Nessa nodded again. She would have liked to have gotten it over with, but then, on the other hand, she might feel better if she slept one more night on the matter. Nanny Lucy always said that things looked better after a good night’s sleep and in the daylight, instead of darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Four
As they had left his house the night before, Jackson had asked Nessa to come over the next evening after work so they could have their talk. The day dragged by like a crippled snail, and something akin to crackling electricity had hung in the air ever since she’d woken up that morning. She busied herself by cutting the pieces for a quilt kit. Jackson had said that Nanny Lucy’s kits sold even better than her finished products, so Nessa intended to have several ready for the fall craft fairs. “And four quilts, too,” she told Waylon, who was watching every move she made from a kitchen chair.
“I’m home!” April dropped her purse on the rocking chair nearest the door.
Nessa heaved a huge sigh of relief. She was so ready to get this visit with Jackson over with.
“Did you hear that we’re under a tornado watch?” April asked.
“I usually get that kind of notice on my phone, but I guess I wasn’t paying attention.” Nessa cut the last piece of cloth and put it into a ziplock baggie. “And I haven’t had the television or radio on all day. How did your day go?”
“Great!” April crossed the living room and dining area and went straight to the kitchen. “What do I smell?” She removed the lid from the slow cooker and sniffed.
“Kidney bean soup,” Nessa said. “Yeast rolls are on the stove to go with it.”
“I’m not waiting on Flynn.” April filled a bowl with the thick soup and put two rolls on a plate. “I’m starving. Nanny Lucy never made this. Where did you get the recipe?” She set the food down on the end of the table and took a bite. “Sometimes I had to do some basic cooking when Nanny Lucy had bad days. I wonder now how on earth she cared for me during those times.”
“One of the church ladies used to bring it to soup-and-sandwich nights at my dad’s church. When I asked her for the recipe, she gave it to me,” Nessa said.
April buttered a hot roll and took another bite of the soup. “Is it hard to make? I could eat this stuff every week.”
“Might be the easiest soup in the world to make,” Nessa answered. “You crumble up a pound of hamburger in a pot with a small diced onion, cover it with water, and boil until the meat is done and the onions are tender. Pour in two cans of kidney beans and a can of tomato sauce. Then add about a cup of ketchup and a fourth cup of Worcestershire sauce and simmer. I make it and pour it into a slow cooker and let it simmer on low for a few hours. Daddy liked to add a little more Worcestershire sauce to it. Mama always served it with hot rolls and an assortment of sliced cheese.”
“Well, it’s really good,” April said.
“Glad you like it.” Nessa put away the sewing machine and cleared the table of quilting scraps. “I’ve kind of felt something in the air all day, so I’m not surprised there’s a tornado watch.”
“Maudie says every time a little breeze kicks up around these parts, the weather folks issue a tornado watch. She says we shouldn’t start to worry until they call it a warning. Then we shouldn’t get our underbritches in a twist until we feel it in the air,” April said between bites.
“She must be a hoot to work for.” Nessa thought of her previous principal, who had never seemed to smile. Then she thought of the electricity she’d felt in the air all day. Could it have been the approaching storm and not her anxiety over talking to Jackson?
“Yes, she’s more like a friend than a boss, and honey, the electricity in the air around here isn’t a tornado.” April giggled. “It’s just sparks jumping back and forth from our house to Jackson’s. I could almost see them when we played Pictionary last night. You ever think that you might have been wrong about the woman with him in Walmart? Maybe she was just a good friend. When are you going to have it out with him?”
“I’m going over there right now,” Nessa answered. “I’ll either feel like a fool because I was jealous, or like an idiot because I didn’t give him a chance to tell me what was going on. At least it will be out in the open.”
Flynn came in the door, kicked off his shoes, stopped to pet Waylon, and headed to the kitchen. “I’m starving, and I smell yeast rolls.”
“Supper is on the stove and in the slow cooker,” Nessa told him. “Help yourself. There’s a lemon chess pie in the refrigerator.”
“I’m sure glad that I’m working every day. If I was just sittin’ on the porch watching the clouds roll in, I’d gain fifty pounds before Christmas,” Flynn said as he dipped up a bowl of soup. “Aren’t you going to eat with us, Nessa?”
“I’ve been too antsy to eat. I’ll see y’all later,” she said.
April gave her a brief nod and went back for a second bowl of soup.
Nessa kept her eyes on the ground to avoid stepping in a hole or stumbling over a rock. She went through a dozen scenarios about how to even ask Jackson about the woman, and none of them worked. When the wind picked up and blew her hair back away from her face, she looked up at the sky and saw the dark clouds in the southwest.
“I guess that’s what caused the warning,” she muttered as she rounded the corner of Jackson’s house.
He was standing on the porch, his hands on the railing, with Tex right beside him. His eyes were on the clouds, and he didn’t even notice her until Tex barked. He whipped around and yelled, “What are you doing out in this weather? We’ve been issued . . .” His voice was blown away in a sudden burst of wind, and his finger shot up to point at a funnel swirling down from the dark clouds that looked like it couldn’t be more than half a mile away. He jumped from the porch to the ground in one leap and grabbed her hand.
“That thing is coming right at us. Run, Nessa!” he screamed.
She glanced over her shoulder to see the whirling vortex devour a tree, roots and all, and almost froze in her tracks, but he yanked on her hand and she started running. The noise above them sounded like a freight train as Jackson guided her into the storm cellar right behind Tex. He pulled the heavy door shut and barred it with a long length of wood. Then the sound got louder and louder.
Nessa dug her cell phone out of her pocket and used it for a flashlight. “Do you have electricity down here?” Her heart was beating so fast that her words came out between breaths.
Jackson struck a match and lit the wick of an oil lamp. “No electricity. Wouldn’t do us much good—every time the wind blows, we lose power for an hour or two. I’ve got a generator for the shop, but this is as good as it gets down here. Have a seat. We might be here . . .”
His voice was cut off again when it sounded like a full-grown elephant landed on the cellar door. Nessa’s hands went to cover her ears. Tex whimpered and crawled under the twin bed against the wall. Nessa took her hands down at the same time that something else landed on top of the cellar.
Jackson motioned toward the bed, then took her by the hand. “We’re safe. That was a close call, but we’re alive. You’re shivering. Are you cold?”