Page 17 of Meeting Up with the Mason

“Stay inside the car. Don’t touch anything.” I ran for the hallway to grab my coat and my go-bag. Alyssa hadn’t been the only one packing last night. “I’m coming to you.”

“Don’t! It’s dangerous. I just want you to talk to me. Keep me calm.”

“I’m not letting you do this alone.” I zipped my jacket and pulled on a baseball cap. Gloves. The keys to Dad’s second truck. “You’re in front of the house?”

“Nearly in the driveway. The tree’s down. I don’t know how close you can get. What if all the water’s electrified?”

“Stay on the phone.” I dashed through the rain and started the truck. I clicked the phone into the holder and set it to speakerphone. “Alyssa, are you there?”

“I wish I weren’t.”

“Are you safe?”

“There are branches everywhere. The roof is dented, but it’s stable. I’m not hurt.” Her voice wavered. “There were so many 911 calls coming in. She couldn’t stay on the phone. Why aren’t you at school?”

“When the storm stalled out and started dumping rain, I stayed put.” I needed to keep her talking. “One of my dad’s clients had a tree fall through his roof, so my dad’s out getting a tarp over it.”

She said, “Is that safe?”

“That’s not the right question to be asking. He’s going to do it, regardless.” Just like I was going to her, regardless. I pulled onto 28. “Could the power be out? Electricity’s been out in Falmouth since five, but we have a generator.”

“I can’t see out of the car to the other houses. You know—I have the garage remote. If I try to put up the door, that will tell me if power’s out to the house.”

“No, no, no!” I could predict where that train of thought would derail. “That’ll tell you if power’son, but it could be off to the house because the line got pulled out of the meter. Meanwhile, the line on the car could be live.”

“I have to do something.”

“You have to stay put.”

She was scared. So was I, but I couldn’t make matters worse by putting the truck into a ditch. Fortunately, while traffic off the Cape was a mess, there was none heading up the Cape. I was the only idiot headingintodanger.

It would take ten minutes to enter Mashpee. “Hang on,” she said. “There’s call waiting. It might be 911 calling back.”

“Take it!” I exclaimed, and then every second I kept listening, every mile passed hoping she’d be back on the line, hoping as I passed the town line for Mashpee, hoping—

Her voice returned. “The Fire Department is on its way.”

I maneuvered around the crown of a pine blocking the road. “I’m two blocks away.”

“You can’t come near the power line.”

“Yeah, yeah—don’t create a second victim. Dad hammered that into my head real good.”

Her block, finally. I turned the corner and— “Criminy.” Although I tried to steady my voice, I failed. “Okay, I can see you.”

Alyssa breathed, “That didn’t sound hopeful.”

“It looks awful. That maple ripped down two power poles and dragged the line across your car. The crown is across the garage. Your trunk is visible, but not much else. Thank goodness the wire came down across the hood. If you were six feet forward, you would have gotten out of the car without seeing it.”

I pulled into the nearest driveway. “Nothing’s burning, and there’s no flooding. I’m fifty feet away. Also, a fire truck just came around the corner.”

Alyssa choked out a sob. “Thank goodness.”

I ran toward the firemen. When the truck stopped, I jumped on the running board and shouted to be heard over the wind. “I’ve got her on the phone! I’ve also got a pickup full of chainsaws and construction equipment.”

One of the firemen took the phone, and for the second time, I was out of the loop.

I huddled in the pickup to escape the sheeting rain while firefighters blockaded the street. Eventually one of them returned my phone. “Are you still on?” I asked.

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