Sam, Jackie, and Thomas come back from the living room singing, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” at the top of their lungs. Looking back at Roxanne, I grin. “I’ve set my bar pretty low.”
Something slams against the side of the house, making me jump. Roxanne takes my hand. “Oh, don’t worry, Dana. I’ll protect you.”
“Funny.”
“Oh, you must need a femme around to keep you safe,” she grins.
Shaking my head at her, I walk away, laughing. She follows me, stopping in the kitchen to grab a tray of cookies. Sam heads for her beer cooler. Turning to Thomas and Jackie, she offers them a beer. Thomas takes one, but Jackie refuses.
Back to my chair, I pick up Frank and deposit him on my lap. He lets out an indignant meow before settling in. Rick and Karen are about as far away on the couch as two people can get. Obvious as usual, Sam comes in and plops down between them. “Hey, Karen,” she says in an overly jovial voice. “What’s shaking?”
Karen glares at her. “Grow up, Sam.”
Unperturbed, Sam shakes her head. “Never. I’m perfect the way I am.”
“Hardly,” Olivia scoffs, coming into the dining area with a plate of food.
That reminds me. “If anyone gets hungry, there is all sort of food in the fridge and all over the counters. Once the power goes out, we want to make sure to open the fridge as little as possible. It will probably keep the food good for about twenty-four hours. After that, we’ll put stuff on ice in the coolers. And hopefully after that, we’ll be able to get down the hill.”
“God, let us hope,” Esmé says.
“You didn’t have to be here,” Sam reminds her. “In fact, if I remember correctly, you weren’t invited.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” I say, laughing.
“Fine,” Karen says, standing. “Sorry for busting in on you. We can go.”
The whole house shakes as something crashes into one of the walls. Rick takes Karen by the hand and pulls her down next to him. “We aren’t going anywhere in this.”
“No one is going anywhere in this,” I state. “I’m pretty sure no one is going to be going anywhere for at least twenty-four hours, so we might all try to pretend that we like each other.”
Jackie grins. “One year we had a hurricane party for fifteen. Everyone except Dana got trashed. There was a leak in one of the windows and it was shooting water in right where I was sleeping. When she woke me up, I was soaking wet from head to toe. Good times.”
Smiling at her, I shrug my shoulders. “They weren’t all bad times.”
Something else crashes hard against the house, causing everyone to jump.
“That was a big one,” my sister says, walking past on her way to the kitchen.
Sam gets off the couch and sits on the ground in front of Olivia. Running her fingers over Sam’s short hair, Olivia bends down and kisses Sam on the ear. Leaning over to press my face against Roxanne’s shoulder, I fake shudder. “I can’t believe I couldn’t avert my eyes in time to miss that.”
Mandy moves her chair closer to Jackie so she can put her arm around her. She’s on her third or fourth beer and I can tell Jackie is getting upset. I don’t think that relationship will last long. It’s hard to recover while still dealing with someone who drinks like that. Jackie stretches her long legs out onto a side table, leaning away from Mandy as she does. Roxanne squeezes my hand. “Want a cookie?”
“Yeah, I do.” Taking a couple of chocolate chip cookies, I lean back in my chair, surveying the room. I should probably get up and walk the house again. Shoving both cookies into my mouth, I stand and motion to Sam. “Everyone else stay put. We’re going to check the house.”
Back in the spare bedroom, everything looks good. There is a little water seepage under one of the windows, but other than that, things are holding up well. The house is shaking like crazy by now and it sounds like a freight train outside. Glancing at her phone, Sam says, “We aren’t in the worst of it yet. According to the satellite, we’re still in the outer bands.”
Leaning over to look at it, I point out the movement of the storm. “Look at the update. We’re getting close to the hardest part.”
She pulls some duct tape out of the pocket of her cargo shorts. Pulling off a piece, she hands the end to me so she can reach in her pocket for a knife. After she cuts the piece off, I tape it across the bottom of the window.
She puts the tape back in her pocket. Reaching for her phone again, she looks at the satellite image one more time. “The biggest convection is one the other side of the eye and that’s what will be over us in a couple of hours.”