still held my hands and now she looked hard into my eyes. “Andy saved Emily’s life.” Her voice broke and I felt her grip tighten on my fingers. “He saved a load of people tonight, Laurel.”

  “Andy?” Maggie and I said at the same time.

  “Yeah, I know.” Robin clearly shared our amazement. “But I swear, it’s the truth.”

  “Mrs. Lockwood?” A woman in blue scrubs stood at the entrance to the waiting area.

  “Yes!” I stood up quickly.

  “Come with me.”

  We were ushered into one of the treatment areas I remembered from three years earlier when Andy broke his arm at the skating rink. The room had several beds separated by curtains. Someone was screaming behind one of the curtains; someone else cried. But the curtain was not drawn around Andy’s bed. He was bare chested and barefooted, but wearing his now-filthy pants. A woman in blue scrubs was bandaging his left forearm, and he wore an oxygen cannula below his nose. Andy spotted us and leaped off the bed, the gauzy dressing dangling from his arm, the cannula snapping off his face.

  “Mom!” he shouted. “There was a big fire and I’m a hero!”

  “Andy!” the nurse called sharply. “I need to finish your arm.”

  Maggie and I pulled Andy into a three-way hug, and I breathed in that horrible acrid scent from the fire in great gulps. “Are you okay, sweetie?” I asked, still holding him tight. He fidgeted beneath my arms, and I knew they’d given him something for the asthma. I could tell by the spring-loaded tension in the muscles of his back, that’s how well I knew my son. Still, I wouldn’t let go of him.

  Maggie came to her senses first, pulling away from us. “The nurse still needs you, Panda Bear,” she said. She lifted his armand I saw the angry red swath that ran from his wrist to the bend of his elbow. First degree, I thought with relief. I led him back into the cubicle and looked at the nurse as Andy climbed on to the bed.

&nbsp
; “Is that the worst of it?” I asked, pointing to his arm.

  She nodded as she fit the cannula to his nostrils again. “Check it tomorrow for blisters. We’ll give you a prescription for pain. He’ll be okay, though. He’s a lucky fella.”

  “I made a new friend,” Andy said. “Layla. I saved her.”

  “I’m glad, sweetie.” I dusted ashes from his hair until its nutmeg color showed through.

  The nurse carefully taped the gauze to his arm again. “He doesn’t seem to feel pain,” she said, looking at me.

  “Not when he’s wired like this.” Maggie boosted herself onto the end of the bed.

  “He’ll feel it later.” I remembered the swim meet last year when he hit his head on the side of the pool. He swam lap after lap, blood trailing behind him, not even aware he was hurt until the adrenaline had worn off.

  “Did you hear me, Mom?” Andy said. “I saved Layla.”

  “Emily’s mother told us you saved several people.” I smoothed the elastic strap of the cannula flat behind his ear. My need to touch him, to feel the life in him, was overpowering. “What happened?”

  “Not several,” he corrected me. “Everybody.”

  “You need to talk to him?” The nurse was looking over our heads, and I turned to see a man in a police uniform standing a few feet behind us. He looked at Andy.

  “You Andy Lockwood?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered for him.

  The man took a few steps closer. “You’re his mother?”

  I nodded. “Laurel Lockwood. And this is my daughter, Maggie.”

  The nurse patted Andy’s bare shoulder. “Give a holler, you need anything,” she said, pulling the curtain closed around us as she left.

  “I’m ATF Agent Frank Foley,” the man said. “How about you tell me what happened tonight, Andy?”

  “I was the hero.” Andy grinned.

  The agent looked uncertain for a moment, then smiled. “Glad to hear it,” he said. “We can always use more heroes. Where were you when the fire began?” He flipped open a small notebook.

  “With Emily.”

  “That’s his friend,” I said. “Emily Carmichael.”

  “Inside the church?” Agent Foley asked, writing.

  “Yes, but she’s my friend everywhere.”

  Maggie laughed. I knew she couldn’t help herself.

  “He’s asking if you and Emily were inside the church when the fire broke out,” I translated.

  “Yes.”

  “Where in the church were you? Were you standing or sitting or…”

  “One question at a time.” I held up a hand to stop him. “Trust me,” I said. “It’ll be easier that way.” I looked at Andy. “Where were you in the church when the fire broke out?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Try to think,” I prodded. “Were you by the front door or closer to the altar?”

  “By the baptism pool thing.”

  “Ah, good.” The agent wrote something on his notepad. “Sitting or standing?”

  “I stood next to Emily. Her shirt was inside out.” He looked at me. “She used to do that all the time, remember?”

  I nodded. “So you were standing with Emily near the baptism pool thing,” I said, trying to keep him focused. “And then what happened?”

  “People yelled fire fire fire!” Andy’s dark eyes grew big, his face animated with the memory. “Then they started running past us. Then some boys grabbed a…the long thing and said one two three and broke the window with the bald man.”

  It was my turn to laugh as the words tumbled out of his mouth. An hour ago, I’d been afraid I’d never hear my precious son speak again.

  Agent Foley, though, eyed him with suspicion. “Were there drugs there, Andy?” he asked. “Did you drink or take any substances tonight?”

  “No, sir,” Andy said. “I’m not allowed.”

  The agent stopped writing and gnawed his lip. “Do you get it?” he asked me. “The long thing? The bald man?”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you still talking about being inside the church, Panda?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes and the boys caught on fire, but there were no ladders, so I told them to Stop! Drop! Roll! and some of them did. Keith was there.” He looked at me. “He was mean to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Sara was my best friend and I was worried sick about her son, but Keith could be a little shit sometimes. “You mean there were no ladders to escape the fire, like the ladder we have in your room at home?”

  “Right. There weren’t any,” Andy said.

  “Okay,” Agent Foley said. “So while this was happening, where were you?”

  “I told you, at the baptism thing.” Andy furrowed his forehead at the man’s denseness.

  The agent flipped a few pages of his notepad. “People told me you got out of the church and—”

  “Right,” Andy said. “Me and Emily went out the boys’ room window, and there was a big metal box on the ground, and we climbed onto it.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “We were outside.”

  “And what did you see outside? Did you see any person out—”

  “One question at a time,” I reminded him.

  “What did you see outside, Andy?” Agent Foley asked.

  “Fire. Everywhere except by the metal box. And Emily was screaming that nobody could get out the front door because fire was there. I saw somebody did get out the door and they were on fire. I don’t know who it was, though.”

  “Oh God.” Maggie buried her face in her hands, her long dark hair spilling in waves over her arms. I knew she was picturing the scene as I was. Sitting there with Andy, it was easy to forget how devastating the fire had been for so many people. I thought again of Keith. Where was he?

  “Did you see anyone else outside beside the person on fire?” the agent asked.

  “Emily.”

  “Okay. So you went back in.”

  “You went back in, Andy?” I repeated, wondering whatever possessed him to reenter the burning church.

  Andy nodded. “I climbed on the metal box and got into the boys’ room and then called for everyone to follow me.”

  “And they did?” the agent asked.

  “Did they what?”

  “Follow you?”

  “Not exactly. I let some of them, like my friend Layla, go first.” He pulled the cannula from his nostrils and looked at me. “Do I still have to wear this?”

  “A little longer,” I said. “Until the nurse comes back and says you can take it off.”

  “So you let Layla go out the window first?” Agent Foley nudged. “And some other kids. Then I followed them. But some were still following me, too.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “You’re doing fine, sweetie,” I said.

  “How did you know the…metal box was there?” the agent asked.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Try to remember,” I said.

  “I saw it when I went to the bathroom.”

  “When was that?” the agent asked.

  “When I had to pee.”

  Agent Foley gave up, closing his notepad with the flick of a wrist.

  “Sounds like you are a hero, Andy,” he said.

  “I know.”

  The agent motioned me to follow him. We walked outside the curtained cubicle. He looked at me curiously.

  “What’s his, uh, disability?” he asked. “Brain injury?”

  “Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder,” I said, the words as familiar to me as my own name.

  “Really?” He looked surprised, glancing over my shoulder as though he could see through the curtain. “Don’t those kids usually…you know, have a look to them?”

  “Not always,” I said. “Depends on what part of them was developing when the alcohol affected them.”

  “You’re his adoptive mother then?”

  The police on Topsail Island know me and they kno
w Andy and they know our story. An ATF agent in Wilmington, though, was a world away.

  “No, I’m his biological mother,” I said. “Sober fifteen years.”

  His smile was small. Tentative. Finally he spoke. “You’ve got a year on me,” he said. “Congratulations.”

  “You, too.” I smiled back.

  “So—” he looked down at his closed notepad “—how much of what he says can I believe?”

  “All of it,” I said with certainty. “Andy’s honest to a fault.”

  “He’s an unusual kid.” He looked over my shoulder again.

  “You don’t need to tell me that.”

  “No, I mean, in a fire, seventy-five percent of the people try to get out the front door. That’s their first reaction. They’re like a flock of sheep. One starts in that direction and they all follow. The other twenty-five percent look for an alternate exit. A back door. Bash open a window. Who’s the bald-headed guy he was talking about?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Anyway, so Andy here goes for the window in the men’s room. Strange choice, but turns out to be the right one.”

  “Well,” I said, “kids like Andy don’t think like that first seventy-five percent, or even the twenty-five percent. It was sheer luck. He could just as easily have gone for…I don’t know, the ladies’ room window, let’s say, and still be stuck there.” I hugged my arms across my chest at the thought. “Do you know if everyone got out okay? I heard rumors that some didn’t.”

  He shook his head. “This was a bad one,” he said. “Last report, three dead.”

  I sucked in my breath, hand to my mouth. “Oh, no.” Some parents wouldn’t have the luxury of hearing their children tell what happened tonight. “Do you know who?” I thought of Keith. Of Marcus.

  “No names yet,” he said. “Two of the kids and one adult is all I know. A lot of serious burns and smoke inhalation. This E.R.’s packed tight as a can of sardines.”

  “What’s the metal box?” I asked.

  “The AC unit. Whoever laid the fire skipped around it.”

  “Whoever…You’re saying this was arson?”

  He held up a hand as if to erase his words. “Not for me to say.”

  “I know there was an electrical problem at the youth building. Could that have affected the church?”