Page 126 of This Time Around
Forty
Rebecca
My body trembled and my teeth clattered.Above my head, wind and storm and rain pounded so hard against the metal doors I was terrified it would rip the doors right off.I was locked in, safe as could be, and all the errors I’d made in life still replayed in my mind, a constant loop of shoulda-coulda-wouldas.
Tears from fear had stopped hours ago, but the storm relented.
The sound of a train rushing overhead came and went, the roar, the wild whip of wind tugged at the doors.
I abandoned my phone hours ago when the screen went black shortly after I called Jordan.I put off heading to the shelter as long as I could, my eyes glued to the television in my living room, my hands clenched to the couch cushions, white-knuckling it so hard my hands still ached hours later.
Tornadoes popped up all over the state and I was sheltered in, locked in and had texted both Cooper and then my brother letting them know.My screen went black less than thirty minutes later, shortly after Jordan’s reply came in.
You okay?
My phone froze and I lost connection before I could reply.
I never saw one come in from Cooper.
I’d tried to eat, and stopped.I read for the first hour or two, and couldn’t do anything else other than listen to the weather radio, a crank up one that didn’t require batteries.My flashlight was next to me.
We had beds down here, put here when Jordan and I were kids and I was curled into the far back corner of the cellar, wrapped in a blanket, fighting against the urge to slam my hands over my ears as another round of trains barreled overhead.
Tornadoes.
Everywhere.All over the state.Based on the noise outside, the calm and the pounding, the wave after wave of heavy material crashing above my head, shaking the ground even though I was well beneath it, didn’t end.
It was ten o’clock.Based on the news of the weather, I had hours left of this torture.
It was the first time I’d had to come down here alone.Memories assaulted me of other times, as kids when Jordan and I would spend hours playing UNO or Go Fish or War.There were board games, covered with a sheen of dust on a shelf.Other memories.The storm that hit when I was seven that had set the Whitman’s house on fire.
Nights Joseph and I hunkered down.Nights where we passed the time concentrating on the feel of each other’s body, ignoring the whooshing of wind and the roll of thunder above.
Cooper shuddering, his entire body, as I led him down the stairs to show him what it was like.More like a bunker than a simple tornado shelter, my dad had taken great pains to make this area safe and sound and somewhere we could hide if we ever needed it.
The damage of this storm would be monstrous.I was already planning on tree removals.Figuring the costs of lost cattle.Thank God I took twenty to market a couple weeks ago and cattle prices were currently higher than normal giving me a decent hope of not being fully taken over financially by this.
I’d be fine.I’d come back from this.
I just really, really wanted Cooper next to me.If only I could text him.Call him.Hear his voice in my ear or even better, feel his hand grazing my thigh.His lips at my throat.
Goddamn it.Why did I let him leave me?
Never again.I didn’t care what I had to do when this was done, but he was never going to be apart from me again.
An enormous crash hit above.The cellar doors slammed against the ground and I jumped.
The hell?
I rushed to the doors, up the small and narrow staircase I had to turn sideways to enter carefully.
Dented.Right across the center of the doors.Right across the lock.
“Shit.”I shoved and the tiny amount of give usually on the locked doors didn’t move.
I moved back slowly, back to my corner.
And I listened.I waited.Weather forecasters continued to report.
