Ansley: Insignificant Things Two Days after the Flotilla

I GAVE MY TWO BOARDED-UP houses, the ones that had been a part of my life story, my family’s life story, for generations, a final once-over. I remembered playing jacks with my grandfather and hopscotch with my grandmother on the very same walkway where I now did those same things with my grandchildren. My stomach clenched at the thought that, in a few weeks, I could come back here to something completely different. I wanted to cry, but instead, I steeled myself. My family was healthy and well, and, even if Peachtree changed after this storm, it would still be Peachtree. Plus, we’d had thousands of hurricanes here. This might be the storm of the century. But these houses had held tight through the storms of the last two centuries and been just fine.

I walked around the back of my house, expecting to see Vivi and my husband champing at the bit to get started on the nearly five-hour drive to Atlanta. Vivi had made us a dinner reservation somewhere along the way. We were packed and boarded up, and now I was getting nervous. I could feel the storm coming. The wind had picked up the tiniest bit, and the air felt sinister. Jack said people couldn’t actually smell the ions in the air, but he was wrong. I could.

I opened the back door, the only entrance to the house that hadn’t been boarded up yet. “Jack!” I called. “Vivi!” No answer. I grabbed my cell off the counter and realized I had two missed calls from Jack. Weird.

I called him right back. “Don’t freak out,” he said.

Immediately, my mind jumped to the plane that held my entire family minus two.

“What?” I practically cried.

“Well, um. I can’t exactly find Vivi.”

“Oh,” I said, brushing it off. “I’m sure she just ran to get coffee before Keith finishes boarding up. But she’d better hurry up, because we need to get out of here.”

“Well…” Jack said. There was something he wasn’t telling me. “Hang on.”

The back door opened, and Jack walked in, blinking. The darkness in this boarded-up house was hard to adjust to. “Something happened,” he said.

My heart sped up again. “Jack,” I said, “I’m really on edge today. Can you please just tell me what’s going on?”

“You know how the other night we were all talking and Caroline said that when it was the right moment to tell Vivi I was her grandfather, we’d just know?”

Oh God. Oh no. “Uh-huh,” I said warily.

“Well, we were talking and having such a good time and she said, ‘I wish you were my real grandfather.’ ”

I gasped and put my hand to my mouth. “You didn’t.”

He bit his lip and shrugged guiltily.

I put my hand to my forehead. “Good Lord, Jack. That should have come from Caroline, not you. Vivi’s such an emotional wreck right now anyway and…” I put my hands up, composing myself. “It doesn’t matter. We have to find her, and we have to get out of here. That’s what’s important.” I paused. “Where have you looked?”

“She can’t be at Sloane’s house, because nothing has been disturbed, not even the sandbags. There’s no way in or out without it being obvious.” He paused. “I should have followed her. But I just thought she was going down to her house when she ran out. I was trying to give her a minute. But she definitely isn’t there either.”

I called her phone, but as expected, she didn’t pick up. Now that I knew what had happened I was worried, but not that worried. Men were notoriously terrible at searching for things.

“Okay,” I said, composing a group text to Hal, Kimmy, and Keith. Vivi is missing. If you’re out and about can you help us look for her? She isn’t at Sloane’s house or Caroline’s or Jack’s.

Immediately, they each responded that they were downtown and could help. Kimmy added, I’ll get my brother on it too.Peachtree Bluff was a small island. It couldn’t take long to find her. At least, it had better not, because we only had three hours until the bridges closed.

I picked up my phone again and hit BOB.

“What do I do?” Jack asked.

I put my finger up. “Bob,” I said when the mayor answered. “Are you still here?”

“Riding it out, Ans. I feel like it’s my responsibility as mayor to be here for those who are left on the island.”

I nodded. He was entirely too old to be riding out a Category 4 hurricane, but he was a good man. “Bob, I can’t find my granddaughter Vivi. I know everyone is occupied with hurricane prep, but if anyone can help, we’ve got to find her and get off this island.”

“That you do,” he said. “I’ll get everyone on this right now. We’ll find her, Ansley.”

I hung up and looked at my phone. It was two o’clock already. Why had I wasted time going to the store? Why hadn’t I stayed here? I should have known better.

“I’m so sorry, Ansley,” Jack said.

I was angry with him. And I was angry with Vivi for running off when she knew what danger we were in. And I was angry with Caroline for leaving this volatile child in my care, knowing what could happen. But it didn’t matter. Right now, we needed to find Vivi. We had to make sure she was safe.

I walked outside, and Jack followed me. It warmed my heart to see that my friends were already on the porch. They all worked within a two-minute walk, but still. “I’m heading down to the coffee shop to look for her there,” Keith said, “and I’ll check anywhere that looks even remotely open or hideable.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m going to drive around town,” Hal said. “Jack, why don’t you come with me?”

Jack looked pleadingly at me. “Yes,” I said. “That’s a good idea.”

“I think you should stay here, Ansley,” Kimmy said. “Someone needs to be here in case she comes home.”

I wanted to protest, but she was right. When she came home, I needed to be the one to smooth things over, to help soothe all the very complicated feelings she was having.

“Can you track her phone?” Kimmy asked as Hal and Jack got into his car. I snapped my fingers. “What a great idea! Although… Caroline is on a plane right now, and I don’t have Vivi’s phone connected to mine.” I thought for a second. “James! I’ll call James!”

She nodded. “I’m going to go start knocking on doors.” She paused. “My brother is out on the hunt for Jim Cantore, so I sent him out after Vivi too.” She smirked. “If you want to find a fifteen-year-old girl, there is no one that can sniff out her trail like a sixteen-year-old boy.”

I was annoyed that she was joking at a time this serious. A gust of wind shot a dagger through my heart. The sky was beginning to darken. We had to find her. I didn’t want to call James and admit that I had lost his daughter. He was going to panic. So would Caroline. I was here, at least. I could look. I could do something. They were so very far away.

I took a deep breath and hit James’s contact. “Hey, Ans!” he yelled into the phone as if we were old friends, not almost-ex-in-laws. “I hear you’re taking my girl on the best trip ever!” Between the wind here and the wind wherever he was, I was glad he was yelling so I could hear him.

“James,” I said. “I don’t want you to panic, but Vivi has run off and we can’t find her.”

He paused. I waited for him to freak out. “Damn,” he said. “Yeah, she does that. She’s done it to me a few times.”

Okay. That wasn’t exactly what I had expected, but I was glad of it. I couldn’t possibly feel worse than I already did, so I doubted any anger would have had much impact even if he had been mad. “Look,” I said, “we have to be out of here in a couple hours. Can you track her on your phone?”

“Oh! Good idea,” he said. “Look, I’m on a ski lift right now, and I have horrible reception up here. I’ll go into the lodge and see if I can track her down. I’m not her favorite person right now, so she might not pick up, but I’ll call her too.”

Yes! I hung up and called her again. No answer. I walked back into the house, pulled out a pad and a pen, and started writing. Sometimes it could jog my memory, and I was racking my brain for anywhere she might go. Her house was an obvious one, as was mine. But she wasn’t there. Starlite Island was an option, but she obviously wasn’t there. The weather was getting bad, and all the boats, kayaks, and paddleboards within a five-mile radius had been stowed. I stood up and walked down to my store with purpose. It was the only other place I could think of that she might possibly feel a connection to. But when I got there, the front was still completely boarded up. She definitely couldn’t have gotten in that way. I walked around the back, where the only other door was solid steel and locked. I unlocked it anyway. She didn’t have a key, but I wanted to check just in case. “Vivi!” I called, squinting in the dark. No answer. I flipped on the lights and did a thorough search of every nook and cranny. Nothing.

My phone rang. I willed it to be Jack or Bob or Kimmy with good news. But it was James.

“Hey,” he said. “This is strange… It says her last location was Marine Supply Warehouse. Do y’all even have that?”

That was strange. “We do, way out on the highway, several miles from here. But she would have had no way to get there.” I texted Hal while still on the phone with James. She isn’t at your house, is she? Maybe took a bike?

He texted back immediately. We’ve looked there. And I had to take all the bikes in, so they’re locked up.

“Hm,” I said to James. “I’m not sure how she would have gotten there, but I guess we could check. Hal said she definitely didn’t take a bike or anything.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Could she have Ubered or something?”

I was annoyed now. “James, how many times have you taken an Uber in Peachtree Bluff?”

“Exactly zero,” he said. “Do you guys even have Uber drivers?” We did, but only two or three. He chuckled, which struck me as odd. Her father was clearly not getting the gravity of this situation. “I know my child, Ansley. I can promise you she isn’t at any marine supply store.”

I shook my head. “James, I’m panicking,” I confessed.

“I am too,” he said. “But, look, she does this. I know Caroline has told you. She runs off, and we panic. But she always turns back up.” He paused. “Want me to get on a plane?”

“You couldn’t if you wanted to. Because of the hurricane.”

“What?” he practically spat.

“Yes! You didn’t know that? That’s why I’m freaking out. The bridges are closing at five. Caroline and Vivi didn’t tell you?”

“Vivi’s mad that I won’t let her live with me, so I haven’t talked to her all weekend. And Caroline and I texted about the trip, but she didn’t tell me about the storm!” He took a deep breath. “Oh God, Ansley. You have to find her. I’m going to stay right here and keep tracking. If anything new pops up, I’ll call you right away.” Then he added, “Caroline is supposed to call me when she lands. Do you want me to tell her?”

Did I want him to? “I wish you could. But I think I need to be the one to do it.”

Because that’s how life worked. The right people have to tell you the right things at the right time. That was a lesson Jack would do well to learn.

I sent a group text to everyone on the search. James said his phone is tracking her at Marine Supply Warehouse? I doubt she’s there—but if there’s anywhere around there you can think of, please let me know.

I looked around the store one last time, thinking how stupid it was that I had been worried about these simple possessions, these silly, insignificant things, only a few hours earlier. Then I locked the back door up tight and booked it back home. On the way, I prayed harder than I ever had that, when I got there, my granddaughter would be there to meet me.