Page 1 of When the Storm Breaks
Prologue
Shiloh
“Please, Maw Maw, you promised,”I pleaded. She tugged on the thick rope, pulling in the crawfish trap tied to our dock and emptied the haul into an old blue and white cooler. “It’s theonlything I want for my birthday.”
“Aw, cher t’bebe.” She threw her hands up in the air and turned to face me. Maw Maw’s face was weathered like old leather and lined with wrinkles, but her eyes were the clearest gray. Like an Arctic lake. Mine were gray too but instead of being clear, they were stormy.
I gave her my best puppy dog eyes and a sweet smile. She pinched my cheek, none too gently. Her hands smelled like crawfish. “How can I say no to this face?”
She was going to do it. This was really happening. I was so excited, I nearly threw up. A swarm of hornets had invaded my belly. Today was the day I would finally know what my future had in store for me.
“I want to know everything.” The wood underneath my feet creaked with every step, the cooler we were carrying banging against my leg as we walked to the side of the house. She turned on the hose and I helped her purge the muddy crawfish. My brother Landry should have been doing this, but he’d taken off with his friends, leaving me behind. As usual. This wasn’t my favorite job but complaining about it wouldn’t get the job done quicker. When the water ran clear and the crawfish were clean, I carried the cooler to the house by myself, eager to hurry this up before Landry came home with his idiot friends and ruined everything.
Lanterns strung from the wood rafters danced in the winter breeze and a ceramic gator greeted me at the front door. We lived in a swamp shack, the turquoise paint peeling to expose the gray underneath, the tin roof weathered and rusted with age. I side-stepped the drum kit, keyboard, and guitars crowding the front room where we held our practice sessions and carried the cooler to the kitchen, setting it on the avocado green linoleum floor.
Maw Maw and I took turns washing our hands at the kitchen sink with lemon-scented dish soap. Pale sunlight filtered through the bald cypresses outside the kitchen window and cast a honey glow on the kitchen, making it look warm and inviting instead of shabby. I wiped my wet hands on my Saints hoodie to dry them, my mind racing with possibilities. “I want to know if I’ll be famous. If I’ll fall in love... who will he be? Will he be handsome? Rich? A musician?”
Maw Maw held up her hand to silence me. “Hush, child. You have to be still. Quiet your mind.”
I took a deep breath and nodded then took my seat in one of the mismatched wood chairs across from her at the orange Formica kitchen table. “You’re not using the cards?” I asked, my eyes roaming the room for her deck of Tarot cards she used for readings.
“No. Your vibrations are strong. Now no more talking. Close your eyes,” she said softly.
I did as she asked, and she took both my hands in her gnarled ones. It was so quiet, I could hear my own heart beating and the hum of the refrigerator. I waited and I waited, and I waited. Losing patience, I cracked one eye open. Maw Maw was staring straight ahead but I could tell she was somewhere else. In a trance.
Her breathing sounded raspy and she squeezed my hands so tightly it hurt. But I didn’t pull away. When she finally spoke, she didn’t even sound like herself.
“I see a boy.” I sucked in a breath.A boy. “Your paths will cross many times.”
I wanted to ask what he looked like and how I would know him when I met him. Was he Dean Bouchon? Dean was my brother’s best friend and the lead guitarist in the rock band we started over the summer. I wanted to ask a million questions, but I stayed quiet, not wanting to ruin her concentration.
“They’ve already crossed once before but ...”
My eyes flew open. Her face looked troubled.
“No.” She shook her head vigorously, her long silver hair flying out around her. “It wasn’t him. It was someone else ... someone who took something precious away from you.”
Something precious? Like what? My guitar? I didn’t have much in the way of material possessions. Maw Maw and Landry were the most precious ... oh, my mother? Did he take my mother away from me?
“The boy is a man now. He will save you more than once. And then it will be your turn to save him.”
Save him from what?
“There will be many storms in your life, cher. The path you choose will not be an easy one, but it will bring you to the place you’ve always desired. Don’t mistake it for where you really need to be.” I heard the warning in her tone. A chill raced up my spine.
I waited for more, but her eyes cleared, and she slumped in her seat, exhausted. Disappointment settled in my gut. She hadn’t told meanything. And what she had told me made zero sense.
After a few long moments of silence, her gray eyes locked onto mine. Spooky eyes, people said. A lot of folks called her crazy, but they were the non-believers. Like the horrible lady who put a gris-gris on us. After that, we couldn’t use the front door for an entire year. “Shiloh, what is the one thing you want most in the world?”
I thought about it for a minute. “I want to find my one true love. And I want to be a rock star.”
“That’s two things. Two very different things. What if you had to choose?”
I didn’t want to choose but my answer was automatic. “I’d choose music.”
The corners of her mouth turned down in disappointment. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Why does that make you afraid?”
