Sweetheart for the SEAL Read online

  “Drive safe out there,” he says. “The news is saying this will be a modest tropical storm, but I’ve seen a few in my life, and I know when it feels worse in the air than they’re making it sound.”

  “I hear you,” I say, nodding. “Think it’ll cause any damage?”

  “Well, what doesn’t get damaged out here when a storm hits?” he says with a chuckle. “We’re one big storm barrier.”

  “Yeah, we are, aren’t we?” I admit with a soft laugh.

  “You from around here? I thought I recognized that accent.”

  “Born and raised,” I say.

  “Well, welcome back!” he says, shaking my hand. “And thank you for your service.”

  Driving down the road, I can tell he wasn’t kidding about the storm. The skies are getting darker, and the trees are billowing a hell of a lot more ominously than the news made it sound. It puts a dark tinge over what’s otherwise a jarring drive down memory lane.

  I see the old doughnut shop I used to visit, and the same owner is getting a couple employees to help him board up the windows. A convenience store I used a lot is putting up signs saying they’re out of gasoline. Old restaurants I used to hang out at are closing early.

  We’re part of a strip of islands here, so it’s easy for bad weather to hit us hard, but this is surprising. I start to wonder about Crystal.

  I checked in on her social media before I came to visit, of course. I didn’t do it to stalk her, obviously, but just to make sure she wasn’t married or seeing someone or moved away. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have much of a presence. Her mom posted on her page asking if she could borrow some eggs, though, so I know that she’s still living in Kitty Hawk, and the phonebook gave me her address. I figured, if there’s a bad storm brewing, though, she might need some help. Or at least, that’ll be my excuse for showing up out of the blue.

  I turn on the radio in the car as I drive past a growing stream of cars headed in the opposite direction and listen to the voice crackling through it.

  “. . . motorists should be advised that the 64 bridge is now closed, as Tropical Storm Bruno has been upgraded to a category-2 hurricane. Meteorologists are actively tracking the storm’s alarming growth, and a statement will soon be made regarding the safety of remaining on the Outer Bank for the duration of the storm. Residents are advised to take the usual safety precautions seriously: boarding up windows and clearing yards of debris is strongly advised.”

  I furrow my brow. This is starting to sound like more than just something worthy of a cozy storm party night indoors, and the further I drive, it’s starting to look like a lot more than that, too.

  The road takes me close to the beach on the east side, and I turn my head to look out to the waves. I can tell the water is angry. I’ve spent a lot of time out on those shores. I drank out here illegally with the other boys as a teenager, and I played out here endless afternoons as a kid.

  I’m not some kind of hippie, but water has a spirit to it, anywhere you go. The Atlantic coast has it just as much as the Amazon river has it. When you get to know the water, you can sense when something’s not right.

  And I’ve got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “Traffic onto the Outer Banks has now been suspended, including the 158 bridge. We now have a statement from First Flight Airport regarding the incoming storm: all incoming flights are being redirected to the nearest available airports, and all departures are suspended until the end of the storm. If possible, residents are encouraged to evacuate to the mainland safely. Coast Guard personnel are en route to the 158 bridge to ensure safe evacuation in lieu of Hurricane Bruno’s projected upgrade to a category-4 hurricane within the next hour.”

  My eyes widen as I look down at the radio, then back up to the crackle of lightning out to the east. I clench my jaw.

  There’s a hell of a storm out there, and it’s getting bigger...fast.

  Crystal

  I sit in front of the television in the living room, perched on the edge of the couch cushion with my eyes wide and my chin resting on my knee, which is folded up to my chest while the other dangles off the couch. Ever since I was a little girl, this has been the way I sit when I’m anxious.

  Years and years ago, nearly a decade now, I sat just like this in the waiting room of the nearby hospital while awaiting the inevitable bad news from the medical staff tasked with looking after my father. Back then, I was just a skinny, gawky twelve year old with no idea how the world worked and certainly no idea that my world would continue spinning on its axis once the doctors informed my mother and me that he was gone.

  But after all the shock and the tears and the “how do we make a life without Dad in it,” I was left with the same advice I received from the man himself all throughout my childhood: find a way to make it through, and then find a way to make it good.

  That has been the motto I’ve worn like a backbone for years and years, and while it has been very difficult at times to follow it, and even more difficult to believe in it, I have to admit that Dad knew what he was talking about.

  When I got pregnant with Dakota, I was just eighteen years old. I had just graduated from high school and my plan at the time was to go to university to get my teaching degree. My father used to teach third grade—I even got the uniquely weird experience of being his student for that grade—so I was determined to follow in his footsteps.

  Besides, I have always been pretty good with children. They listen to me and seem to bond with me very quickly. I love kids. Even with as unpredictable as they can be sometimes, especially around certain ages, I love the honesty and earnestness with which they seem to view the world around them. Everything is new. Everything is interesting. Even the most mundane of routines can look like an adventure from the eyes of a child.

  Sometimes, when I’m feeling bored and bogged down by the dull monotony of daily life, all I have to do is listen to my daughter talk about her day and suddenly the universe brightens up a little. She sees things I overlook, finds joy in the tiny minutiae that slip right past me. It’s truly a blessing to have her alongside me as a copilot for life.

  That’s not to say I didn’t panic when I found out I was pregnant with her.

  I mean, I was just a bright-eyed, naive, optimistic eighteen-year-old with a game plan that was now being totally rerouted...and I didn’t even know the new destination yet. I was just scrambling to get some semblance of my life together, still waiting tables at the golf club, sending off college applications even though I knew I probably couldn’t handle going to school full-time while working full-time and being a new mom. One of the three had to go.

  Obviously, Dakota was not going anywhere. And I needed that job to pay my bills and to slip into my savings account if I wanted to ever have a shot at moving out and living independently from my mother.

  So it was the university degree that got sidelined. Now, I look back and realize that was the best possible decision I could have made at the time, but back then? Well, let’s just say I spent a lot of long hours in the evenings after work, perched on my bed with one knee up and one leg hanging, my usual panic-pose.

  The same position I’m sitting in right now as the news channel flashes back and forth from boring local stories to the coverage of Tropical Storm Bruno.

  The reason I am so anxious about it is that I can hear, see, and feel this storm already. The air is tight, the thunder rumbling overhead sounds like the deep growls of some humongous ancient beast, and the rain is falling so hard that my little potted plants on the back patio have probably drowned by now.

  Now, here’s the thing: the folks living here in the Outer Banks of North Carolina are no strangers to stormy weather. That’s part and parcel of living on the east coast, on a conglomeration of barrier islands. Kitty Hawk, the small seaside tourist town I have been an inhabitant of for my entire twenty-two years of life, buckles down and prepares for hurricane season around the same time every single year.

  We all go to the groce
ry store weeks ahead of time to stock up on giant crates of bottled waters, canned goods, dry foods that don’t have to be cooked just in case the power goes out. Everyone I know has a small stockpile of candles, flashlights, and batteries.

  When you live on the edge of the world like we do, you get used to some pretty dodgy weather. In the summers, we are lucky to get a lot of sunny beach days. That’s the good part. And in the winter, the temperatures never drop too low. That’s a good part, too.

  But hurricane season is the trade-off. That’s the price we pay for life on the beach. Still, we are a hardy and sensible population, and we generally don’t lose our minds over a little rain and lightning. We don’t close our schools or cancel the workday for a little precipitation.

  But this...I can feel this time is different somehow.

  I know I should probably remain calm. I mean, I have been keeping an eye on the news channel all morning just in case the weather guy tells me it’s time to freak out. Normally, if there’s a hurricane brewing somewhere out on the Atlantic, our meteorologist can predict it way ahead of time. Hours, even days before it will ever make landfall.

  We take a note of the impending horror, make the necessary adjustments to schedules, plans, what have you. We make sure our usual hurricane supplies aren’t dwindling, and we top up whatever might be lacking. It’s gotten to the point now where we don’t really have to panic. It’s all to be expected, and the science of weather-predicting has been sharpened to a fine point, so I trust what the weather guy says.

  The powers that be christened the storm Tropical Storm Bruno. Not Hurricane Bruno. Just another tropical storm to blow crazy gusts that sound like the wailing of monsters through the palm trees, pour down enough rain to cause some light flooding, maybe even close down a few minor roadways. A tropical storm, back when I was growing up, often just meant I had a built-in excuse to stay indoors and dive into an especially juicy e-book, just while away the hours engrossed in a story.

  And sometimes, the approaching maelstrom will cool off and calm down long before it even reaches our shores, to be downgraded to just another run-of-the-mill thunderstorm. No need to worry. I expected that to happen this time.

  After all, if it is a real and present threat to our safety, wouldn’t the news let us know?

  If I have reason to worry, surely the weather man would have made that clear by now. He has never let me down before, to my memory. I can’t remember a time when a tropical storm snowballed out of control to become more dangerous than predicted. And yet, I just have a feeling in my gut warning me that something isn’t quite right.

  So I am sitting here totally transfixed, my eyes on the television screen while the cogs of my mind turn faster and faster, picking up anxiety as they circulate. An ad for some kind of luxurious body wash comes on the screen and I roll my eyes, wishing the commercial break would end so I can get back to the weather updates.

  Just as I’m about to get up and go grab a second mug of coffee while I’m waiting, a massive clap of thunder cracks through the sky directly overhead. It is so loud that it makes me yelp in genuine terror, and I feel the power of the thunder vibrate my whole house.

  Uh oh.

  That pit in my stomach is getting heavier by the second, and my heart pounds wildly in my chest as I hear the kids from the next room cry out, clearly terrified by the thunder. I leap off the couch and go bolting into the playroom, fully prepared to go into comfort mode. When I round the corner, I almost run smack into Kota, who apparently came running for me.

  “Mommy! Big thunder! It was so loud!” she whimpers, her sweet little face contorted with tearful fright. Her eyes look even deeper green with the tears shimmering in them.

  “Oh, honey, I know. It was scary, huh?” I coo, immediately kneeling down to sweep her up into my arms. She throws her pudgy arms around my neck and buries her face in my shoulder, trembling like a Chihuahua in the rain. I stroke her curly blonde hair and stand up to go into the playroom to check on the children. If Dakota is scared, the others must be, too.

  When I step into the room, I’m surprised to find all three of the little ones standing by the window, peering out at the stormy skies. The rain is slamming into the windowpane so hard that it’s difficult to see out and get a good glimpse of how bad it is out there. I hurry over to the window and start trying to shoo them away toward the couch, as I know from my own childhood that it’s more dangerous to stand by a window during a storm of this caliber.

  “Come on, kids, away from the window now,” I chide them gently, reaching down with my free hand to guide them back away. Grant looks up at me with huge, round eyes full of wonder and fear. I can see the tears just slightly starting to shimmer there, making his gaze look glossy and shiny.

  “It’s rainin’ a lot,” he murmurs, a little breathlessly. My heart aches for the little guy as he tries to make sense of the storm.

  I nod at him and manage to summon up a smile. “I know. It’s really loud, isn’t it? But don’t worry. We’re safe inside,” I assure him, ruffling his brown hair with my free hand.

  “Are you sure?” Hailey asks in the tiniest, most frightened little voice. I look down at her to see that she’s sucking her thumb and she’s got her trusty stuffed whale, Whailey, tucked under her arm as usual. For some reason, her question strikes fear deep into my soul.

  I know why. It’s because I’m not sure. I’m not sure that we’ll be okay. Because when I look out the window, the world outside is dark. Way, way too dark for half past noon on a summer’s day. It looks like night is falling, like the sun has been sucked up into a black hole, leaving us shrouded in darkness as the rain pours heavily.

  “Yes, sweetheart. I’m going to keep you all safe, okay? Got it?” I assure them with as much confidence as I can muster. Grant, Weston, and Hailey all crowd around me, wrapping their little arms around my legs and waist.

  “Come on, let’s go in the other room so I can watch the weather man, alright?” I tell them, leading them out of the playroom and into the adjoining living room. The commercial break has ended by now, and as soon as we walk into the room, I see the local news station flash over to the weather.

  This time, the meteorologist looks downright freaked out. That cannot be a good sign of things to come. The kids pile onto the sofa with me, Whailey and all. I snuggle them close as I listen to the weather guy, my heart thumping like crazy with every word out of his mouth.

  “Folks, it looks like we might have counted our chickens before they hatched,” he admits with a deeply furrowed brow. “Tropical Storm Bruno has hit a warm patch and is now being upgraded to a hurricane. This is all happening very quickly, and I’m here to do my best to keep the good people of the Outer Banks updated on what to do and where to go in case of… well, if the worst happens.”

  “The worst?” Weston repeats nervously. I reach over and give his thin shoulder a squeeze. He grabs a pillow from the end of the couch and hugs it close to his chest, cuddling up closer to Grant. I’m grateful that the kids I watch all get along so well. Especially in a time like this, when the shit appears to really, truly be hitting the fan.

  “The local police are in the process of closing all but major thoroughfares right now,” says the weather man. “Businesses are shutting down for the day so that employees can go home in time to prep for the hurricane. The timeline we here at the meteorology station established earlier this morning is being accelerated to fit the new conditions caused by Hurricane Bruno. I have just received word that evacuation centers are being set up to help get folks out of dodge. Again, I want to apologize for how quickly things have changed. I have to admit, we—we did not see this coming.”

  “Shit,” I murmur aloud as my blood runs cold.

  All four kids gasp. Dakota frowns and says, “That’s a bad word.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is, sweetie. I’m sorry. Don’t repeat that word— any of you,” I reply hastily. “I, uh, I should make some phone calls and see if I can get a hold of your parents,” I tell the
other kids as I fumble around in my pocket for my phone. I slide the screen open and select my contacts list, deciding to start with Hailey’s mom. I dial her number and press the phone against my ear. It rings only twice before Hailey’s mother, Katherine, picks up.

  “Hi, Kat? Are you there?” I ask into the phone receiver.

  All I get in response are some garbled words, the service dipping in and out so badly that I can’t even put the sounds together to make sense of them. “Hello?” I ask again, frowning. Once again, the audio clips in and out, and I can’t tell whether she’s even on the other end of the line or not. The storm must be messing with the cell towers somehow. Just as I’m about to say something else, the line cuts out.

  I stare at the phone blankly for a moment before realizing the kids are all watching me and I need to maintain a brave face. So I quickly move down the contacts list to call Grant’s dad instead. I get the same spotty service before the line cuts out. Starting to panic, I try Weston’s mom next, only to receive more of the same. By now, I’m starting to feel sick to my stomach. I don’t know what to do. I can’t reach their parents. I have no idea if they’re still stuck at work or if they’re in traffic trying to get here to collect their children before evacuation. I don’t know if maybe they’ve already been forced to go to the evacuation centers sans children. If the police are blocking the roads already… well, then things must be pretty serious.

  And there’s no way I can evacuate. Not with these four small children. Not with the winds howling and the rain pelting down like a biblical flood. Not with the lightning cracking the dark sky into flashes of searing hot light and the thunder shaking the earth. It isn’t safe for us to leave the house. All I can do is bunker down with these four tiny innocents and hope against hope that the hurricane doesn’t plow us down in its path.

  Just as I’m contemplating how screwed I am, another clap of powerful thunder— even closer than before— cracks through the silence and makes us all scream out in fear.