Steering her car down winding roads to the homes of people too sick to leave the house satisfied Amande’s sense of adventure, and the massive chunks of downed trees in the rights-of-way made it all feel even more exotic. Even better, when she was out making deliveries, she was free of her mother’s fears and demands.
Michael was a cheerful kid, so he sat behind her in his car seat all the way to Mike and Magda’s house, narrating their journey.
“There’s a tree! There’s ’nother tree. Why’d the trees fall down, Sissy? There’s ’nother tree. Look, that lady has a chain saw like Daddy’s!”
Fortunately for them both, they enjoyed the same music, so the soundtrack for their adventures always consisted entirely of hip-hop and ’70s soul. When the occasional Isaac Hayes number surfaced from her playlist, though, Amande hit the skip button immediately, not because she didn’t like his music but because her mother did. Michael had not yet differentiated his musical tastes from his parents’, so he squawked when she did that. To keep him cheerful, she always made an exception and let the theme from Shaft play in full.
Michael was now playing happily with his best friend, Rachel, so Amande was free to listen to music that was dark. Angry, even. Today, she wanted music that sounded uglier than the way she felt inside.
Looking at the damage left by the hurricane broke Amande’s heart. It made her feel helpless, useless. There was no quicker way to become a hero than to hand a bottle of water to a Floridian who had been without air conditioning for a July week, but Amande didn’t want to be a hero. She was looking at a torn-apart world, and she wanted a different one.
She didn’t want to live in a world where thirteen-year-olds died when the car they were riding in slammed into a fallen tree. She didn’t want to live in a world where a person’s worth was measured by a piece of paper from a university. She didn’t want to live in a world where people who worked all day and all night at two jobs—three jobs, maybe—couldn’t afford a comfortable life with a few small pleasures. She didn’t want to live in a world where good and gentle men like Captain Eubank met ugly deaths.
Amande didn’t reach Jeanine Eubank’s house until midday, because the captain’s sister lived as far from the Crawfordville supply pickup site as it was possible to be while still being in Micco County. This was her first food-and-water run to Miss Jeanine, because it had taken all this time to clear the country road leading to her house from a horizontal forest of fallen trees.
She wasn’t sure what she would say to Miss Jeanine. This was the first time she’d seen the old lady since her brother died. It wasn’t that Amande had no experience with grief. She’d lost the grandmother who raised her when she was only sixteen. She remembered her empty certainty that nothing would ever be right again. It was just that she had no experience with comforting other people who had lost loved ones.
As she pulled into the driveway, she saw that Miss Jeanine’s roof was littered with heavy tree limbs, and whole sections of shingles were gone. If Captain Eubank had lived, he would have taken care of those things for his sister. Amande knew that her parents would find a way to come help her. That made her feel better, but only a little.
The thing that kept Amande awake at night was the sheer mindboggling scale of the disaster. Her parents could help Miss Emma and her neighbors and now Miss Jeanine. They could keep helping people, one after another, and they would. People were counting on the government and insurance companies and charities and churches. All those institutions should come help, and maybe they would, but Amande saw a lot of people shaking their heads at the thought.
They’d lived through hurricanes before, and they knew how things were. Micco County was sparsely populated. The hurricane was “only” a Category 3. The news channels had already moved on to something new and fascinating. The weather channels were reporting on the next hurricane, which had drawn a bead on the Texas coast. Nobody remembered that there were people still digging out from the last one.
Even cheerful Emma expected to be forgotten. Amande had heard her say, “We have to presume that we’re on our own. It has happened before and it will happen again,” as she handed Amande’s parents money to buy tarps for the roofs of people who couldn’t afford them.
And what about these trees lying flat or leaning precariously against each other? If they were in the road or on somebody’s house or in somebody’s yard, then yeah, somebody would get rid of them. But what about the ones lying in the woods, their rootballs reaching for the sky? They would stay right where they were for years and years.
Most days, Amande was pretty sure she was a grown-up, then she found herself smack up against something like this old woman who had lost her cherished brother. She wanted so much to help, but she felt overwhelmed and awkward. Truthfully, she felt like a little kid.
A massive pine tree had crushed the full length of the front porch of Miss Jeanine’s lifelong home. Yes, it was a blessing that it had missed the house itself by two feet—maybe less—but that didn’t take an old woman’s memories into account. Amande knew how much time she’d spent on the porches of the big old house on Joyeuse Island, sitting with Michael on her lap, or playing rummy with her parents, or just enjoying the breeze while she killed time playing stupid games on her phone.
A fallen tree couldn’t take away Amande’s memories, but it would break her heart to see those old boards splintered. How much worse would it feel to lose a porch if, at the very same time, you lost the brother who had sat there with you?
Amande decided she’d better stop thinking about that stuff. Otherwise, she was going to start crying, and that wouldn’t help her street cred as a grown-up at all.
She paid no attention to the fact that there were two cars in the driveway, a sky-blue 1990s Cadillac and a new gray SUV, when there was only one person living in the house. She knew that people sometimes got attached to cars and kept them around. As it turned out, the second car didn’t belong to Miss Jeanine. It belonged to her guest, a woman named Greta Haines who answered the door when Amande knocked.
Ms. Haines shook Amande’s hand with the excessive warmth of somebody trying to sell her something. “Thank you for being so good to my friend Jeanine,” she said. “I just couldn’t stand to think of her out here all by herself, so I drove out to check on her as soon as the road was clear.”
She ushered Amande into the dining room, where a big display of fruit cut to look like a bouquet of flowers sat on the long maple table. Next to it sat a basket of fancy cheeses wrapped up in cellophane and two bottles of wine, one red and one white. Amande looked at what she herself was carrying—bottled water, raisin bran, dry milk, and a few cans of tuna—and wondered why she’d bothered to drive all the way out there. Greta’s gifts were fancier and finer. More exciting, for sure.
Miss Jeanine was sitting in an upholstered chair tucked in a corner, beside a window with cardboard covering two busted-out panes. A third woman sat next to her in an identical chair. After a couple of false starts, Jeanine was able to struggle out of the chair.
She tottered toward Amande on spindly legs. “You are so lovely to bring me food. And water! I never thought I’d want to see more water after the hurricane filled most of my house right up. But you can’t drink floodwater, and I’m pretty thirsty these days. Now you’ve brought me water to drink, and my cell phone has service again. I think I’ll probably get my electricity back in time to keep it from dying, and that’s a good thing. Things are getting better every day.”
Amande was at a loss. This woman had lost her brother and her house was falling apart around her ears. What was she supposed to say to her?
She went with a cliché, saying “I’m so sorry for your loss.” Then she kicked herself for not thinking of something better.
It was hotter inside the house than outside, so steamy that Amande could hardly breathe. The curls around Miss Jeanine’s face were damp with sweat. Her thinning hair was almost as gray as the captain’s had been, but with a beige tinge that made Amande think she’d once been blond.
This made Amande realize that she didn’t even know what color the captain’s hair had been when he was young. He’d gone gray before she met him. It felt weird that she didn’t know that. She looked around the room for pictures of him and saw none. The house smelled of must and mold, so the odds were good that any photos Miss Jeanine had owned were ruined by the storm.
The dining room might be the only livable portion of the entire house, because it looked like Miss Jeanine had moved her entire life there. Plastic bags overflowing with clothes were lined up along the walls. Assorted china knickknacks on the sideboard had been shoved aside to make room for a pile of canned food and a can opener.
Miss Jeanine pointed at the canned goods and said, “You can unload the things you brought right there on the sideboard, Amande, and I thank you so much for them. I’m keeping food in here until there’s a solid roof over the pantry again.”
Leaning hard on her cane, she gestured toward a chair at the dining room table, inviting Amande to sit next to Greta. When her guests were settled, she sank back into her chair.
“I’m so sorry. I forgot to introduce you to Cyndee Stamp.” She gestured at the woman in the chair next to hers. “She’s a friend of Greta’s, and she’s a tree contractor. I just love meeting women who do things that people said weren’t for me when I was a little girl—women like your mother, Amande, and her archaeology business. She impresses me a lot.”
This made Amande very proud, and also a little bit resentful that her mother couldn’t leave her alone when she wasn’t even in the room.
Jeanine was still talking about the good old days, which didn’t sound very good to Amande. “I don’t think my parents thought about what the life they chose for me really meant. When I didn’t marry, I lived here with them. I earned my keep by taking care of the house and garden, because they were afraid to think of me on my own. We were happy—very happy!—but what did they think was going to happen to me when they were gone?”
The idea of being so vulnerable and dependent horrified Amande.
“I guess they knew that dear, sweet Edward would step into their shoes. They just had no way of knowing that he would pass before me or that he wouldn’t have children to take me on as their burden. Times were different for women then, and I’m so glad to see things change.”
Amande had a flash of memory—her grandmother stooped over a table full of envelopes with windows on the front. Beside them lay her slim blue checkbook full of checks that had no money to back them up. She knew what life was like for old people who couldn’t always pay their bills.
She blurted out, “Are you going to be okay? Now that he’s gone, I mean.” And then she wanted to sink through the floor, because it was probably really rude to talk about money, especially in front of guests. And, even worse, to remind Miss Jeanine that her dear, sweet Edward was dead.
Jeanine took both of Amande’s hands and said, “God bless you, child. Not many people your age would give my worries a single thought. Not because they’re not good people, but because they haven’t seen much of the world. I’m thinking you have.”
She squeezed Amande’s hands a bit, and her own hands were stronger than they looked. Then Jeanine said, “Edward took care of me, even in death. He lived on his military pension, so he didn’t have a lot of money to leave me, but he paid faithfully on a life insurance policy with me as the beneficiary. And the sale of his house will bring in some money. I can stay here in my home. I’m grateful to my brother for that.”
She raised her cane and pointed it at the sideboard where Amande had stacked the food and water. “And I’m grateful for people like you who bring me gifts like those. Edward’s in heaven now and he knows what you’re doing for me.”
“Well, it’s not like I brought brie and pineapple,” Amande said, perched on the edge of the dining chair and acutely aware of Greta’s fancy food.
The strong bird-like hand grasped hers again. “You brought me practical gifts, dear, and Greta brought me luxurious ones. Both of you make me feel like you care.” Then she plucked a chunk of cantaloupe off Greta’s arrangement and handed it to her.
Then Amande remembered that Miss Jeanine hadn’t had electricity since the storm. There was no way that one person could eat pounds of unrefrigerated cut fruit before it started to turn brown and smell. And once that hunk of brie was cut, it would spoil faster than the fruit.
Also, Amande knew for a fact that people who lived where Miss Jeanine did got their water from a well. Her electric pump wouldn’t be working until the electric company got her lights back on. She had a feeling that Miss Jeanine was a lot happier to see her bottled water than Greta Haines’s wine.
Somehow, the frail old woman had let Amande know that she shouldn’t feel bad for not bringing caviar and champagne, yet she’d done it without insulting Greta’s gifts. Amande figured that on the day she was smooth enough to do that, she would truly be grown up.
When Miss Jeanine urged her to have some fruit and to help herself to a hunk of cheese while she was at it, Amande ate heartily, like a fellow adult who was in on the secret that these things needed to be eaten before they decayed. She steadfastly refused to accept anything nonperishable, though, not even a bottle of water.
When Amande rose to leave, Miss Jeanine said, “Come back to see me, dear, and don’t think you have to bring anything with you. Well, you can bring your brother. His sweet smile reminds me of Edward at that age. We were like the two of you. I was much older and he was like my living baby doll. I think he spent the first five years of his life on this hip.” She smacked a hand on her loose cotton skirt. “I can’t believe…well, I just can’t believe he’s gone.”
Again, Amande stood there feeling stupid and wondering what her parents would say if they were standing there. She decided to cheat and let them do the talking.
“My parents send you their sympathy. We all loved Captain Eubank, and we’re just heartbroken to lose him.”
Greta echoed her. “Yeah, me too.”
Cyndee said, “I know how I’d feel if I lost any of my brothers.”
Now Amande was completely out of things to say. She was saved by a knock at the door. Hustling to get to her feet before Greta did, she almost ran to let the visitor in.
Opening the door, she saw an auburn-haired woman with blue eyes peeking out from under long bangs. She didn’t look much older than Amande.
The young woman held out a hand, shook Amande’s, and said, “I’m a friend of the captain’s, and I have something for his sister.”
Jeanine called out, “A friend of Edward’s? Oh, my. Please bring her in here so I can say hello.”
Amande did that. Jeanine’s most recent guest introduced herself as Samantha Kennedy as she held out a book bound in worn brown linen. “The captain lent me this book on the history of the lumber industry in Florida, and I wanted to return it,” she said. “It was a big help while I was writing my dissertation. There aren’t many copies left, and the other ones are held in archives too far away for me to even think about visiting on a graduate student’s budget. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to him, and I wanted you to know.”
“Have you finished your dissertation, dear?” Jeanine asked. “Are you Dr. Kennedy now?”
Samantha nodded shyly. “Yes, and I’m teaching, just like I’ve always dreamed—two courses at Micco County Community College plus a course at Florida State. With the captain’s help, I’ve put together a book manuscript that just might get me a tenure-track job, once I find a publisher. I couldn’t have done it without him.”
Samantha was still holding out the book, but Jeanine waved it away. “Keep it, dear. If it helps you in your work, it will be keeping my dear brother’s memory alive. Please sit down and tell me about yourself.”
Amande jumped up to give Samantha her chair, despite the fact that there were still two empty ones in the room. Then she fled, because she just couldn’t bear to be where she was any longer. Jeanine’s grief just might break her if she stayed.
Also, Samantha seemed very sweet, perhaps even someone who could be a friend, but Greta Haines and Cyndee Stamp made her skin crawl. Amande couldn’t say why she felt that way, but she did.
Amande knew that when she told her parents about her day, her dad would say he was glad Miss Jeanine had friends to visit her. Amande’s dad loved everybody in the whole wide world. It would never occur to him that anybody might have bad motives, because he’d never had one in his life.
Her mother, however, would share Amande’s instinctive response to Greta and Cyndee, which was to roll her eyes and watch her back. She didn’t know exactly why Miss Jeanine would need to watch her back, but Amande had seen some hard years. Her grandmother had always been able to make sure that she ate, but it hadn’t always been enough to fill her up and make her feel safe. Amande had the impression that Faye’s mother and grandmother had worked just as hard to make sure she had what she needed, most of the time. Joe’s family had been poor, too, but poverty hadn’t marked him the way it had marked Amande and her mom.
To Amande and Faye, money was a buffer against a hard world. Neither of them would steal to build up a pile of money big enough to make them feel safe forever, but Amande had no doubt that some people would. This gave her a suspicious streak and she wasn’t proud of it. It had taken years for the notion to sink in, but Amande was now realizing that she and her mother were a lot alike. This did not make her especially happy.
She shoved that thought away to think about something else, like what gifts she could bring to Miss Jeanine that would outshine Greta’s stupid luxury items. Maybe a photo to remember her brother by?
Amande had taken a picture of Captain Eubank that she liked. It was nothing special, just something she’d snapped with a phone camera when he’d come back to the marina with a really big fish. She’d insisted that he hold that cobia up next to a yardstick, because it was just so darn big. His grin lit the whole picture.
She knew that her parents would come help Miss Jeanine. Her dad would climb up on the roof to make sure the tarps up there were doing what tarps were supposed to do. Her mother had been patching the roof on their Joyeuse Island house since she was in grade school, so she could help him, but she’d be more useful in the house. Miss Jeanine was going to need help filling out the big pile of insurance paperwork sitting on her kitchen table, and her mom was way better than her dad at that kind of thing.
Amande was confident in the fact that her parents were good people, even the mother whom she often wanted to throttle. She just wasn’t sure that she could live with them.