If Darkness Takes Us Read online

  Mazie’s eyes popped wide, and she gaped at me without blinking. “They don’t hurt anymore. The pink’s all gone.”

  I searched her face, half-afraid she was shining me on to avoid doctors, but she gave me a teary-eyed smile. I kissed her cheek, shut the door, and hurried back to the driver’s seat. I sat for a second, worried I’d be putting the kids at risk by going back for Harry. But the fire didn’t look any bigger, as far as I could tell.

  “Let’s get Harry,” I said. The kids shouted “Yay!” and “Woohoo!” I turned across traffic and headed toward home.

  “How could you forget Harry, Nana?” Keno sounded disappointed in me.

  “You forgot him, too!” I shot my grandson an annoyed look.

  The first street entrance to my neighborhood was blocked by police cars. I drove a quarter-mile to the next entrance, but two more squad cars blocked it as well, their lights blinking warnings, a couple of policemen milling about. I drove up beside the policemen and hopped from the car.

  “We’re evacuating,” I said, “but I forgot our dog. I need to go get him.” I was out of breath, pulling at my fingers until they hurt.

  “You can’t go in, ma’am,” said the tallest cop.

  “How could you forget your dog?” said the other.

  I scowled at the squat, stern cop. “Because I’m a frantic old woman, trying to save my grandkids from a fire and God knows what all. Please let me back in for five minutes.”

  “We can’t, ma’am. I’m sorry,” the tall cop said.

  “Why on Earth not?”

  “Because of the fire and God knows what all.” The short cop smirked at me meanly.

  “I can walk in and get the dog while the others wait,” Keno said, leaning out the car window. So gallant of him.

  “No. No, I can’t be responsible for that,” the nice cop said.

  “Then I’ll walk in,” I said, wondering if I could even do that. “You’re not going to say no to a woman twice your age, are you? What about my dog?”

  “Ma’am, I have to say no. I’m sorry.”

  I couldn’t out-argue these guys. I couldn’t think of a way to sneak in to get Harry. Keno might be able to manage it but, like the policeman, I could not be responsible for that. As I climbed in my SUV, I looked off toward the flames and smoke.

  “Think they’ll get that fire put out before it burns down the neighborhood?” I asked the nice cop.

  “So far they’re keeping it confined to the train.”

  “Thank God. You know, some of my neighbors aren’t leaving.”

  “Oh? Who?”

  “The Beldings,” I muttered and gave him their address. The cop got on his radio, and I put my car in gear to drive away, defeated.

  “I want Harry!” Mazie cried out.

  “Me, too, but Harry will be okay.” I hoped.

  “But there’s fire and smoke! He’s locked in the yard,” Mazie squealed, flapping her hands.

  Watching the little girl in my rearview mirror, I wanted to hug her. I wanted to squeal and whine myself.

  “Harry’s real smart, honey. He knows how to get out of the yard. He’ll run away from the neighborhood if he needs to.”

  “Well, I don’t want him to run away.”

  “He’ll come back when it’s safe. He loves you too much to run away for good.”

  From the front seat, Tasha reached around and patted Mazie’s knee. I felt like beating myself about the head for forgetting that poor dog.

  “Mazie, are your eyes still okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said, closing those eyes and leaning back in her booster seat.

  I drove due north for a ways so that I could cut back west and get to the other side of the fire, upwind. Everyone had a cell phone, even Mazie. The kids tried to call their parents while I drove, but no one answered. Shoot. I was hoping the other adults in my family would calm me down.

  Though we were out of immediate danger, I had a deep foreboding in my gut. Did the train derail? What crazy thing could have caused that? It was a flat, straight track with no hills or curves. Could it have been warped somehow? Did someone—like a terrorist—mess with the signal? I’d lived next to that track for thirty-plus years, and nothing like this had ever happened before.

  “I bet your parents went out to eat with Grandpa,” I said to the kids, “and he made them turn off their phones.”

  “Grandpa’s mean,” Milo grumbled.

  “Oh, honey. He just likes people to behave a certain way.”

  “He bosses everybody around, even grown-ups.” Milo jutted his chin, daring me to contradict what everyone knew to be true.

  “He always says, ‘You kids be quiet!’” Mazie imitated her grandfather’s deep voice.

  “Sometimes when you get old, kid noise gets on your nerves,” I said.

  “We can’t help it if we’re kids,” Milo said.

  “I’m glad you’re kids. Kids are fun.”

  “Yes, we are!” Milo made a silly face, and I laughed.

  But that conversation took me aback. I hadn’t realized that Hank was annoying our grandkids, too. I didn’t know what to do with him.

  I mean, you can’t stay married to a man for thirty years without having at least some affection for him, or I couldn’t anyway. Hank and I were the glue that held our big family together—the family that meant the world to me. I had once believed in Hank, until complications got in the way. Though I hadn’t seen much of his lovable self in years, I coached myself to trust I would uncover it again. So, I looked for reasons to stay married, tried to find things to love in my husband Hank, though they seemed to get scarcer by the day.

  I found a grassy roadside to the northwest about ten miles from home and upwind, where I pulled off and spread a tarp on the ground. We sat, Keno messing with his iPad, Tasha texting, Milo and Mazie poking at each other in true brother-sister fashion, and all of us watching the fire and eating a bag of stale popcorn we’d left in the car that afternoon. The radio said they were evacuating neighborhoods near the train wreck, but they didn’t say why.

  Hazmat trucks, that’s why. Contaminated air.

  Mazie complained that her phone wasn’t working, but Keno and Milo finally reached their moms, who were out and about in Dallas with the rest of the clan, enjoying the nightlife far too much from the sound of them. Hank called me, I guess just to ask if he should come home.

  “No, we can’t be home now anyway. Just stay up there and enjoy the game.”

  “How’s your heart doing with all this stress?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Bea, you should go to bed. Get those kids straight to a hotel.”

  I was sick of him bossing me around. I breathed deeply, attempting to calm my aggravation. Hank, what happened to you?

  “How’s Harry taking it?” Hank asked, setting off a wave of panic and guilt in me.

  “Harry? Oh, he’s fine.” I couldn’t very well tell Hank that I’d forgotten the dog. My husband loved that dog more than he loved me. I said goodnight before Hank could ask me to put Harry on the phone.

  It was a typical early autumn in Central Texas, so it wasn’t cold. I was tempted to bed us down at the roadside, but I figured the cops would run us off. Besides, it was ragweed season—not good for me or Mazie, or especially Keno. That kid’s nose ran like a faucet all day and night while the ragweed bloomed, but he refused to take a pill for it, and he seldom thought to blow his nose. Allergies in Austin plagued us year-round.

  “Milo, quit spying on my texts!” Tasha hollered as we piled back in the car. “It’s freaking annoying.”

  “She texted cuss words,” Milo said. “I saw them.”

  “It’s none of your business!” Tasha swatted at Milo, who swatted back.

  “Cut it out. Both of you!” A tense silence settled over the car.

  As we drove away, Keno groaned. “The internet on my iPad keeps shutting down.” He sighed and stared out the window.

  “Kids, if I take you to a luxury hotel, can you
keep it a secret from your parents and grandpa?”

  “Heck, yeah,” Milo said.

  “I love secrets,” Mazie gushed.

  Keno and Tasha grinned, seeming to like the idea.

  I drove downtown, where for some reason all the traffic lights were blinking red or yellow—super-annoying when almost every corner had a stoplight. At last we arrived at the Four Seasons, and I rented us a two-bedroom suite, paying for it with the credit card I kept hidden from Hank. Very posh digs, the Four Seasons. The hushed voices, the crisp, cool air and canned music were strangely numbing.

  “Oh? There was a train wreck?” said the young woman who checked us in, never losing her overly cheerful tone. “Thank you for choosing the Four Seasons.”

  The perfect accommodations for our luxury evacuation needs.

  I’d never slept in such a place. I had always disdained them, but after our escape from danger, I wanted to spoil my grandkids—and myself, to be honest.

  I texted Hank to tell him we were at a cheaper northside hotel and purposely didn’t include a phone number. He could always reach me on my cell.

  After the excitement of the fancy hotel suite wore off and I’d again sworn the kids to secrecy, they went to sleep. I made myself some cocktails from the mini bar. The TV news said the fire from the train was almost out. From the aerial news footage, I saw that my house and yard were intact. Thank God, Harry would not be in danger from fire.

  I took a long soak in the Jacuzzi. The water jets soothed my nerves and the jasmine bath oil evoked comforting memories of my Southern grandmother. A relaxing bath could be so hard to come by.

  Though I was still a bit jittery, at least now I could think.

  We were kind of a mash-up of a family. Hank had three boys and I had my two girls. We got married in our late thirties when the kids ranged in age from five to nine. Since their other parents—our exes—weren’t much in the picture, our kids were raised together, which was hairy but also good because they bonded like a real family, which they were, of course.

  Our grown kids were now in their thirties, except Jeri, who’d just turned forty. I said they all went to Dallas for the game, but that’s not completely accurate. The three of them who lived around Austin went with Hank, along with Jeri’s husband and Wayne’s girlfriend. Two of my stepsons lived in Phoenix. It was next to impossible to get the whole family together anymore.

  Back when the kids were growing up, we used to have the greatest times going camping at Pace Bend Park on Lake Travis. Five kids were a lot to keep an eye on, but the place was so pretty and the lake so clean and clear. Not as clear as it would have been without human use and road runoff, but being there was still so lovely, so relaxing, so reinvigorating.

  Hank would barbecue, and I would mix up potato salad and deviled eggs from the pre-cooked ingredients I’d bring from home, and we’d all eat our hearts out under the starry sky with our pink noses and shoulders and our bronzed chests and arms. We would tell stories and laugh and sing along to Hank’s guitar, then we’d stretch out in our tents and listen to the whippoorwills and frogs and crickets and sleep more peacefully than we had in weeks. We’d wake in the mornings with our messy hair and our tents and lawn chairs covered in dew, and we’d feel the sting of yesterday’s sunburn while songbirds raced about gathering scraps from the ground, and a big, giant whooping crane flew slowly, loopingly, overhead.

  I would’ve given what remained of my life to have one more weekend like that, as long as my grandkids could be there, too. Hank would’ve said he’d give his left nut. I suspect he’d have given both of them.

  TWO

  THE NEXT MORNING at the hotel, Cranky Hank called and woke me up.

  “Dang, Hank, did you have to call so early?”

  “Bea, it’s after nine. Why are you still sleeping?”

  “Well, why shouldn’t we be? We were up late. We’ve got nothing to do anyway.”

  “You need to get those kids home,” he said.

  “Are you saying we can go home already? How do you know that?”

  “It’s on the internet and TV. They say you can go home later today. Aren’t you paying attention?”

  “No, I was sleeping. And do I have to be there the first minute they open the neighborhood?”

  “You should be ready to go.”

  “Hank, I’m in no hurry to return to the scene of a toxic spill.” My phone dropped the call, which was fine with me. I didn’t feel like arguing with Hank, but I had no intention of rushing my grandchildren home.

  I checked on the kids in the adjoining room. The girls lay in bed together, Mazie sprawling her tiny body across two-thirds of the bed and halfway across Tasha. They looked so pretty and sweet in their sleep, and so much like polar opposites in body type and coloring: six-year-old Mazie—thin and pale with aquamarine eyes; and fifteen-year-old Tasha—buxom, brown-eyed, and olive-skinned.

  Gangly Keno had created a private space for himself on a pallet in front of the TV. Mucus rattled in his nose as he slept. Milo was sacked out in the far bed alone. He rolled over and looked at me, sandy hair in his bleary eyes, then went back to sleep.

  I wished that my prim and proper daughter Jeri hadn’t called me a hoarder. Before they left town, she’d walked in on Hank yelling at me for filling the linen closet with “way too much” over-the-counter medicine, and she’d taken his side. He would have busted a gut if he’d known the full extent of my stockpiling. But Jeri’s comment and Hank’s yelling hurt me. It felt like bad karma to be apart for days with bitter feelings in the air.

  Yet the trouble between Hank and me had started long ago.

  As a grandmother, I felt my purpose in life was to keep my kids and grandkids safe and healthy. So, when the climate started going to hell at an accelerating rate, scaring the crap out of me daily, I felt forced to plan for my family’s long-term survival.

  First, there were the long droughts and heat waves, which were a matched set around here. Then we noticed that all the frogs had disappeared from our yard. We couldn’t decide how long they’d been gone, or when we’d last heard them. How did we fail to notice that the frogs had gone missing? It didn’t bode well for us.

  Next came the barrage of tornadoes and hurricanes, keeping me up nights tracking radar and worrying about people in their paths. Though inland in Austin, we still got storm tendrils strong enough to topple trees and cause fatal floods.

  Ironically, Hurricane Katrina gave me a chance to earn extra income from my work-at-home job, where I calculated and wrote up insurance claims for commercial property. I was a whiz at building interlocking spreadsheets and arguing with tight-fisted insurance execs, forcing them to cough up more cash. The hurricane gave us so many new clients that it took me years of long hours to settle those claims.

  And while I worked, I listened to progressive podcasts, particularly a guy who gave dire environmental warnings and told us, only half-jokingly, to stock up on canned goods.

  Once I’d amassed all the insurance money, I wanted to install photovoltaic solar panels on our house to generate power, but Hank hated the idea.

  “It’ll ruin the roof. We’ll have leaks,” he said.

  “Okay, I’ll put a new, stronger roof on first—find a better roofer. And I’ll pay him to check the panels to be sure they don’t cause leaks.”

  “I don’t want all that weight on my roof.” Everything was his, never ours.

  That evening, our TV show was interrupted by a weather alert. Hurricane Ike was bearing down on Galveston Island in the Gulf of Mexico, two hundred miles southeast of us.

  “Hank, you know this crazy number of hurricanes is caused by excess carbon in the atmosphere.”

  “Oh, c’mon. How do you know that?”

  “Because I read. We have to reduce our carbon footprint. That’s why I want solar panels.”

  Hank looked at me sideways. “You gonna pay for this—I mean every penny?”

  “Yes. Yes, I will. Can I please do it?”

  He ro
lled his eyes and sighed. “I guess I won’t stop you, as long as they don’t interrupt our power in the evenings.”

  “Yeah, can’t miss your TV shows, huh?”

  “Some things are important to you.” He chuckled. “Others are important to me.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart,” I said, and I kissed him.

  “But if anything goes wrong, it’s on you.” He just couldn’t let the moment of agreement last.

  Naturally, I wanted to do more than install solar panels. I wanted to stock up on food, too, but I’d already pushed Hank to his limit. Still, little by little, I slipped in other things without giving him much chance to protest. I installed gutters and a rain barrel system to collect water for the lawn. I xeriscaped the yard with drought-resistant trees, plants, and grass. I installed triple-paned windows, water-saving plumbing fixtures, energy-efficient appliances and air-conditioning.

  I went tree hugger wild. Then to top it off, I built a lovely tiled patio with a rooftop for shade, I added a big storage shed out back, and I insulated our attic and garage. The more I did for the house, the crankier Hank became.

  By the time my extra insurance jobs were finished, I’d spent most of the money on the house. I called it our retirement plan. But Hank and I were now at odds.

  When half the State of Texas seemed to go up in flames a few summers back, and we had long-running fires to our east, west, and south, I began to implement my secret plan. I tried to talk to Hank about the plan in a hypothetical way, but I could see it was too much for him, so I shut up and took it underground.

  I let a few activities remain in the open, to throw him off the scent. I collected candles and set out the decorative ones, hiding hundreds of blackout candles from Hank. I planted tomatoes, peppers, and herbs in pots around the yard. I hired someone to build a raised garden-bed along the side of our home, and I ordered beaucoup seed packets and catalogs. Hank groused about the catalogs, because he groused about everything, but I did catch him flipping through them now and then. If he saw me watching, he would slam the catalog shut and walk away, grumbling.

  While much of the Austin suburb of Bastrop and the Lost Pines State Park burned to the ground, taking Hank’s cousin’s house, hundreds of other homes, and a million and a half pine trees along with it, by sheer coincidence I inherited a great deal of money from my maiden aunt, money Hank had speculated about for years.