Page 28 of The Summer I Destroyed You

17

EMMY

“Want to go on a secret mission?” my father asks.

The rain outside is thunderous and he’s got his jacket on, so I know we’re going to Main Street to help with the sandbags. I scramble from the bed and he grins, telling me he’ll wait downstairs.

We’ll begin, I know, with Bradley’s mom’s store, though Bradley never comes out to help.

“Bradley’s mom says kids just get in the way,” I tell my dad once I’ve gotten in the car.

He smooths his hand over my head with a small smile. “Moms are wrong sometimes. Your mom is wrong about a lot of stuff, and Bradley’s mom is wrong about this. We’re going out there to protect the stores, but we’re also doing it to remind people that a community is a family, and we have each other’s backs when the chips are down. Kids and adults alike.”

I startle awake in the dark room. I’m sure it’s the rain that made me dream about my father and the sandbags, but it felt more like a premonition or a warning from beyond the grave.

That supposes, however, that my father is dead—something I don’t know—or that he’d care enough to warn me in the first place. Given the way he left, it seems unlikely.

I look at the clock. It’s just after four in the morning, but if it’s rained like this all night, the lake is already flooding, which means the theater—and all the lovely hardwood waiting to be installed in the grocery store—will be flooded too. Even if it wasn’t my father reaching out from another realm, I’m taking it as a sign.

I dive into my closet, fishing out leggings and a sweatshirt, which are the closest things I have to flood attire. I manage to get over the bridge to Main Street, where the water is running a foot high down the road before my car sputters and starts to stall. I gun the engine and make it to higher ground, then park in the historic section and run back down the hill. Water is lapping at the storefronts in the darkness, a vulture ready to swoop.

Fuck.

I’ve arrived way too late. Why the hell didn’t I come down here yesterday? Why didn’t I listen when Liam suggested it might flood?

“You brought this whole situation on yourself,” I say to myself, but my tirade comes to a sudden end.

There, in front of the grocery store’s front door, are sandbags, neatly stacked. And there, a little farther down, are Liam and his guys, saving the rest of the places on the street.

He’s here to save everyone, but he started with me.

A warning ache swells in my throat. “I swear to God, if you start crying,” I hiss at my reflection in the grocery window, “I will never forgive you.”

I walk down to Liam. I’m already so wet that I’ve given up trying to remain beneath the store awnings.

“Why the fuck are you here?” he growls. “I told you to stay put.”

So much for feeling moved to tears. Now I feel moved to punch.

“I came to check on the store,” I reply, “and no man tells me to stay put, FYI.”

He runs two hands through his hair. “And you drove here in that tiny car?”

“Sorry,” I reply tartly. “My monster truck is in the shop.”

“Well, I hope you get it back soon, because that BMW’s likely to be totaled when this is all said and done.”

I throw up my hands. I was going to offer to help, but since he’s being such a dick, I won’t. “Fine. I’ll drive home.”

“You can’t drive home,” he says, glancing toward the lake in the distance. “All that water you came through on the way here? Well, that was at a lower elevation than we are here and it’ll be flooded by now. Try driving into it and you’re gonna get swept off the road at best. Just go in your shop. When I get done here, I’ll give you a ride.”

Fuck. He’s right about the drive home. But I’m not waiting inside like the princess he thinks I am.

I grab a sandbag from the back of the flatbed truck and sling it up against the door of the bank. It’s far heavier than I remember them being, and I wonder how the hell I even lifted these things as a kid, but Liam’s hauled at least fifteen of them on my behalf. I owe him that many in return.

“Do you ever fucking do as you’re told?” Liam shouts.

“Do you realize that I’m a grown woman who’s not under your command?” I reply, grabbing another sandbag.

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