Sloane: Consequences Day Three of the Hurricane

Dear Sloane,

I bet you thought I’d forget to write you today with everything going on, didn’t you? But it is times like these that I am most reminded how very grateful I am for our family. Not just you, AJ, and Taylor, but everyone in the Murphy clan. And I hope you know that my wanting to move isn’t because I want to escape from your family, to take you away from them, to separate. You know how I told you that I could never leave the military? That I would never have the bond or the relationships with anyone else that I had with my men? Well, I was wrong, I think. Your family has become my family. They are my troops now, and I will protect them at all costs, just as I know they will me. We’ll get through this hurricane together, Sloane, no matter what it brings. We all will. We’ve been through worse. Brighter days are ahead.

All my love,

Adam

I was reading Adam’s letter in one of the two UberXs attempting to get this crowd to the airport—in the third row since I was one of the only family members who didn’t get carsick. I folded it and looked over at Adam and then out the window at the standstill traffic. “We’re never going to make it,” I said, gazing up ahead. “There’s no way. We’re going to miss our flight.”

Adam looked down at his phone. “It’s nine forty-five. We might make it.”

“We take off at eleven fifteen. We’re supposed to board in an hour and we’re like twenty minutes from the airport in good conditions.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I could hear Caroline instructing the driver from the front seat, though I couldn’t be sure what she was saying. She had gotten in this car with AJ, Taylor, Adam, and me, while James had taken Preston with Emerson, Kyle, and Carter. Usually, orchestrating a family trip like this took weeks, if not months. Now we were attempting to pull it off in a couple hours.

“Car!” I called. “Do you need me to reserve us cars from the Palm Beach airport to the marina?”

“No!” she shouted back. “James is dealing with that. And it won’t matter if we DON’T GET TO THIS AIRPORT.”

Adam laughed behind his hand. As if the poor driver could control the traffic. But maybe he could. Because just a few minutes later, a miracle happened: the traffic cleared.

We made it to the airport at 10:13, right as AJ was saying, “Mommy, my tummy doesn’t feel good.”

This was not the moment for me to be trapped in the third-row seat. Fortunately, Caroline was on it, and had him to the curbside trash can right in the nick of time.

Emerson, Kyle, James, and Preston had somehow beaten us to the airport and were in front of us in a security line that seemed to hold all the people in the world. I looked at my phone. “We’re never going to make it,” I said to Adam.

“Hell of a time for James to let his NetJets membership lapse,” Caroline said under her breath.

I didn’t point out that he could probably no longer afford it since they were getting divorced.

Twenty minutes later, Taylor was crying because he’d tripped over AJ’s suitcase, and Carter was having an absolute fit because Kyle was holding her but she wanted Emerson, whose bag had been detained. The only silver lining was that Carter and Kyle had finally made it through security. The same could not be said for the rest of us.

“I told her that they would think that round lotion was a bomb,” Caroline said. “I told her, but she didn’t listen, and now we’re going to miss the plane.”

“Nope,” Adam said. “We’re not missing it. We’re not.”

Adam was right. After two temper tantrums—one from a now-starving AJ and one from Emerson, which actually made the TSA agent give her back her lotion—we sprinted to the gate and made it aboard just as the doors were closing.

Two hours later, we had arrived in Palm Beach and gone on the world’s quickest provision run, filling carts to the brim with food and water so we’d have enough for anyone in town who was stuck like Vivi, Mom, and Jack. Now, five hours later, I leaned back on the comfortable couch inside Caroline’s boat as she pulled out of the marina. I put my hands over my face. “I can’t believe we made it.” I finally felt like I could breathe, which was weird because, in reality, the hard part was just beginning.

The last time I had been on a big boat like this was when Caroline was attempting to shake loose at least a little of my despair from Adam being MIA. Back then, our fate was so very up in the air. Now he was here beside me on the Starlite Sisters, holding my hand, making me strong. I leaned into him.

Admittedly, this boat trip wasn’t much better than the last one. We hadn’t heard from the rest of our family in more than twenty-four hours. We had no idea what was actually happening to them, and no way of finding out. The last time we turned on the Weather Channel was before we left Caroline’s apartment, when the eye had been over Peachtree Bluff. There was certainly plenty of flooding, and it had probably made its way into Caroline and Jack’s houses, but, from what we could see, not our family’s house.

“Surely, they would have stayed at our house, right?” I asked Adam. “They would have thought to move to the highest ground they could find?”

Adam nodded confidently. “Absolutely. This isn’t Ansley’s first hurricane. And it certainly isn’t Jack’s.”

“I can’t ever remember Peachtree flooding like this, though,” I said.

“It’s because it’s the worst possible timing,” Adam said. “It’s a king tide, so the water was already high.”

King tide. I had always thought it was the most beautiful phrase, the tide when the full moon pulled it highest. But now it didn’t sound beautiful. It sounded foreboding. I sighed. Caroline was standing several feet away from us, steering confidently as James, Kyle, and Emerson attempted to make the beds while simultaneously wrangling the kids. I’m not sure they had actually noticed Adam and I weren’t helping… I was hoping they wouldn’t for a while.

“And you’re sure this is safe?” I asked Caroline for the hundredth time. I didn’t think my sister would put all of us in danger on purpose. But I also knew that she would do absolutely anything to get to her daughter. So I was sort of fifty-fifty on the safety front.

“I promise,” she said. “The hurricane is moving inland. It will be long gone by the time we get there.” She paused. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not promising bright blue sunny skies or anything. But I’m not nosing us into a hurricane.”

Well, that was a relief, at least.

Emerson made her way up the few steps into the salon, looking exhausted.

When Caroline saw her, she gasped.

She didn’t look that bad.

“Emerson! Your audition!” she said.

It was almost as if Caroline had just noticed Emerson was on the trip with us. Hell, maybe she had. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through inside. Fear. Anger at Vivi for putting all of us in this situation, frustration with herself for letting Vivi stay, sadness at what might be happening to our home right now. I looked back and forth from Caroline to Emerson, right as a Taylor-sounding, “Daddy!” rang out. Adam got up and smiled. “I believe that’s my cue.” He headed downstairs.

“What audition?” I asked, looking from Caroline to Emerson and back again. “What’s happening?”

Emerson shook her head. “Caroline, I can’t believe you even remember that.”

“Remember what?” I asked. “I hate when y’all do this.” I crossed my arms.

“Someone had an audition for a role on Broadway,” Caroline said.

I gasped. “Emerson! You should have stayed! That’s huge.”

She waved her hand like it was no big deal. But it was a huge deal. “There will be other opportunities,” she said lightly.

“I doubt it,” Caroline said under her breath.

“Hey!” Emerson plopped down beside me. For a just a second, I could pretend that it was the three of us, on a fun sister trip. I could pretend we were sitting around gossiping about our lives, chatting, making plans. Almost.

“That’s a big deal, Em. I’m sorry you’re missing that,” I said.

She shrugged. “You know, Kyle and I talked about it. We really did. Because who knows what I can actually do to help once we get to Peachtree? But I knew I couldn’t stay behind. How could I even audition as distracted as I am right now? I need to know they’re okay. That’s all that really matters.”

It was all that really mattered. I knew that. But it was easy—especially under the sometimes-harsh glow of the spotlight—to lose sight of that. I was proud of her for putting her family first.

“If I can’t do anything, fine. But I need to at least try. Knowing we’re doing all we can makes me feel better.”

“Me too,” Caroline said.

I, like my sisters, had felt my tremendous sense of unease dissipate slightly once I knew we were going to Peachtree, once I knew that we were heading there to rescue our family from the storm. But now, out on these unforgiving waters, I was reminded of how very fickle Mother Nature could be. Would we get to Peachtree Bluff safely? The logic in my head said of course we would. We were on a gorgeous, practically brand-new yacht, with an expert captain at the helm, and we were close enough to shore that the Coast Guard could come to us quickly at any moment along this route. But losing my father—and then almost losing Adam—had trained me to prepare for the worst.

I looked over at Caroline, so at ease on the water, and a sadness that she might lose part of what she loved so much flooded me. The boat was in Palm Beach because Caroline was putting it up for sale.

“Do you really have to sell your boat?” I whispered to Caroline. “You love it so much.”

She shrugged sadly.

“Oh no,” Em said softly.

“I love it,” she said. “But it doesn’t make sense to keep it. Between my apartment and James’s, the Hamptons house, Peachtree Bluff, and the boat, something has to go. So I think the boat makes the most sense. And the Peachtree house.” She shrugged. “Besides, there’s no way I can afford the boat’s maintenance and the storage and all of that.”

“I’m sorry, Car,” Emerson said.

She smiled. “The divorce is still worth it.”

We all laughed.

She rubbed the steering wheel fondly. “And I’ll get a little sailboat or something, keep it at Mom’s. It might be more fun, really. We can teach all the kids to sail.”

She was lying. It could not be more fun than her gorgeous yacht. But it would be nice to teach the kids to sail. I stretched and, deciding I’d put off my parenting duties for long enough, walked back toward the staterooms.

I was following the small voices, but I stopped when I saw James sitting by himself on the end of his bed. His hands were clamped into fists and he was looking down at them. For a minute, I thought he had been hurt. “Are you okay?” I asked quietly, not wanting to startle him.

When he looked up, he had tears in his eyes. “I’m just realizing that I didn’t only lose Caroline in this divorce,” he said. “I lost all of you too. I lost you, and I put my daughter’s life in danger. If it weren’t for my mistakes, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now. Vivi would be home and safe. Caroline would still love me.”

I wanted to scream at him, unload on him, tell him that, yes, this was all his fault. Yes, he had put his daughter’s life in danger, broken my sister’s heart, and shattered a piece of our family that we would never get back. We would never be whole again in the way we once were. “I wish things had been different for you and my sister. I wish they had been different for all of us.”

I smiled through my sadness as little feet ran by the door and up the stairs and Emerson called from the galley, “Who wants snacks?” A chorus of “Me!” erupted. We had bought like fifteen boxes of Teddy Grahams, and the kids could never say no to those.

James looked up. “I know it’s over. I know she’ll never forgive me. But she wins, Sloane. In the end, she wins. Because I will regret destroying my family—your family—for the rest of my life.”

I smiled sadly. It was nice to hear that he was remorseful. Although I had to think that maybe he was saying all this to the wrong sister. “You’re wrong, though,” I said. “She has forgiven you. If she hadn’t, you wouldn’t be on this boat right now.” I shrugged. “And you didn’t destroy our family, James. No offense, but no one can do that.”

He nodded, still looking so downtrodden that I felt sad for him. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe you’re right. I just wish I could erase the past.” He looked up. “You’re so lucky,” he said. “You’re so lucky to have Adam and your family. You’re so lucky that you know how much you love each other.”

He was right. Adam and I might not have agreed one hundred percent of the time on things like where we should live and precisely what our future should hold. But it didn’t matter. I knew now that that didn’t mean I should just roll over and give in to anything he wanted, and that was growth for me. But I did know that something like a house didn’t matter at the end of the day. Not really.

I squeezed James’s knee and got up. “We are lucky. Let’s just hope our luck holds out.”

I left James and stood in the doorway of the stateroom I was sharing with my family, watching as my husband fluffed the comforter and spread it out over the top of the bed. I walked into the room and locked the door shut behind me. “Hey,” he said, smiling.

I put my finger to his mouth and then kissed him. He pulled back and smiled at me. I kissed him again and lifted his shirt over his head, drawing him close enough that I could feel his heartbeat. My heart swelled with love for this man who was always there for me, who I knew was always on my team. As I lay back on the comforter, everything we’d been going through faded into the background. It was just Adam and I and a bright, shining future, stretched out into the distance like the eternal tide before us. And I knew James was right: we were, without a doubt, the lucky ones.