Zack steered the newly rented Hummer up the drive to Flint’s cabin, the first stop on the way up the mountain. He wanted to carry Amy and her family out to safety, and renting another Hummer had seemed the best means.
The state police had tried to prevent him from driving in, but he’d circumnavigated their roadblocks. He’d driven over roads that were no better than creek beds. He’d ground fallen saplings and debris beneath the vehicle’s huge tires. He should have turned back a dozen times, but he couldn’t when his life, his future, was up the side of this treacherous mountain.
His knee ached from twisting it the wrong way. He’d worked it too hard and neglected it too long these last weeks.
Even admitting he was wrong wasn’t sufficient to distract him from the mud pouring past the Hummer’s wheels as they splattered up the gravel drive. He prayed Amy was here with her sister and the children. He knew he could get everyone out safely if they were quick.
He winced as he remembered Amy’s mother had a home farther up the mountain, on the other side of town. They’d never leave without her.
One thing at a time. Find Amy and the children. If they weren’t here, maybe they’d be at the apartment above the café. It was a little too close to the river for comfort, but it was on the main highway, unlike this mud trap of Flint’s.
There were no vehicles in front of the cabin, and it didn’t take a second glance to understand why.
The original owner of the land had stripped off the trees, and now the yard was a running waterfall of silt and rock. The house could wash off its foundation at any moment.
Don’t panic he told himself, attempting his cell again. Still no reception. The café next. Surely they were all at the café. Or maybe they’d taken the children over the mountain to safety. Maybe he was on a wild goose chase, imagining himself the white knight riding to their rescue when he was only making a dramatic European ass of himself. Everyone was probably drinking hot coffee and soup somewhere warm and dry right now, and they’d laugh themselves sick if they knew the silly Brit was having a nervous breakdown worrying about them out in this tempest.
At least the wind had died to a low roar, he tried to console himself as he steered the bulky vehicle down the river of mud to the road again. Flying debris had dented the Hummer’s door earlier. It was mid-October, so most of the branches still had their foliage. Now he needed to fear only rain-laden trees toppling as their roots were sucked from the mire. A slimy trail of fallen leaves added to the slipperiness of the water and sludge on the highway.
He used the Hummer’s grill to gently push a young tree trunk from the road. He should have brought a chain saw in case he came across a larger obstacle. He’d packed fresh water and blankets and the kinds of things he’d been taught to have for emergencies, but fallen trees weren’t a common obstacle in Europe.
He couldn’t live in a country that would subject his family to hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes. England was far more civilized. He’d simply have to persuade Amy of that.
He knew he might as well talk to wallpaper.
Zack’s knuckles were white by the time he arrived in Northfork. The day was rapidly sliding into night, but there wasn’t more than a flicker of light in any window. The electricity had gone out again. Falling trees and limbs took the wires out, he’d learned.
He didn’t bother parking in the lot on the far end of town but halted the Hummer on the sidewalk directly in front of the café and left the emergency lights flashing. The limited local traffic on the blockaded highway could pull around him.
Sliding across the front seats, he opened the passenger door and then hopped down, wincing as his bad knee almost gave way. The café door popped open before he reached it, and cheers rang from inside.
Word of the show’s success had apparently traveled up here. He admired the strength of a people who could take this hurricane with such equanimity that they saw it as a passing disaster and cheered the promise he’d created of tomorrow. He ought to feel pride, but success wasn’t as important as Amy. Or her children.
Anxiously, he scanned the room. He recognized the new waitress who’d taken Amy’s place behind the counter and a number of people from the mill and church. He hadn’t realized he knew so many people here. But among all the apprehensive faces, he didn’t see the ones he wanted, and his heart sank.
Jo hurried from the back, shoving long tendrils of blond hair from her face and looking worried. The effervescent Jo looking worried sent Zack over the edge.
“Where are they?” he shouted in what sounded like panic even to him.
“Flint took the kids up to Mama, where it should be safer, but then the phones went out, and we haven’t heard anything since.”
“Is Amy with them?” he demanded, already turning and heading back to the door.
Someone shoved a cup of coffee in his hand. Jo ran to follow him, grabbing a dripping slicker someone handed her. “She and your driver went to the mill early this morning. The bridge is out over the river, so they can’t get back.”
The memory of another night on a snow-slick Italian highway with flashing police and ambulance lights almost paralyzed him. Sick to his stomach, Zack left the coffee on a table and refused to open the front door for Jo. “You stay here, on the main road, where you’ll receive communication faster than anywhere else.”
“My husband and boys are out there somewhere,” she stated flatly, hands on hips. “It isn’t any safer here than out there.”
“It is the way I’ll be driving if I have to cross the river,” he retorted. “I’ll not have your life on my hands. You’ll stay here and call if the tower starts working again. I’ll check on the children first. Give me directions to your mother’s.”
He knew country music star Joella was considered town royalty, but he’d reached the end of his patient nonchalance. Beneath his glare, even she backed down. She gave him a quick description of her mother’s drive and bit her fingernail as he stalked out.
Amy was down at the mill, saving his wretched ass. He’d have to kill her for that, once he got his hands on her. Terror that he might never touch her again hollowed out his insides. He shot the Hummer into gear and proceeded up the mountain, deliberately not picturing rising rivers and flooding mills and buildings crashing into swirling water.
Children came first. Amy would want that. He didn’t dare go after her without word of her children. He understood her well.
Trying to see through a windshield blanketed by torrents of rain, driving around boulders that had fallen from the bare cliff face, Zack prayed as he’d never prayed before. Facing the possibility that Amy and her children might be lost from this world, he lost his pride, his confidence, all those things that had kept him whole all these years. He was stripped down to raw nerves and a frantic desire to never again let them out of his sight — ever.
He’d sworn never to place his heart in the hands of another again, but he finally understood that before Amy and her children came along, he had been nothing. He’d built a shell of a man, and now all his carefully constructed camouflage was disintegrating, revealing the true man beneath — a man who needed a family.
He wanted to move forward. He wanted to be the man Amy thought he was. The husband and father who laughed with children and built communities, not the dilettante who played and pretended it was work.
He couldn’t do it without her. That knowledge grew as he searched the side of the road for the decorative mailbox Jo had described as belonging to their mother.
Finding the landmark he sought, Zack turned the Hummer up another mountain of mud. If there was gravel on the drive, he couldn’t tell for the rivers running down it. Was he fooling himself, or had the rain let up slightly?
He could see weak light flickering inside the humble home where Amy had grown up. It was little more than a clapboard cottage, with a sagging front porch and a sturdy rock chimney, but it had withstood the harsh elements over time.
He had to hope Amy was standing strong now, because looking at the dark shack, he realized he couldn’t leave the children here without heat or water. The well would be on an electric pump. He knew all about old houses.
The hurricane-force winds had snapped a giant oak in half, missing the house by feet, emphasizing the danger. Zack offered up a prayer of thanksgiving and turned off the vehicle.
The graying front door opened, silhouetting Marie Sanderson’s spare frame against a backdrop of lantern light. If anyone could keep the children safe, it would be this dragon lady Amy called Mother. Unable to summon the charm that had been his cover for so long, Zack limped out of the Hummer and up the porch stairs.
“The children?” he asked first.
She stepped back to let him in. Her cropped blond hair contained as much silver as gold, her face was lined with years of illness, but she gestured at a room full of active children as if she were his age.
“Rambunctious but all in one piece,” she replied.
Louisa ran to leap into Zack’s arms. He hugged her lithe body close and looked over her head to Josh, who was frowning with worry but easing toward him. Behind him were Flint’s adolescent boys playing with some battery-operated game. Unfazed, they glanced up at him, then returned to virtually shooting each other.
The scene was so homelike and reassuring that Zack would have wept had he been a crying man. Instead, he crouched down and offered Josh a hug. “We were worried about you, big man. Thought you might have eaten everything in the pantry by now.”
Josh’s freckled nose wrinkled. “Nana has jars and jars of green beans. Where’s Mommy?”
“She’s still down at the mill. I have to go get her after I leave here.” Zack figured that wasn’t too much of a lie. He was getting Amy, one way or the other.
He glanced up at Marie. “There is room in the car to take all of you over the mountain to a hotel. It will get cold tonight.”
She shrugged. “We have oil heat.”
He didn’t want to leave them here, not after what he’d seen. “I have to drive over the mountain until I find a place where my phone works. You will be safer out of this. The roads are bad and could get worse. You could be cut off for days.”
He could see that concerned her. He pressed home his advantage. “I can persuade your daughters to join you more easily if we take their children out of here.”
“They’re all right?” Her eyes finally expressed the fear she had been hiding. She’d been up here all alone with these children through hurricane winds, toppling trees, and a deluge. Her spirit was tough, but the body was weak, and a mother’s heart worried.
“They are being stubborn, so they must be fine,” he agreed. “I have not seen Flint, though. Jo was concerned about him.”
“He dropped off the boys and went to check on a friend for me. He’s probably hauling people out of the hollow back there.”
Flint could take care of himself. Zack had to look after the women and children. “Go pack their bags. I have heard of Gatlinburg. Perhaps the worst of the rain has not reached there.”
“Dollywood,” one of the boys suggested, proving he was listening for all his pose of blasé disinterest in the conversation. “They’re still open.”
Zack had no idea what Dollywood was, but if it was in Gatlinburg, then it was only an hour away. He prayed it was high and dry and had cell reception because he already knew the road to Asheville was dangerous and didn’t.
He prayed the river wouldn’t rise any higher until he could rescue Amy from the valley.
* * *
The battery on their last flashlight was weakening. Luigi snapped it off, casting the second floor loft into darkness.
Below them, the water lapped against the walls of the old stone foundations and washed across the plank floors.
“I think the rain is letting up,” Amy said with forced cheer, trying to ignore the emptiness of her belly.
“Don’t mean the water’s going down,” Hoss replied laconically. “If you folks would keep more food in your desks, we’d be a sight more comfortable.”
“A desk drawer ain’t gonna hold enough food to fill you, Hoss,” one of the workers responded. “We need to move the Stardust down here.”
They’d run out of songs to sing when they’d run out of fresh water and food. The toilet facilities were no longer functioning either. Everyone was soaked to the skin from kneeling in the rising water, unbolting the heavy machinery from the warping wooden floor.
“Maybe we ought to set up a dock on the river and keep sailboats for times like this,” some other wit suggested.
Amy decided she could do without food and water, if she just knew that her babies were safe. She hoped Evan had come for them and taken them off the mountain. Maybe Jo and Flint had taken them down, if the road hadn’t washed out.
She prayed Zack had had the sense to stay in High Point. The roads would be treacherous by now, and he wasn’t accustomed to driving in hurricane conditions. She didn’t want to have to worry about him on top of everything else. She wanted to think about Zack living his lovely, wealthy life in safety in the years to come.
Years that couldn’t include her. She’d weep over the loss, but now she had to remain strong and fearless for the brave people around her. If Zack hadn’t shown her how to be brave and stand up for her self, she would never have had the courage to do what she was doing now. She didn’t know how she would go on without him.
People needed to come in pairs so that one could be strong where the other was weak. Life was much nicer having someone to rely on.
She would not cry.
“We can’t see to do anything until morning,” Luigi said matter-of-factly. “Might as well get some sleep.”
“You planning on swimming out?” Hoss asked, propping his big feet on a bolt of velvet. He’d had to take his boots off after wading back and forth half the afternoon, hauling benches to prop up the machinery.
“Wrap up good in one of the heavier fabrics,” Amy ordered, her maternal nature taking over. “We can’t handle hypothermia under these conditions.”
“Nicest covers I ever had,” someone commented. “Have to get my wife something like this someday.”
Amy distracted her thoughts from Zack and the rain and the lapping river and her empty belly by designing tapestry bed covers in her head.
“Don’t suppose anyone has a gun on them, do they?” Hoss called through the silent darkness. “I think I hear rats down there.”
Shoot. Amy propped her arms on her knees and buried her face against them. She had a long night ahead in which to face her stupidity.
She was far better suited to a life without rats in it, a life that Zack had offered with all the best intentions. It was stubbornness and pride that had forced her to refuse him. And fear of another failure.
If she hadn’t retreated to her usual fear of change, she could have asked Zack what his intentions were. That he wanted her to meet his parents had to mean he saw this as more than the affair she’d thought he wanted. She knew Zack. Underneath all that charisma, he wasn’t the playboy type. Somehow, they might have made things work.
Stripped down to the raw essentials, she realized, all she had ever wanted was love and family. The community might appreciate what she could do for them, but they couldn’t love her as her kids could.
Not as Zack could, if he would let himself. He’d wanted to take her and the kids with him to London, not leave her as her father had left her mother.
And she’d told him to go away.