“Who was keeping Elora safe?” I ask her. “Or Evie. Or Hart. Or any of the others?”
Who was there to keep Zale safe?
Or Aeron?
“Oh, Sugar Bee.” Honey reaches out for me, but I take a step back, and she looks so hurt. “I don’t see how that old business could possibly have any connection to Elora, if that’s what you’re thinking,”
“Jesus!” I’m crying now. The angry kind of tears that always make me shake. “You don’t know that! How could you possibly know that? What if it does have something to do with what happened to Elora? What if it has everything to do with what happened to Elora?”
For a second, there’s only the sound of my rattled breathing. And the jingling of Sweet-N-Low’s collar as he scratches his ear.
And, of course, the damn wind chimes.
“Plywood’s out in the shed,” Honey finally tells me. “Let’s you and me drag it out first thing tomorrow, so we’re ready when Leo gets here to board up the windows.”
She kisses me good night and heads upstairs to bed. And I just stand there. Stunned. Because I know Honey loves me. And I know she wants to protect me. Keep me safe. I get that.
But I’m not like her.
I can’t live with the holes. Not any more.
I need answers.
When Honey wakes me up before sunrise the next morning, I’ve barely slept at all. And the first thing I hear is the ringing of wind chimes.
But the first thing I see – feel – is that flash of Elora. Someone squatting low beside her.
Don’t run.
I can’t see a face.
There’s no point.
I feel the weight of the words on my chest.
And I can almost hear the voice.
Almost.
But not quite.
I know I’m getting closer to whatever happened to Elora out there in the bayou, though. I just need a little more time. And that’s something I don’t have.
I struggle into some clothes and pull on my boots. Honey and I barely say two words to each other as we drag the big pieces of plywood out from the shed. One for every window.
I don’t point out the missing black trunk.
And she doesn’t notice it.
We turn on the radio again over breakfast and catch the tail end of another weather update. Elizabeth’s winds have reached 115 miles per hour, making it a category 3 storm. A hurricane watch has been issued for all of coastal Louisiana, and evacuations are beginning. We’ve got less than sixty hours, the announcer tells us.
“We’ll get everything tightened down today and head out first thing tomorrow,” Honey says. But I can tell she’s worried. She glances in my direction as she spreads strawberry jam on toast. “I should’ve sent you back to Little Rock days ago.”
And I’m sure she means because of the storm. Mostly. But also because she could have avoided that whole scene last night.
We spend the morning carrying all the shop merchandise upstairs to Honey’s big bedroom. Other than the big furniture, everything from my room has to go up, too. And the kitchen. Assuming the whole house doesn’t blow away or get swept downriver, it’s the flood that will do the damage. The stilts and the raised boardwalk protect us from high tides and even normal river flooding. But it won’t be enough to keep our houses dry if a monster hurricane puts this whole area under twenty-five or thirty feet of water.
After lunch, Leo and Hart come and board up the windows for us. They carry the heaviest stuff upstairs and take down the swinging sign out front so it won’t rip loose in the wind. I try to talk to Hart a couple times, but he doesn’t have much to say other than “hold this rope” or “hand me that screw gun”。
All up and down the boardwalk, people are tying down their boats and securing their property as best they can. Every so often, they stop work to mop their sweaty faces with soiled handkerchiefs and squint up at the perfect blue sky. I hear them whisper the names out loud in snatches of overheard conversation.
Rita. Camille.
Andrew. Betsy. Audrey.
Katrina.
Katrina.
Katrina.
Then back to work. No time to waste. Everybody is busy.
Even Victor. He’s crawling around up on their roof checking for loose shingles, and I think again about how we all let Evie down. And her mama, too.
All of us except Hart.
By suppertime, we’re about as ready as we’re going to get. Honey and I eat fried bologna sandwiches at the kitchen table while Sweet-N-Low paces around the house on his stubby little legs, trying to figure out where all our stuff went. I figure he thinks we were robbed while he was asleep.