Page 9 of Before the Storm

She whispered to the sky, “Where are you? We need you!”

It was nothing she would have said to her mother’s or father’s faces. But speaking it aloud nearly shattered her heart.

It wasn’t till the next day that Josie got an answer. Following a weird hunch, she talked to her father’s real estate buddy Marv. He told her that, yes, the house was going up for sale in thenew year, and yes, it was already cleared out. Their parents had moved just like that.

“They didn’t tell me where they were going,” he said. “I figured they’d tell their daughters. But they didn’t say?”

“No!” Josie was exasperated.

“They didn’t even hint?” Marv asked. “Maybe they left a note somewhere. Maybe they told you, and you forgot?”

But how could Josie forget something like that?

Josie was stricken. On the one hand, her parents’ departure was a burden off her shoulders. But on the other hand, she knew Tara would take it hard. She’d blame herself.

Josie prepared to tell Tara.

But when she got back to the apartment they now shared with Donnie, she found Donnie and Tara laughing together on the sofa, eating snacks and watching television. She found her little sister happy and in love as she grew more pregnant by the day.

She’d tell Tara soon.

But right now, she’d let her ride the highs of love.

“Real life” would crash on her soon enough. It always did.

Chapter Three

December 2024

It was December fifteenth and the busiest of all seasons. Tara was entrenched in paperwork and phone calls and putting out little metaphorical fires. She had a to-do list about a mile long, one she continued to add to at odd times—like when she woke up in the middle of the night, was in the grocery store, or was out with the Salt Sisters, trying to have a good time. Hilary Salt, the saltiest of the Salt Sisters, often told her, “You need to create boundaries between your work and life.” But Tara no longer had a life. It was all work, work, work. And because Tara was grateful for the career she’d built—a career she probably shouldn’t have had because she’d dropped out of college in 2001—she didn’t want to let her guard down. She didn’t want anyone to swoop in and take what she’d built.

Now, Tara was bundled up in downtown Nantucket, watching as the Christmas Festival was set up around her. It was much the same as it always was, with similar games, food and wine stalls, and a few rides. For safety reasons, they’d gotten ridof the more aggressive rides over the years but replaced them with other activities and ways of amusing Christmas-craving Nantucketers and their children.

Tara still loved the Christmas Festival just as much as she had as a kid. As she walked through the stalls, chatting with the staff she’d hired as well as volunteers who refused money, her heart opened.

“There she is! The Nantucket Christmas Queen!” Greg was working the clam chowder stand this year, spooning bowls of his mother’s recipe. “I hope there won’t be any fainting this year?”

Tara rolled her eyes into a smile. Nobody let her forget the first year she’d planned the festival when she’d fainted “out of nowhere” and gone to the hospital. It was the last time she could ever remember fainting. But that was the thing about small towns. Oftentimes, you were remembered for something you did once twenty years ago. It stuck to you like a bad smell.

“No fainting,” Tara promised. “But I’ll make sure to get extra bowls of clam chowder, just in case.”

“There will be buckets of it!” Greg promised.

Tara’s phone blared with an alarm: Grief Therapy. Thirty minutes. How could she have forgotten? She sped away from the festival setup to grab a cup of coffee and rearrange her thoughts for her meeting with Stephanie, a grief therapist she’d been seeing for the past few years. Sometimes she wasn’t sure if therapy was working at all. Other times, she clung to her sessions with Stephanie, knowing they were powerful weapons against Tara’s loneliness, depression, and fear of the future.

Tara sat in Stephanie’s office with her ankles crossed. Stephanie was bright and friendly, her hands glowing with lotion and her face taut from face yoga. Stephanie had recommended face yoga to Tara a year ago, but Tara never stuck with it for long because it seemed pointless and silly.I should have stuck with it, Tara thought now.Why am I so impatient?

“How are you, Tara?” Stephanie smiled, crossed her legs, and leaned forward.

Empty, Tara considered saying. Dead inside. If I didn’t have the Christmas Festival or all the other events I need to plan, I’d probably sit at home and stare at the wall. If I didn’t have the Salt Sisters, I’d move to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, watch bad television, and never smile again.

But Tara didn’t feel like being honest with Stephanie today. She didn’t want Stephanie’s brow to wrinkle. She didn’t want to hear Stephanie saying,Can you walk me through how you experience these emotions? What brings them on? Where are you? What are your triggers?

Instead, Tara poked through her mind to find “safe” subjects to talk to Stephanie about. She discussed the Christmas Festival, about a little fight she’d had with a vendor, about an incident with one of the Salt Sisters, when Robby had thought Tara had insulted her, and Tara had had to backtrack and explain what she’d meant. “I love Robby,” Tara said, her heart crushed. “I met her in this very office! I know we’re both going through so much.”

“Did she understand where you were coming from?” Stephanie asked.

“Eventually, she did,” Tara said.

---