Gathering Lies. Meg O'Brien
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She stood and flung her blanket to the ground, doubling her fists. Tears ran down her face. “My children may be dead right now! Do you realize that? While you two are harping at each other, my kids could be dead!”
“All right, that’s it!” I said, standing. “First of all, I’ve just about had it with you, Grace. Maybe you’re right, maybe Timmy could have prepared better. But it doesn’t help to stand around and rant at each other.”
I turned to Jane and put both hands on her shoulders. “Look, I know this is awful for you. But, Jane, we have to focus now on finding a way to communicate with the mainland. The sooner we do that, the sooner we may be able to reach your husband and children. At the very least, a portable radio might give us some up-to-date news. We could find out how things are going down there.”
Jane fell silent, and Dana asked, “What do you have in mind?”
“I’ve been thinking about it all night. There are three other houses on the island. Two, as I remember, are summer cabins. Right, Timmy?”
She nodded. “They’ve sold a couple of times over the years, but both have been vacant quite a while.”
“And the Ford house?”
“It’s still there, of course. The son owns it now, but he only comes out here in the summer.”
“Luke, you mean?”
She nodded again.
So he’s still around. “Any chance he’d be there now?” I asked. “It’s almost summer.”
“I’ve never known him to be here this early,” Timmy said. “And I’m pretty sure he would have let me know he was here, if he was.”
“So unless someone just happens to be visiting those two cabins, we’re the only people on the island, right? Then, what we need to do is check out those cabins, and Luke’s house, and see if they are indeed vacant, and if they survived the quake. If so, they might have some things we can use till help arrives.”
I turned to Timmy. “Two people should stay behind, just on the off chance a rescue party comes by. Do you mind? You and Amelia?”
“Leave the two old ladies behind, is that it?” Amelia said spiritedly. “Not on your life. Leave Jane. I’m as strong as she is.”
“I’m sure you are,” I said, though in truth I doubted it. It wasn’t Amelia’s age that was against her, as many women in their seventies were good hikers. But I’d seen her trembling when she thought no one was looking. It had been a difficult twelve hours, and Amelia needed rest, not the exertion of tramping through the woods. As for Timmy, she had suffered too much loss. To my eyes, she seemed close to breaking.
“I also thought maybe you and Timmy could check out the grounds here,” I said. “See what kinds of vegetables are left in the gardens, like maybe some carrots still in the ground from last fall? Do you mind?”
Amelia hesitated, but looked at Timmy, who seemed very frail, suddenly. “No,” she said, “of course not.”
“Okay, then, let’s get going,” Dana said. “I’m more than ready.”
We all looked at each other for signs of agreement. Kim, who hadn’t yet spoken, said, “Just one thing. Does anyone here have a gun?”
Jane laughed uncertainly. “My goodness, no. Who on earth would have thought we’d ever need one here?”
Dana shook her head, and Amelia raised her white brows and said, “That’s an odd thing to ask.”
“Not if you’ve ever been in an earthquake,” Kim said. “I have.”
“You mean in L.A.?”
She nodded. “The Northridge. People went nuts.”
“But that was entirely different,” I said. “L.A. is a big city. Here, there’s no one else on the island. Only us.”
Kim gave me a weighted look, then flicked her eyes to Grace.
We all followed her gaze.
Grace flushed, then said, “Oh, for God’s sake! I may not be the most patient person in the world, but it’s not like I’m going to kill anyone.”
No one said a word.
Kim Stratton and I made our way along the shoreline to the east, while Dana, Jane and Grace headed west to check out the two cabins. Our plan was to meet at the Ford house, which was in the approximate middle of the island, on the northern shore. The more direct, cross-island path Luke and I had created all those years ago had grown over, and I hadn’t been able to find it from Thornberry. Our trek would take us a bit longer than if the more direct three-mile route had been available, but we thought that if we kept a steady pace, we could be there in less than four hours.
The beach consisted of gray rock, not sand, and was lined with fir and cedar trees. At times we were forced to navigate huge logs that had washed up during storms, and in several places the shoreline came to a dead stop by boulders we had to climb to get where the beach began again.
I was grateful I’d worn my hiking boots, jeans, and a warm sweater and coat to dinner the night before. A quick check of my cottage this morning had revealed most of my belongings were buried beneath debris. There hadn’t been time to see what could be salvaged—nor had I wanted to. My nerves were shot, and I felt exhausted after so little sleep.
Nor could I eat. Timmy and Amelia had put together a breakfast of fruit and found muffins. I had wrapped a muffin in a napkin and had stuck it into my coat pocket for later. Kim and I each carried a bottle of water.
Each of our two groups had an air horn that we’d found in the kitchen pantry, nearly buried by flour sacks. They were one of the few things Timmy had set aside for emergencies—not that she’d expected anything like this, I thought. More likely illness, or an invasion by bear.
Are there bears up here? I suddenly wondered, nervously scanning a thick stand of fir trees. Grizzlies could kill a person with one swat and eat the evidence before anyone was the wiser.
Stop it. Better to worry about these damned aftershocks. Will they never stop?
Unable to steady myself as another one hit, I let it take me to my knees, then flattened myself on the ground. Kim fell prone beside me.
“That one felt stronger than the others,” she said, gripping the ground with her fists. “God help us if the first one was only a foreshock.”
“Don’t even think it.”
If I felt like I’d been through hell in Seattle before coming here, that whole business seemed more like purgatory now—the place Catholics believe you can pray yourself out of, like buying tickets to a fair. This—this not knowing what was going to happen next—was hell.
Or so I thought then, not knowing how much worse things were going to get.
I stood, brushing sharp, gravel-like sand from my knees and palms. As I did so, I felt like screaming—like running into the woods and beating on the ground. The only thing that kept me from doing that was feeling I had to keep up my spirits. If not for my sake, then for Kim’s. Though she probably didn’t need me for that.
On first meeting, Kim had seemed spoiled and standoffish. The two times she did show up for after-dinner coffee, she asked endless gossipy questions about our personal lives. I supposed this was what passed for conversation in Hollywood.
Still, I had to admit that Kim had been proving her mettle, ever since we’d found her outside her cottage yesterday, looking more angry than anything else.
I said to her now, as we began to walk again, “I’m amazed at how you’re taking all this.”
Her tone registered amusement. “Because I’m a star you mean?”
“Well, no…”
But that was exactly what I’d