“Got it,” Evie said. “But just in case, what do we do if she dies on us?”
Sam wanted to laugh, but they were serious.
“You already know what to do. You pick up the phone and call for help. Now tell me the number you call.”
“911,” Evie shouted.
“911,” Beth echoed. “We dial 911 if she dies on us.”
Sam hugged them to him. “Yes, that’s what you do if she dies. Now. Are you two getting hungry?”
“Starving!” Evie said.
“Starving,” Beth echoed.
“Then go wash up. When you come back, supper will be ready,” he said.
They slid off his lap and left the room running.
Sam sat for a moment, his head spinning and his heart in a bit of a bind. They were growing up so fast. One day they’d be asking questions he couldn’t answer. Stuff a mother would have been teaching them, and stuff a mother would need to tell them. God. Why did life have to be so beautiful and so sad at the same time?
***
Katie’s supper was baked lasagna from the freezer section at Welby’s Grocery. The house smelled good, and since she’d thrown away her lunch at noon, she was beginning to feel hungry. The shock of her flashback was lessening, and she had quit stewing about what Lila told her. She gave herself a lecture on not owning other people’s troubles and took the lasagna out of the oven.
But when the national news came on TV, she was eating her supper sitting on the couch and waiting to see if they mentioned Megan Roman’s murder. What she hadn’t expected was to see footage of Mark coming out of the police station with his head down, sunglasses on, and dodging the media hammering him with questions.
She sat there a minute, wondering if she was about to feel sorry for him, and then thought… Nope. I had to face a church full of people and tell them you dumped my ass. You’re fine. You’re coming across here as the “good guy” who turned in his own wife just to do the right thing.
She took another bite of lasagna, listened to the updates on the case from the news anchor, and then changed the channel and finished eating.
It was nearing sundown when she went out on her back porch with a piece of pecan pie from the bakery section at Welby’s and ate it sitting in the porch swing.
The day was cooling off a bit, and there were storm clouds on the horizon. Earlier, the weatherman had predicted the possibility of rain, so Katie eyed the clouds as they continued to build into massive thunderheads. Off in the distance, she could hear the beginnings of a rumble. Even though it was a long distance away yet, the sound gave her goose bumps.
When she was little, she had been afraid of thunder, and when a storm would come up full of lightning and thunder, she would hide under her bed. Then one of the boys in her foster family told her that sound in the sky was just potatoes rolling around in the tater wagon. She believed that for enough years to get her over the fear. The boy, who was already sick, later died of leukemia, but his kindness had not been forgotten.
She sat outside until the sun went down and the wind began to rise. Then she went back inside, put the rest of the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, and started it up.
All she wanted to do was run a tub full of hot water and soak until her skin puckered, then crawl in bed, and read some more of her new Dinah McCall. The book was a thriller with a psychic and missing people, set on an old Southern plantation. The romance was hard to get through right now, because love was so far off her radar, but as with all things, this too would pass. The rest of it rocked, and she couldn’t wait to see what came next.
So she locked up the house, set the thermostat as she turned off lights in the front of the house, and headed back to her room. Her comfy bed and the old claw-foot bathtub were calling her name, and Dinah’s story was waiting.
***
Across the street, Sam Youngblood had seen the same newscast about the murder of a young socialite in Albuquerque and her involvement in drug trafficking. As they began unweaving the tangled story for their listeners, Sam keyed in on the name of the husband who’d turned her in and then saw the clip of Mark Roman coming out of the police precinct and frowned. That name rang a bell. He’d read that name recently, but where?
He kept thinking about it as he was getting the girls into bed, and listening to their prayers for Miss Roxie not to die, and hoping to God the girls didn’t bug Roxie about her impending demise tomorrow.
Later, he went into the office and sat down at the computer to pay a couple of bills. That’s when he remembered where he’d seen that name.
At this computer. The night he’d done a background search on Katie McGrath. If he wasn’t mistaken, that was the name of the man in her wedding announcement. And there had been a photo. Now he wanted to see it again. It probably wasn’t the same man, but he knew he wouldn’t rest until he investigated further.
So he typed in the names “Mark Roman” and “Katie McGrath” and “wedding in Albuquerque” and up popped the same news item he’d seen before, with a picture of the couple.
It was the same man.
He dug deeper and typed “Mark Roman and Megan Lanier wedding” and found an announcement about an elopement to Las Vegas, but he was stunned by the date.
The son of a bitch married another woman the day before he was supposed to marry Katie. He jilted a schoolteacher for a drug-pushing socialite. I wonder what he thinks about his choice now?
The more he learned about Katie McGrath, the more his intentions grew to do his part to make sure she felt safe and wanted here.
***
Katie had fallen asleep with the book in her lap and all of the lights still on. For once, she wasn’t having nightmares and was blissfully sleeping when lightning and thunder announced the storm’s arrival.
She jumped, felt the book sliding off her lap, and immediately grabbed at it as she opened her eyes, then groaned when she saw the time. It was just after 2:00 a.m.
The storm sounded bad. Strong winds. Rain hammering against the windows and the roof. Other than her bathtub, she didn’t have a tornado shelter, so she quickly turned on the TV to check weather reports. After a quick search of channels, she found a local station with a weather alert on a continuous scroll at the bottom of the screen.
Strong winds, thunder and lightning, and a good soaking. No chance of tornadoes or hail. That’ll work. Katie got up, leaving the lights of her bedroom to walk through the darkened house, lit only by the intermittent flashes of lightning.
The whole noise of the storm and the psychedelic flashes of light coming through shades and curtains gave her an eerie feeling. She hadn’t lived here long enough to know what would hold together in a storm and what might leak, but a quick check of the house would answer all those questions soon enough.