“Let me pack up a few things, and I’ll go with you,” Lacey said, looking at Beck. “You can take your mom and the babies to the shelter and wait for me. I’ll go with Javi and see if anyone needs help.”
“We’re sending everyone who needs help to the shelter,” Javi said. “I don’t mind taking you, but you’re all going to the same place, so…?”
“Are you going to the shelter right now?” she asked Javi.
He turned to motion to Esperanza. “We’re going to go check on a few more houses, then my neighborhood,” he said.
The cock of Lacey’s head reminded him he hadn’t introduced Esperanza. “This is Esperanza. She’s been in town with the tornado chasing tour. We were out on the road when we saw the twister heading to town.”
“You’re a tornado chaser?” Lacey asked, walking down the steps with her hand extended to greet Esperanza.
Esperanza shook her hand. “Yes, my sister and I run a tour. We arrived yesterday with our group after one of our vans broke down.”
Had it only been yesterday? Javi had trouble believing that. He felt like he’d known her forever, which was part of the reason he’d forgotten to introduce her right off.
“Oh. Well. Welcome to Broken Wheel.”
“Now you know how the first settlers felt,” Beck tried to joke.
His wife cast him a look over her shoulder.
“I’m Lacey and the comedian over there is Beck. He’s holding our daughter Emily. Her twin Evan is the one you hear crying in the background.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Lacey pivoted to Javi abruptly. “Did you say you were on the road with the storm chasing tour?”
“I was driving.” He motioned to the SUV. “Couldn’t fit everyone comfortably in one van.” Only after he said it did he realize he hadn’t explained why they only had one van available.
“Right, but you went, too?” Lacey gave Esperanza a speculative look. “Interesting. If you get a signal, let Austin know I’m on my way to help.”
“I will.” He gave Beck a small wave as he ushered Esperanza back to the SUV.
He didn’t really want to head to his neighborhood, didn’t want to see. He thought his house was pretty well-made, but he didn’t know how it would stand up to a storm like they’d seen. He tried to think of who else was out here that they could check on.
“No point delaying,” Esperanza said. “Let’s go see how bad it is.”
He told himself he needed to check on his own neighbors, and that gave him the motivation he needed to make the turn.
CHAPTER11
“This is a nice neighborhood,” Espy observed as they turned into the entry of the neighborhood, marked by white stone walls on either side of the road. “I wouldn’t have thought a town this small would have such new houses.”
“Yeah, they thought the boom was going to drift farther south, and they wanted a nice place to draw in the roughnecks and their families. When that didn’t happen, well, some of us who had been thinking about buying houses were able get good deals on the houses they couldn’t sell. I wanted my mom to live here, but she said she’s happy with her neighbors. Maybe now she’ll change her mind.”
Because the power was out and night had fallen, damage was difficult to assess, but Espy couldn’t see any fallen trees or much debris in the roads. Maybe they’d see more in the light of day.
“Do we want to go door to door to let them know about the shelter?” she asked, a little apprehensive.
“That could be dangerous, going up to a house in the dark. I think there’s a bullhorn here.” He motioned to the back of the SUV. “We could make a few announcements to the neighborhood at large before I check on my house.”
She was curious to see his house, even in the dark. She nodded, and he pulled over, went around to the back of the vehicle to rummage through the equipment stored there, then drew out a bullhorn.
Minutes later, they pulled into a short driveway in front of a brick house, literally all Espy could see in the headlights. They climbed down and he handed her the flashlight while he fished out his house keys.
The door led into an open living area, and when she walked in a few more steps, she could see the kitchen with a wide island on her left. The garage, she knew, was on the other side of the entryway hall, so the bedrooms and bathrooms must be down to the right. She handed over the flashlight.
“I’ll wait here while you go check on everything,” she said.
