Before the Storm Page 6

  His arm was still around me and I raised mine until it circled his waist. “Of course,” I said.

  “I’ve never told anyone this and you might think I’m crazy.”

  “Tell me.”

  “What I’d really like to do one day is create my own church,” he said. “A place where people can believe whatever they want but still belong to a community, you know?”

  I wasn’t sure I understood exactly what he meant, but one thing I’d learned about Jamie was that there was a light inside him most people didn’t have. Sometimes I saw it flash in his eyes when he spoke.

  “Can you picture it?” he asked. “A little chapel right here, full of windows so you can see the water all around you. People could come and worship however they chose.” He looked toward the ocean and let out a sigh. “Pie in the sky, right?”

  I did think he was a little crazy, but I opened my mind to the idea and imagined a little white church with a tall steeple standing right where we stood. “Would you be allowed to build something here?” I asked.

  “Daddy owns the land. He owns every grain of sand north of those houses. Would nature let me build it? That’s the thing. Nature’s got her own mind when it comes to this spot. She’s got her own mind when it comes to the whole island.”

  The aroma of baking greeted us when we walked into Terrier. Jamie introduced his parents Southern style as Miss Emma and Mr. Andrew, but his father immediately insisted I call him Daddy L. Miss Emma had contributed the gene for Jamie’s full head of wavy dark hair, although hers was cut in a short, uncomplicated style. Daddy L was responsible for Jamie’s huge, round brown eyes. They each greeted their son with bear hugs as if they hadn’t seen him in months instead of a day or so. Miss Emma even gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then held my hands and studied me.

  “She’s just precious!” she said, letting go of my hands. I caught a whiff of alcohol on her breath

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Jamie said to his mother as he helped me out of my leather jacket.

  “I hope you’re hungry.” Daddy L leaned against the doorjamb. “Mama’s cooked up a storm this afternoon.”

  “It smells wonderful,” I said.

  “That’s the meringue on my banana pudding you’re smelling,” Miss Emma said.

  “Where’s Marcus?” Jamie asked.

  I hadn’t met him yet, but I knew Jamie’s fifteen-year-old brother was something of a bad boy. Eight years younger than Jamie, he’d been a surprise to parents who’d adjusted to the idea of an only child.

  “Lord only knows.” Miss Emma stirred a big bowl of potato salad. “He was surfing. Who knows what he’s doing now. I told him dinner is at six-thirty, but the day he’s on time is the day I’ll keel over from the shock.”

  Jamie gave his mama’s shoulders a squeeze. “Well, let’s hope he’s not on time, then,” he said.

  An hour later, we settled around a table laden with fried chicken, potato salad and corn bread. Marcus was not with us. We were near one of the broad oceanside windows and I imagined the view was spectacular in the daylight.

  “So, tell me about your people, darlin’,” Miss Emma said as she handed me the bowl of potato salad for a second helping.

  I explained that my mother grew up in Raleigh and my father in Greensboro, but that I lost them on the cruise ship and was raised by my aunt and uncle in Ohio.

  “Lord have mercy!” Miss Emma’s hand flew to her chest. She looked at Jamie. “No wonder you two found each other.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. Jamie smiled at me and I figured I could ask him later.

  “That explains your accent.” Daddy L looked at his wife and she nodded. “We were trying to peg it.”

  Daddy L helped himself to a crisp chicken thigh. He glanced at his watch, then at the empty chair next to Jamie. “Maybe you could talk to Marcus about his grades, Jamie,” he said.

  “What about them?”

  “We just got his interim report, and he’s fixin’ to flunk out if he doesn’t buckle down,” Miss Emma said quietly, as if Marcus could overhear us. “Mostly D’s. And it’s his junior year. I don’t think he knows how important this year is for getting into college.” She looked at me. “Jamie’s Daddy and I never made it to college, and I want my boys to get an education.”

  “I love going to UNC,” I said, although I was really thinking that she and Daddy L had done quite well for themselves without a college degree.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Jamie said.

  “He spends all the time he’s not in school on that surfboard,” Miss Emma said, “and then is off with his friends on the weekends, no matter what we say.”

  “Boy’s out of control,” Daddy L added.

  I’d been in the house only an hour, but already the primary Lockwood family dynamic was apparent: Jamie, despite the long hair and the tattoo and the motorcycle, was the favored son. Marcus was the black sheep. I hadn’t even met him and I already felt sympathy for him.

  We were nearly finished when we heard the downstairs door open and close. “I’m home!” a male voice called.

  “And your dinner’s cold as ice!” Miss Emma called back.

  I heard him on the stairs. He came into the dining room barefooted, wearing a full-length wet suit, the top unzipped nearly to his navel. He had a lanky, slender build that would never fill out to Jamie’s bulk, even though Jamie had eight years on him. A gold cross hanging from his neck glittered against the tan that must have been left over from summer, and his hair was a short, curly cap of sun-streaked brown. He had Miss Emma’s eyes—blue, shot through with summer sky.

  “Hey.” He grinned at me, pulling out the chair next to Jamie.

  “Go put some clothes on,” Daddy L said.

  “This is Laurel,” Jamie said. “And this is Marcus.”

  “Hi, Marcus,” I said.

  “You’re a sandy mess,” Miss Emma said. “Get dressed and I’ll heat you a plate in the microwave.”

  “Not hungry,” Marcus said.

  “You still need to change your clothes if you’re going to sit here with us,” said his father.

  “I’m going, I’m going.” Marcus got up with a dramatic sigh and padded toward the bedrooms.

  In a few minutes, I heard the music of an electric piano. The tune was halting and unfamiliar.

  Jamie laughed. “He brought the piano with him?”

  “If you can call it that,” Miss Emma said.

  Daddy L looked at me. “He wants to play in a rock-and-roll band,” he explained. “For years, we offered to buy him a piano so he could take proper lessons, but he said you can’t play a piano in a band.”

  “So he bought a used electric piano and is trying to teach himself how to play it,” Miss Emma said. “It makes me ill, listening to that thing.”

  “Ah, Mama,” Jamie said. “It keeps him off the streets.”

  After we’d eaten the most fabulous banana pudding I’d ever tasted, I wandered down the hall to use the bathroom. I could hear Marcus playing a song by The Police. When I left the bathroom, I knocked on his open bedroom door.

  “Your mother said you’re teaching yourself how to play.”

  He looked up, his fingers still on the keys. He’d changed into shorts and a navy-blue T-shirt. “By ear,” he said. “I can’t read music.”

  “You could learn how to read music.” I leaned against the doorjamb.

  “I’m dyslexic,” he said. “I’d rather have all my teeth pulled.”

  “Play some more,” I said. “It sounded good.”

  “Could you recognize it?”

  “That song by The Police,” I said. “‘Every Breath You Take’?”

  “Awesome!” His grin was cocky and he had the prettiest blue eyes. I bet he was considered a catch by girls his age. “I’m better than I thought,” he said. “How about this one?”

  He bent over the keys with supreme concentration, the cocky kid gone and in his place a
boy unsure of himself. The back of his neck looked slender and vulnerable. He grimaced with every wrong note. I struggled to recognize the song, to let him have that success. It took a few minutes, but then it came to me.

  “That Queen song!” I said.

  “Right!” He grinned. “‘We are the Champions.’”

  “I’m impressed,” I said sincerely. “I could never play by ear.”

  “You play?”

  “I took lessons for a few years.”

  He stood up. “Go for it,” he said.

  I sat down and played a couple of scales to get the feel of the keyboard. Then I launched into one of the few pieces I could remember by heart: Fur Elise.

  When I finished, I looked up to see Jamie standing in the doorway of the bedroom, a smile on his face I could only describe as tender. I knew in that moment that I loved him.

  “That was beautiful,” he said.

  “Yeah, you’re good,” Marcus agreed. He tipped his head to one side, appraising me. “Are you, like, a sorority chick?”

  I laughed. “No. What made you ask that?”

  “You’re just different from Jamie’s other girlfriends.”

  “Is that good or bad?” I asked.

  “Good.” Marcus looked up at his brother. “She’s cool,” he said. “You should keep this one.”

  I heard the sound of dishes clinking together in the kitchen and left the brothers to help clean up. I found Miss Emma up to her elbows in dishwater.

  “Let me dry.” I picked up the dish towel hanging from the handle of the refrigerator.

  “Why, thank you, darlin’.” She handed me a plate. “I heard you playing in there. That was lovely. I didn’t know a sound like that could come out of that electric thing.”

  “Thanks,” I said, adding, “Marcus plays really well by ear.”

  “It’s his choice of music that makes me ill.” I had the feeling nothing Marcus did would be good enough for her.

  “It’s what everybody listens to, though,” I said carefully.

  She laughed a little. “I can see why Jamie likes you so much.”

  I felt my cheeks redden. Had he talked about me to his parents?

  “You care about people like he does.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I mean, I care about people, but not like Jamie does. He’s amazing. Three weeks ago, I almost killed him. I did. Now I feel like…” I shook my head, unable to put into words how I felt. Taken in. By Jamie. By his family. More at home with them than I’d felt in six years with my icy aunt and silent uncle.

  “Jamie does have a gift with people, all right,” she said. “The way some people are born with musical talent or math skills or what have you. It’s genetic.”

  I must have looked dubious, because she continued.

  “I don’t have the gift, Lord knows,” she said, “but I had a brother who did. He died in his thirties, rest his soul, but he was…it’s more than kindness. It’s a way of seeing inside a person. To really feel what they’re feeling. It’s like they can’t help but feel it.”

  “Empathy,” I said.

  “Oh, that stupid tattoo.” She squirted more dish soap into the water in the sink. “I about had a conniption when I saw that thing. But he’s a grown man, not much his mama can do about it now. He doesn’t need that tattoo.” She scrubbed the pan the corn bread had been baked in. “My aunt had the gift, too, though she said it was more of a curse, because you had to take on somebody else’s pain. We were at the movies this one time? A woman and boy sat down in front of us before the lights were shut out. They didn’t say one single word, but Aunt Ginny said there was something wrong with the woman. That she felt a whole lot of anguish coming from her. That was the word she used—anguish.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, keeping my expression neutral. Miss Emma was going off the deep end, but I wasn’t about to let her see my skepticism.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” she said. “I thought so too at the time. When the movie was over, Aunt Ginny couldn’t stop herself from asking the woman if she was all right. Ginny had a way of talking to people that made them open right up to her. But the woman said everything was fine. As we were walking out of the theater, though, and the little boy was out of earshot, she told us that her mother’d had a stroke just that morning and she was worried sick about her. Ginny’d picked right up on that worry and took it inside herself. She ended up with a bleeding ulcer from taking on too many other people’s worries. That’s how Jamie is, too.”

  I remembered Jamie after the accident, when I wondered why he’d expressed no anger toward me. You already feel like crap about it, he’d said. Why should I make you feel any worse?

  I shivered.

  Miss Emma handed me the corn-bread pan to dry. “Here’s what happens with people like Jamie or my brother or my aunt,” she said. “They feel what the other person feels so strong that it’s less painful for them to just…give in. I knew when Jamie was small that he had the gift. He knew when his friends were upset about something and he’d get upset himself, even if he didn’t know what had them upset in the first place.” She reached into the dirty dishwater and pulled the stopper from the drain. “One time, a boy he barely knew got his dog run over by a car. I found Jamie crying in bed that night—he couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. He told me about it. I said, you didn’t even know that dog and you barely know that boy. He just kept crying. I thought, oh Lord have mercy on me, please. Here’s my brother and Aunt Ginny all over again. It’s a scary thing, raising a child like that. Most kids, like Marcus, bless his heart, you have to teach them how other children feel and how you need to be sensitive to them and all.” She pulled another dish towel from a drawer and dried her hands on it. “With Jamie, it was the opposite. I had to teach him to take care of himself.”

  I bit my lip as I set the dry pan on the counter. “Are you trying to…are you warning me about something?” I asked.

  She looked surprised. “Hmm,” she said. “Maybe I am. He likes you. I can tell. You’re a nice girl. Down-to-earth. You got a good head on your shoulders. He’s had a few girlfriends who took advantage of his kindness. I guess I’m asking you not to do that. Not to hurt him.”

  I shook my head. “Never,” I said, thinking of how good it felt to have Jamie’s arms around me. “I couldn’t.”

  I thought I knew myself so well.

  Chapter Six

  Laurel

  “I GUESS WE’RE SUPPOSED TO SIT UP THERE.” Maggie pointed to the front row of seats in the crowded Assembly Building. Trish Delphy’s secretary had called us the day before to say the mayor wanted us up front at the memorial service. I was sure our special status had to do with Andy, who was scratching his neck beneath the collar of his blue shirt. I’d had to buy him a new suit for the occasion. He so rarely had need of one that his old suit no longer fit. I let him pick out his own tie—a loud Jerry Garcia with red and blue swirls—but I’d forgotten a shirt and the one he was wearing was too small.

  “We’ll follow you, sweetie,” I said to Maggie, and she led the way down the narrow center aisle. The air hummed with chatter, and the seats were nearly all taken even though there were still fifteen minutes before the start of the service. There’d been school buses in the parking lot across the street, and I noticed that teenagers occupied many of the seats. The lock-in had attracted children from all three towns on the island as well as from a few places on the mainland, cutting across both geographic and economic boundaries, tying us all together. If I’d known how many kids would show up at the lock-in, I never would have let Andy go. Then again, if Andy hadn’t been there, more would have died. Incredible to imagine.

  I sat between my children. Next to us were Joe and Robin Carmichael, Emily’s parents, and in front of us was a podium flanked by two dozen containers of daffodils. Propped up on easels to the left of the podium were three poster-size photographs that I was not ready to look at. To the right of the podium were about twenty-five empty chairs set at a ninety-degree ang
le to us. A paper banner taped between the chairs read Reserved for Town of Surf City Fire Department.

  Andy was next to Robin, and she embraced him.

  “You beautiful boy,” she said, holding on to him three seconds too long for Andy’s comfort level. He squirmed and she let go with a laugh, then looked at me. “Good to see you, Laurel.” She leaned forward a little to wave to Maggie.

  “How’s Emily doing?” I asked quietly.

  Joe shifted forward in his seat so he could see me. “Not great,” he said.

  “She’s gone backward some,” Robin said. “Nightmares. Won’t let us touch her. I can hardly get her to let me comb her hair. She’s scared to go to school again.”

  “She had her shirt on inside out,” Andy piped in, too loudly.

  “Shh,” I hushed him.

  “You’re right, Andy,” Robin said. “She was already sliding back a ways before the fire, but now it’s got real bad.” She raised her gaze to mine. “We’re going to have to take her to see that psychologist again.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. Emily had suffered brain damage at birth, and I knew how far they’d come with her over the years. How hard it had to be to have a child who hated to be touched! Many FASD kids hated being touched, too, but I’d gotten lucky with Andy; he was a hugger. I needed to rein that hugging in with people outside the family, though, especially now that he was a teenager.

  Robin looked behind us. “So many people affected by this…mess,” she said.

  I didn’t turn around. My attention was drawn to the Surf City firefighters who were now filing into the seats reserved for them. In their dress blues and white gloves, a more sober looking bunch of men—and three women—would be hard to find, and as they sat down, a hush washed over the crowd. I saw Marcus glance at us, and I quickly turned my attention to the pink beribboned program I’d been handed when I entered the building.

  Some people had wanted to put the memorial service off for another couple of weeks so the new Surf City Community Center would be open and the event could be held in the gymnasium. But the somber mood of the island couldn’t wait that long. In the week since the fire, that’s all anyone talked about. The part-time counselor at the elementary school where I worked was so inundated with kids suffering from nightmares about being burned or trapped that she’d had to refer the overflow, those whose fears showed up as stomachaches or headaches, to me. People were not only sad, they were angry. Everyone knew the fire was arson, although those words had not been uttered by anyone in an official capacity, at least not publicly.