Read the book: «Before the Storm»

Praise for Diane Chamberlain

“Diane Chamberlain is a marvellously gifted author. Every book she writes is a gem.”

—Literary Times

The Bay at Midnight

“So full of unexpected twists you’ll find yourself wanting to finish it in one sitting. Fans of Jodi Picoult’s style will love how Diane Chamberlain writes.”

—Candis

“This complex tale will stick with you forever.”

—Now Magazine.

“Emotional, complex and laced with suspense, this fascinating story is a brilliant read”

—Closer

“A moving story”

—Bella

“A fabulous thriller with plenty of surprises”

—Star

“A brilliantly told thriller”

—Woman

“This compelling mystery will have you on the edge of your seat”

—Inside Soap

The Lost Daughter

“A strong tale that deserves a comparison with Jodi Picoult”

—www.lovereading.co.uk

Before the Storm
Diane Chamberlain

www.dianechamberlain.co.uk

For John, both helpmate and muse

Acknowledgements

On my first research trip to Topsail Island, I stumbled into a realty office to ask directions. When realtor Lottie Koenig heard my name, she told me she loved my books and gave me a hug. That was my introduction to the friendly people who call Topsail Island home. Lottie gave me a tour of the island and hooked me up with another valuable resource, fellow realtor and longtime Topsail Island resident Patsy Jordan. In turn, Patsy introduced me to Anna Scott, one of the few teens on the island. Anna gave me a wealth of information about what life would be like for the teenagers in Before the Storm. I’m grateful to these three women for their help and enthusiasm.

Thank you to special friends Elizabeth and Dave Samuels and Susan Rouse for generously allowing me to use their Topsail Island homes as I did my research.

I could not have written this story without the help of Ken Bogan, Fire Marshal of the Town of Surf City’s fire department. Ken went out of his way to give me an understanding of my firefighting characters, instruct me in arson investigation and much, much more. Ken and his wife, Angie, also introduced me to Sears Landing Grill, where I arrived armed with a list of forty-five questions for them to answer over dinner. They answered them all and would have answered another forty-five had I asked. Thank you, Ken and Angie! Thanks also to these other Surf City firefighters: Tim Fisher, Kevin “Butterbean” Head and Bill Lindsey.

I found several excellent resources on Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, but none better than Jodee Kulp, an FASD activist, author and mother of a daughter with FASD. The Best That I Can Be, a book Jodee wrote with her daughter, Liz, was a huge help to me in understanding Andy. Jodee not only answered my questions, but read Andy’s first chapter to make sure I was on target with his character.

For helping me understand the legal and juvenile justice system, I’m indebted to attorneys Barrett Temple and Evonne Hopkins, as well as to Gerry McCoy.

I kept Ray McAllister’s book, Topsail Island: Mayberry by the Sea, close at hand as I wrote. It’s an excellent, lovingly written treat for anyone wanting to read further about the Island.

In a raffle sponsored by the North Carolina Writers’ Network, Jabeen Akhtar won the right to have her name mentioned in Before the Storm. I hope she’s happy I named a coffee shop after her! Although some of the places mentioned in Before the Storm do exist, Jabeen’s Java, Drury Memorial Church and The Sea Tender are, like the characters themselves, figments of my imagination.

I’m also grateful to the following people for their various contributions: Sheree Alderman, Trina Allen, Brenda Burke-Cremeans, BJ Cothran, Valerie Harris, Christa Hogan, Pam “bless your heart” Lloyd, Margaret Maron, Lynn Mercer, Marge Petesch, Glenn Pierce, Emilie Richards, Sarah Shaber, Meg Skaggs, David Stallman, MJ Vieweg, Brittany Walls, Brenda Witchger, Ann Woodman and my friends at ASA.

Thanks to the readers of my blog, especially Margo Petrus, for inspiring this book’s title.

Finally, I often hear that agents and editors are so busy that they can’t take the time to help their authors create the best books possible. That certainly is not true in my case. Thank you to my agent, Susan Ginsburg, and my editor, Miranda Stecyk, for their skill, wisdom, commitment and passion. You two are the best!

Laurel

They took my baby from me when he was only ten hours old.

Jamie named him Andrew after his father, because it seemed fitting. We tried the name out once or twice to see how it felt in our mouths. Andrew. Andy. Then, suddenly, he was gone. I’d forgotten to count his fingers or note the color of his hair. What sort of mother forgets those things?

I fought to get him back, the way a drowning person fights for air.

A full year passed before I held him in my arms again. Finally, I could breathe, and I knew I would never, ever, let him go.

Chapter One

Andy

WHEN I WALKED BACK INTO MY FRIEND Emily’s church, I saw the pretty girl right away. She’d smiled and said “hey” to me earlier when we were in the youth building, and I’d been looking for her ever since. Somebody’d pushed all the long church seats out of the way so kids could dance, and the girl was in the middle of the floor dancing fast with my friend Keith, who could dance cooler than anybody. I stared at the girl like nobody else was in the church, even when Emily came up to me and said, “Where were you? This is a lock-in. That means you stay right here all night.” I saw that her eyebrows were shaped like pale check marks. That meant she was mad.

I pointed to the pretty girl. “Who’s that?”

“How should I know?” Emily poked her glasses higher up her nose. “I don’t know every single solitary person here.”

The girl had on a floaty short skirt and she had long legs that flew over the floor when she danced. Her blond hair was in those cool things America-African people wear that I could never remember the name of. Lots of them all over her head in stripes.

I walked past some kids playing cards on the floor and straight over to the girl. I stopped four shoe lengths away, which Mom always said was close enough. I used to get too close to people and made them squirmy. They need their personal space, Mom said. But even standing that far away, I could see her long eyelashes. They made me think of baby bird feathers. I saw a baby bird close once. It fell out of the nest in our yard and Maggie climbed the ladder to put it back. I wanted to reach over and touch the girl’s feather lashes, but knew that was not an appropriate thing.

Keith suddenly stopped dancing with her. He looked right at me. “What d’you want, little rich boy?” he asked.

I looked at the girl. Her eyes were blue beneath the feathers. I felt words come into my mind and then into my throat, and once they got that far, I could never stop them.

“I love you,” I said.

Her eyes opened wide and her lips made a pink O. She laughed. I laughed, too. Sometimes people laugh at me and sometimes they laugh with me, and I hoped this was one of the laughing-with-me times.

The girl didn’t say anything, but Keith put his hands on his hips. “You go find somebody else to love, little rich boy.” I wondered how come he kept calling me little rich boy instead of Andy.

I shook my head. “I love her.”

Keith walked between me and the girl. He was so close to me, I felt the squirmies Mom told me about. I had to look up at him which made my neck hurt. “Don’t you know about personal space?” I asked.

“Look,” he said. “She’s sixteen. You’re a puny fourteen.”

“Fifteen,” I said. “I’m just small for my age.”

“Why’re you acting like you’re fourteen then?” He laughed and his teeth reminded me of the big white gum pieces Maggie liked. I hated them because they burned my tongue when I bit them.

“Leave him alone,” the pretty girl said. “Just ignore him and he’ll go away.”

“Don’t it creep you out?” Keith asked her. “The way he’s staring at you?”

The girl put out an arm and used it like a stick to move Keith away. Then she talked right to me.

“You better go away, honey,” she said. “You don’t want to get hurt.”

How could I get hurt? I wasn’t in a dangerous place or doing a dangerous thing, like rock climbing, which I wanted to do but Mom said no.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Go home to your fancy-ass house on the water,” Keith said.

“If I tell you my name, will you go away?” the girl asked.

“Okay,” I said, because I liked that we were making a deal.

“My name’s Layla,” she said.

Layla. That was a new name. I liked it. “It’s pretty,” I said. “My name’s Andy.”

“Nice to meet you, Andy,” she said. “So, now you know my name and you can go.”

I nodded, because I had to hold up my end of the deal. “Goodbye,” I said as I started to turn around.

“Retard.” Keith almost whispered it, but I had very good hearing and that word pushed my start button.

I turned back to him, my fists already flying. I punched his stomach and I punched his chin, and he must have punched me too because of all the bruises I found later, but I didn’t feel a thing. I kept at him, my head bent low like a bull, forgetting I’m only five feet tall and he was way taller. When I was mad, I got strong like nobody’s business. People yelled and clapped and things, but the noise was a buzz in my head. I couldn’t tell you the words they said. Just bzzzzzzzzz, getting louder the more I punched.

I punched until somebody grabbed my arms from behind, and a man with glasses grabbed Keith and pulled us apart. I kicked my feet trying to get at him. I wasn’t finished.

“What an asshole!” Keith twisted his body away from the man with the glasses, but he didn’t come any closer. His face was red like he had sunburn.

“He doesn’t know any better,” said the man holding me. “You should. Now you get out of here.”

“Why me?” Keith jerked his chin toward me. “He started it! Everybody always cuts him slack.”

The man spoke quietly in my ear. “If I let go of you, are you going to behave?”

I nodded and then realized I was crying and everybody was watching me except for Keith and Layla and the man with glasses, who were walking toward the back of the church. The man let go of my arms and handed me a white piece of cloth from his pocket. I wiped my eyes. I hoped Layla hadn’t seen me crying. The man was in front of me now and I saw that he was old with gray hair in a ponytail. He held my shoulders and looked me over like I was something to buy in a store. “You okay, Andy?”

I didn’t know how he knew my name, but I nodded.

“You go back over there with Emily and let the adults handle Keith.” He turned me in Emily’s direction and made me walk a few steps with his arm around me. “We’ll deal with him, okay?” He let go of my shoulders.

I said “okay” and kept walking toward Emily, who was standing by the baptism pool thing.

“I thought you was gonna kill him!” she said.

Me and Emily were in the same special reading and math classes two days a week. I’d known her almost my whole life, and she was my best friend. People said she was funny looking because she had white hair and one of her eyes didn’t look at you and she had a scar on her lip from an operation when she was a baby, but I thought she was pretty. Mom said I saw the whole world through the eyes of love. Next to Mom and Maggie, I loved Emily best. But she wasn’t my girlfriend. Definitely not.

“What did the girl say?” Emily asked me.

I wiped my eyes again. I didn’t care if Emily knew I was crying. She’d seen me cry plenty of times. When I put the cloth in my pocket, I noticed her red T-shirt was on inside out. She used to always wear her clothes inside out because she couldn’t stand the way the seam part felt on her skin, but she’d gotten better. She also couldn’t stand when people touched her. Our teacher never touched her but once we had a substitute and she put a hand on Emily’s shoulder and Emily went ballistic. She cried so much she barfed on her desk.

“Your shirt’s inside out,” I said.

“I know. What did the girl say?”

“That her name’s Layla.” I looked over at where Layla was still talking to the man with the glasses. Keith was gone, and I stared at Layla. Just looking at her made my body feel funny. It was like the time I had to take medicine for a cold and couldn’t sleep all night long. I felt like bugs were crawling inside my muscles. Mom promised me that was impossible, but it still felt that way.

“Did she say anything else?” Emily asked.

Before I could answer, a really loud, deep, rumbling noise, like thunder, filled my ears. Everyone stopped and looked around like someone had said Freeze! I thought maybe it was a tsunami because we were so close to the beach. I was really afraid of tsunamis. I saw one on TV. They swallowed up people. Sometimes I’d stare out my bedroom window and watch the water in the sound, looking for the big wave that would swallow me up. I wanted to get out of the church and run, but nobody moved.

Like magic, the stained-glass windows lit up. I saw Mary and baby Jesus and angels and a half-bald man in a long dress holding a bird on his hand. The window colors were on everybody’s face and Emily’s hair looked like a rainbow.

“Fire!” someone yelled from the other end of the church, and then a bunch of people started yelling, “Fire! Fire!” Everyone screamed, running past me and Emily, pushing us all over the place.

I didn’t see any fire, so me and Emily just stood there getting pushed around, waiting for an adult to tell us what to do. I was pretty sure then that there wasn’t a tsunami. That made me feel better, even though somebody’s elbow knocked into my side and somebody else stepped on my toes. Emily backed up against the wall so nobody could touch her as they rushed past. I looked where Layla had been talking with the man, but she was gone.

“The doors are blocked by fire!” someone shouted.

I looked at Emily. “Where’s your mom?” I had to yell because it was so noisy. Emily’s mother was one of the adults at the lock-in, which was the only reason Mom let me go.

“I don’t know.” Emily bit the side of her finger the way she did when she was nervous.

“Don’t bite yourself.” I pulled her hand away from her face and she glared at me with her good eye.

All of a sudden I smelled the fire. It crackled like a bonfire on the beach. Emily pointed to the ceiling where curlicues of smoke swirled around the beams.

“We got to hide!” she said.

I shook my head. Mom told me you can’t hide from a fire. You had to escape. I had a special ladder under my bed I could put out the window to climb down, but there were no special ladders in the church that I could see.

Everything was moving very fast. Some boys lifted up one of the long church seats. They counted one two three and ran toward the big window that had the half-bald man on it. The long seat hit the man, breaking the window into a zillion pieces, and then I saw the fire outside. It was a bigger fire than I’d ever seen in my life. Like a monster, it rushed through the window and swallowed the boys and the long seat in one big gulp. The boys screamed, and they ran around with fire coming off them.

I shouted as loud as I could, “Stop! Drop! Roll!”

Emily looked amazed to hear me tell the boys what to do. I didn’t think the boys heard me, but then some of them did stop, drop and roll, so maybe they did. They were still burning, and the air in the church had filled up with so much smoke, I couldn’t see the altar anymore.

Emily started coughing. “Mama!” she croaked.

I was coughing, too, and I knew me and Emily were in trouble. I couldn’t see her mother anywhere, and the other adults were screaming their heads off just like the kids. I was thinking, thinking, thinking. Mom always told me, in an emergency, use your head. This was my first real emergency ever.

Emily suddenly grabbed my arm. “We got to hide!” she said again. She had to be really scared because she’d never touched me before on purpose.

I knew she was wrong about hiding, but now the floor was on fire, the flames coming toward us.

“Think!” I said out loud, though I was only talking to myself. I hit the side of my head with my hand. “Brain, you gotta kick in!”

Emily pressed her face against my shoulder, whimpering like a puppy, and the fire rose around us like a forest of golden trees.

Chapter Two

Maggie

MY FATHER WAS KILLED BY A WHALE.

I hardly ever told people how he died because they’d think I was making it up. Then I’d have to go into the whole story and watch their eyes pop and their skin break out in goose bumps. They’d talk about Ahab and Jonah, and I would know that Daddy’s death had morphed into their entertainment. When I was a little girl, he was my whole world—my best friend and protector. He was awesome. He was a minister who built a chapel for his tiny congregation with his own hands. When people turned him into a character in a story, one they’d tell their friends and family over pizza or ice cream, I had to walk away. So, it was easier not to talk about it in the first place. If someone asked me how my father died, I’d just say “heart.” That was the truth, anyway.

The night Andy went to the lock-in, I knew I had to visit my father—or at least try to visit him. It didn’t always work. Out of my thirty or forty tries, I only made contact with him three times. That made the visits even more meaningful to me. I’d never stop trying.

I called Mom to let her know the lock-in had been moved from Drury Memorial’s youth building to the church itself, so she’d know where to pick Andy up in the morning. Then I said I was going over to Amber Donnelly’s, which was a total crock. I hadn’t hung out with Amber in months, though we sometimes still studied together. Hanging out with Amber required listening to her talk nonstop about her boyfriend, Travis Hardy. “Me and Travis this,” and “me and Travis that,” until I wanted to scream. Amber was in AP classes like me, but you wouldn’t know it from her grammar. Plus, she was such a poser, totally caught up in her looks and who she hung out with. I never realized it until this year.

So instead of going to Amber’s, I drove to the northern end of the island, which, on a midweek night in late March, felt like the end of the universe. In fourteen miles, I saw only two other cars on the road, both heading south, and few of the houses had lights on inside. The moon was so full and bright that weird shadows of shrubs and mailboxes were on the road in front of me. I thought I was seeing dogs or deer in the road and I kept braking for nothing. I was relieved when I spotted the row of cottages on the beach.

That end of the island was always getting chewed up by storms, and the six oceanfront cottages along New River Inlet Road were, every single one of them, condemned. Between the cottages and the street was another row of houses, all waiting for their turn to become oceanfront. I thought that would happen long ago; we had to abandon our house after Hurricane Fran, when I was five. But the condemned houses still stood empty, and I hoped they’d remain that way for the rest of my life.

Our tiny cottage was round, and it leaned ever so slightly to the left on long exposed pilings. The outdoor shower and storage closet that used to make up the ground floor had slipped into the sea along with the septic tank. The wood siding had been bleached so pale by decades under the sun that it looked like frosted glass in the moonlight. The cottage had a name—The Sea Tender—given to it by my Grandpa Lockwood. Long before I was born, Grandpa burned that name into a board and hung it above the front door, but the sign blew away a couple of years ago and even though I searched for it in the sand, I never found it.

The wind blew my hair across my face as I got out of the car, and the waves sounded like nonstop thunder. Topsail Island was so narrow that we could hear the ocean from our house on Stump Sound, but this was different. My feet vibrated from the pounding of the waves on the beach, and I knew the sea was wild tonight.

I had a flashlight, but I didn’t need it as I walked along the skinny boardwalk between two of the front-row houses to reach our old cottage. The bottom step used to sit on the sand, but now it was up to my waist. I moved the cinder block from behind one of the pilings into place below the steps, stood on top of it, then boosted myself onto the bottom step and climbed up to the deck. A long board nailed across the front door read Condemned, and I could just manage to squeeze my key beneath it into the lock. Mom was a pack rat, and I found the key in her desk drawer two years earlier, when I first decided to go to the cottage. I ducked below the sign and walked into the living room, my sandals grinding on the gritty floor.

I knew the inside of the cottage as well as I knew our house on Stump Sound. I walked through the dark living room to the kitchen, dodging some of our old furniture, which had been too ratty and disgusting to save even ten years ago. I turned on my flashlight and put it on the counter so the light hit the cabinet above the stove. I opened the cabinet, which was empty except for a plastic bag of marijuana, a few rolled joints and some boxes of matches. My hands shook as I lit one of the joints, breathing the smoke deep into my lungs. I held my breath until the top of my head tingled. I craved that out-of-body feeling tonight.

Opening the back door, I was slammed by the roar of the waves. My hair was long and way too wavy and it sucked moisture from the air like a sponge. It blew all over the place and I tucked it beneath the collar of my jacket as I stepped onto the narrow deck. I used to take a shower when I got home from the cottage, the way some kids showered to wash away the scent of cigarettes. I thought Mom would take one sniff and know where I’d been. I deserved to feel guilty, because it wasn’t just the hope of being with Daddy that drew me to the cottage. I wasn’t all that innocent.

I sat on the edge of the deck, my legs dangling in the air, and stared out at the long sliver of moonlight on the water. I rested my elbows on the lower rung of the railing. Saltwater mist wet my cheeks, and when I licked my lips, I tasted my childhood.

I took another hit from the joint and tried to still my mind.

When I was fifteen, I got my level-one driver’s license and was allowed to drive with an adult in the car. One night I had this crazy urge to go to the cottage. I couldn’t say why, but one minute, I was studying for a history exam, and the next I was sneaking out the front door while Mom and Andy slept. There was no moon at all that night and I was scared shitless. It was December and dark and I barely knew how to steer, much less use the gas and the brake, but I made it the seven miles to the cottage. I sat on the deck, shivering with the cold. That was the first time I felt Daddy. He was right next to me, rising up from the sea in a cloud of mist, wrapping his arms around me so tightly that I felt warm enough to take off my sweater. I cried from the joy of having him close. I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t believe in ghosts or premonitions or even in heaven and hell. But I believed Daddy was there in a way I can’t explain. I just knew it was true.

I felt like Daddy was with me a couple more times since then, but tonight I had trouble stilling my mind enough to let him in. I read on the Internet about making contact with people who’d died. Every Web site had different advice, but they all said that stilling your mind was the first thing you needed to do. My mind was racing, though, the weed not mellowing me the way it usually did.

“Daddy,” I whispered into the wind, “I really need you tonight.” Squeezing my eyes more tightly closed, I tried to picture his wavy dark hair. The smile he always wore when he looked at me.

Then I started thinking about telling Mom I wouldn’t be valedictorian when I graduated in a couple of months, like she expected. What would she say? I was an honors student all through school until this semester. I hoped she’d say it was no big thing, since I was already accepted at UNC in Wilmington. Which started me thinking about leaving home. How was Mom going to handle Andy without me?

As a mother, Mom was borderline okay. She was smart and she could be cool sometimes, but she loved Andy so much that she suffocated him, and she didn’t have a clue. My brother was my biggest worry. Probably ninety-five percent of my time, I thought about him. Even when I thought about other things, he was still in a little corner of my mind, the same way I knew that it was spring or that we lived in North Carolina or that I was female.

I talked Mom into letting Andy go to the lock-in tonight. He was fifteen; she had to let go a little and besides, Emily’s mother was one of the chaperones. I hoped he was having a good time and acting normal. His grip on social etiquette was pretty lame. Would they have dancing at the lock-in? It cracked me up to imagine Andy and Emily dancing together.

My cell phone vibrated in my jeans pocket and I pulled it out to look at the display. Mom. I slipped it back in my jeans, hoping she didn’t try to reach me at Amber’s and discover I wasn’t there.

The phone rang again. That was our signal—the call-twice-in-a-row signal that meant This is serious. Answer now. So I jumped up and walked into the house. I pulled the door closed to block out the sound of the ocean before hitting the talk button.

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

“Oh my God, Maggie!” Mom sounded breathless, as though she’d run up the stairs. “The church is on fire!”

“What church?” I froze.

“Drury Memorial. They just cut into the TV to announce it. They showed a picture.” She choked on a sob. “It’s completely engulfed in flames. People are still inside!”

“No way!” The weed suddenly hit me. I was dizzy, and I leaned over the sink in case I got sick. Andy. He wouldn’t know what to do.

“I’m going over there now,” Mom said. Her car door squeaked open, then slammed shut. “Are you at Amber’s?”

“I’m…” I glanced out the door at the dark ocean. “Yes.” She was so easy to lie to. Her focus was always on Andy, hardly ever on me. I stubbed out the joint in the sink. “I’ll meet you there,” I added. “At the church.”

“Hurry!” she said. I pictured her pinching the phone between her chin and shoulder as she started the car.

“Stay calm,” I said. “Drive carefully.”

“You, too. But hurry!”

I was already heading toward the front door. Forgetting about the Condemned sign, I ran right into it, yelping as it knocked the air from my lungs. I ducked beneath it, jumped to the sand and ran down the boardwalk to my Jetta. I was miles from the church in Surf City. Miles from my baby brother. I felt so sick. I began crying as I turned the key in the ignition. It was my fault if something happened to him. I started to pray, something I only did when I was desperate. Dear God, I thought, as I sped down New River Inlet Road, don’t let anything happen to Andy. Please. Let it happen to me instead. I’m the liar. I’m the bad kid.

I drove all the way to Surf City, saying that prayer over and over in my mind until I saw the smoke in the sky. Then I started saying it out loud.

Chapter Three

Laurel

THERE IS ONLY ONE STOPLIGHT ON THE twenty-six miles of Topsail Island. It sits two short blocks from the beach in the heart of Surf City, and it glowed red when my car approached it and was still red when I left it behind. If there’d been a dozen red lights, they wouldn’t have stopped me. People always told me I was a determined woman and I was never more so than the night of the fire.

Miles before the stoplight, I’d seen the yellow glow in the sky, and now I could smell the fire itself. I pictured the old church. I’d only been inside it a few times for weddings and funerals, but I knew it had pine floors, probably soaked with years of oily cleaner, just tempting someone to toss a match on them. I knew more than I wanted to know about fires. I’d lost my parents to one, plus Jamie had been a volunteer firefighter before he died. He told me about clapboard buildings that were nothing but tinder. Probably one of the kids lit a cigarette, tossed the match on the floor. Why oh why did I listen to Maggie? I never should have let Andy go. Maggie was around him so much, she thought of him as a normal kid. You got that way when you were around him a lot. You got used to his oddities, took his limitations for granted. Then you’d see him out in the world and realize he still didn’t fit in, no matter how much you’d tried to make that happen. It was easy to get seduced into thinking he was okay when the environment around him was so carefully controlled and familiar. Tonight, though, I threw him to the wolves.

The street near Drury Memorial was clotted with fire trucks and police cars and ambulances and I had to park a block away in front of Jabeen’s Java and The Pony Express. I’d barely come to a stop before I flew out of my car and started running toward the fire.

A few people stood along the road watching clouds of smoke and steam gush from the church into the bright night sky. There were shouts and sirens and a sickening acrid smell in the air as I ran toward the front doors of the church. Huge floodlights illuminated the building and gave me tunnel vision. All I saw were those gaping doors, smoke belching from them, and they were my target.

“Grab her!” someone shouted.

Long, wiry arms locked around me from behind.

“Let go of me!” I clawed at the arms with my fingernails, but whoever was holding me had a grip like a steel trap.

“We have a staging area set up, ma’am,” he shouted into my ear. “Most of the children are out and safe.”

“What do you mean most?” I twisted against the vise of his arms. “Where’s my son?”

He dragged me across the sandy lot before loosening his hold on me. “They’ve got names of the children on a list,” he said as he let go.

“Where?” I spun around to see the face of Reverend Bill, pastor of Drury Memorial. If there was a person on Topsail Island I didn’t like, it was Reverend Bill. He looked no happier to realize it was me he’d been holding in his arms.

“One of your children was here?” He sounded stunned that I’d let a child of mine set foot in his church. I never should have.

“Andy,” I said. Then I called his name. “Andy!” I shaded my eyes from the floodlights as I surveyed the scene. He’d worn his tan pants, olive green-striped shirt, and new sneakers tonight. I searched for the striped shirt, but the chaos of the scene suddenly overwhelmed my vision. Kids were everywhere, some sprawled on the sand, others sitting up or bent over, coughing. Generators roared as they fueled the lights, and static from police radios crackled in the air. Parents called out the names of their children. “Tracy!” “Josh!” “Amanda!” An EMT leaned over a girl, giving her CPR. The nurse in me wanted to help, but the mother in me was stronger.

Above my head, a helicopter thrummed as it rose from the beach.

“Andy!” I shouted to the helicopter, only vaguely aware of how irrational I must have seemed.

Reverend Bill was clutching my arm, tugging me across the street through a maze of fire trucks and police cars to an area lit by another floodlight and cordoned off with yellow police tape. Inside the tape, people stood shoulder to shoulder, shouting and pushing.

“See that girl over there?” Reverend Bill pointed into the crowd of people.

“Who? Where?” I stood on my toes trying to see better.

“The one in uniform,” he shouted. “She’s taking names, hooking parents up with their kids. You go see—”

I pulled away from him before he could finish the sentence. I didn’t bother looking for an entrance into the cordoned-off area. Instead, I climbed over the tape and plowed into the clot of people.

Parents crowded around the officer, who I recognized as Patty Shales. Her kids went to the elementary school in Sneads Ferry where I was a part-time nurse.

“Patty!” I shouted from the sea of parents. “Do you know where Andy is?”

She glanced over at me just as a man grabbed the clipboard from her hands. I couldn’t see what was happening, but Patty’s head disappeared from my view amid flailing arms and angry shouting.

From somewhere behind me, I heard the words “killed” and “dead.” I swung around to see two women, red eyed, hands to their mouths.

“Who’s killed?” I asked. “Who’s dead?”

One of the women wiped tears from her eyes. “I heard they found a body,” she said. “Some kids was trapped inside. My daughter’s here somewhere. I just pray to the Lord—” She shook her head, unable to finish her sentence.

I felt suddenly nauseated by the smell of the fire, a tarry chemical smell that burned my nostrils and throat.

“My son’s here, too,” I said, though I doubted the woman even heard me.

“Laurel!” Sara Weston lifted the yellow tape and ducked under it, running up to me. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“Andy’s here. Is Keith?”

She nodded, pressing a trembling hand to her cheek. “I can’t find him,” she said. “Someone said he got burned, but I—”

She stopped speaking as an ominous creaking sound came from the far side of the church—the sort of sound a massive tree makes as it starts to fall. Everyone froze, staring at the church as the rear of the roof collapsed in one long wave, sending smoke and embers into the air.

“Oh my God, Laurel!” Sara pressed her face against my shoulder and I wrapped my arm around her as we were jostled by people trying to get closer to Patty. Parents stepped on our feet, pushing us one way, then another, and Sara and I pushed back as a unit, bullish and driven. I probably knew many of the people I fought out of my way, but in the heat of the moment, we were all simply desperate parents. This is what it was like inside, I thought, panic rising in my throat. All the kids pushing at once to get out of the church.

“Patty!” I shouted again, but I was only one voice of many. She heard me, though.

“Laurel!” she yelled. “They took Andy to New Hanover.”

“Oh God.”

“Not life threatening,” Patty called. “Asthma. Some burns.”

I let out my breath in a silent prayer. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

“You go.” Sara tried to push me away, but I held fast to her. “Go, honey,” she repeated. “Go see him.”

I longed to run back to my car and drive to the hospital in Wilmington, but I couldn’t leave Sara. “Not until you’ve heard about Keith,” I said.

“Tracy Kelly’s parents here?” Patty called.

“Here!” a man barked from behind me.

“She’s at Cape Fear.”

“Is Keith Weston on the list?” Sara shouted into the din.

I was afraid Patty hadn’t heard her. She was speaking to a man who held a pair of broken glasses up to his eyes.

“Keith Weston was just airlifted to New Hanover,” Patty called.

“Oh, no.” Sara grabbed my arm so hard I winced. I thought of the helicopter rising into the sky above me.

“Let’s go,” I said, pulling Sara with me through the sea of people. Tears I’d been holding in spilled down my cheeks as we backed away, letting other parents take our places. “We can drive together.”

“We’ll go separately,” Sara said, already at a run away from me. “In case one of us has to stay longer or—”

“Mom!” Maggie suddenly appeared at my side, winded and shivering. “They told me Uncle Marcus is here somewhere, but I couldn’t find out anything about Andy.”

“He’s at New Hanover.” I grabbed her hand. “I’m parked over by Jabeen’s. Let’s go.”

I took one glance back at the smoking church. The ragged siding that still remained standing glowed red against the eerie gray sky. I hadn’t thought about my former brother-in-law being there, but of course he was. I pictured Marcus inside the church, moving slowly through the smoke with his air pack on, feeling his way, searching for children who never stood a chance. Could he have been hurt when the roof collapsed? Please, no. And for the briefest of moments, I shifted my worry from Andy to him.

Maggie and I barely spoke on the way to Wilmington. She cried nearly the whole time, sniffling softly, shredding a tissue in her lap. My eyes were on the road, my foot pressing the gas pedal nearly to the floor. I imagined Andy trying to make sense out of the chaos of a fire and its aftermath. Simply moving the lock-in from the youth building to the church had probably been more than he could handle.

“Why did you say they moved the lock-in to the church?” I asked when we were halfway there.

“The electricity went out in the youth building.” Her voice broke. “I heard some kids died,” she said.

“Maybe just rumors.”

“I’m so sorry I talked you into letting Andy—”

“Shh.” I reached for her hand. “It’s not your fault, all right? Don’t even think that.” But inside I was angry at her, at how cavalierly she’d told me, Oh, Mother, he’ll be fine!

I tried to pull my hand from hers to make a turn, but she held it tightly, with a need that was rare for Maggie, and I let our hands stay locked together for the rest of the trip.

The crammed waiting area of the emergency room smelled of soot and antiseptic and was nearly as chaotic as the scene at the church. The throng of people in front of the glass reception window was four deep. I tried to push through, carving a space for Maggie and myself with my arms.

“Y’all have to wait your turn,” said a large, wide woman as she blocked my progress.

“I need to find out how my son is.” I kept pushing.

“We all need to know how our children are,” said the woman.

A man in the waiting area let out sudden gut-wrenching sobs. I didn’t turn to look. I wanted to plug my ears with my fingers. Maggie leaned against me a little.

“Maybe it was the electrical,” she said.

“What?”

“You know, how the electricity was out in the youth building? Maybe that’s connected to the fire somehow.”

The woman ahead of us left the window and it was finally our turn. “They told me my son was brought here,” I said. “Andrew Lockwood.”

“All right, ma’am. Have a seat.”

“No!” I wailed, the sound escaping my mouth like a surprise. “Please!” I started to cry, as though I’d been holding the tears in by force until that moment. “Tell me how he is! Let me go to him. He’s…he has special needs.”

“Mom…” Maggie tried to pull me away from the window.

The receptionist softened. “I know, honey,” she said. “Your boy’s okay. You take a seat and someone will come get you right quick.”

I nodded, trying to pull myself together, but I felt like fabric frayed too much to be mended. Maggie led me to one of the seats in the waiting area and when I looked at her I realized that she, too, had dissolved in tears once more. I hugged her, unable to tell whether it was her shoulders quaking or my own.

“Laurel?”

I saw a woman heading toward us from the other side of the room. Her face and T-shirt were smeared with soot, her hair coated with so much ash I couldn’t have said what color it was. Beneath her eyes, two long, clean trails ran down her cheeks. She’d had a good cry herself. She smiled now, though, as she took both my hands in hers. I recognized the slightly lopsided curve of the lips before I did the woman. Robin Carmichael. Emily’s mother.

“Robin!” I said. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she said. “And Andy’s fine, too,” she added quickly, knowing those were the words I needed to hear before anything else.

“They won’t let me see—”

“What about Emily?” Maggie interrupted.

Robin nodded toward the other side of the waiting area, where I spotted Emily curled up on a chair, hugging her knees and holding a bloodstained cloth to her forehead.

“She’s gonna be okay,” Robin said, “but we’re waiting to get her seen. She cracked her glasses right in two and got a little cut over her eyebrow.” Robin still held my hands and now she looked hard into my eyes. “Andy saved Emily’s life.” Her voice broke and I felt her grip tighten on my fingers. “He saved a load of people tonight, Laurel.”

“Andy?” Maggie and I said at the same time.

“Yeah, I know.” Robin clearly shared our amazement. “But I swear, it’s the truth.”

“Mrs. Lockwood?” A woman in blue scrubs stood at the entrance to the waiting area.

“Yes!” I stood up quickly.

“Come with me.”

We were ushered into one of the treatment areas I remembered from three years earlier when Andy broke his arm at the skating rink. The room had several beds separated by curtains. Someone was screaming behind one of the curtains; someone else cried. But the curtain was not drawn around Andy’s bed. He was bare chested and barefooted, but wearing his now-filthy pants. A woman in blue scrubs was bandaging his left forearm, and he wore an oxygen cannula below his nose. Andy spotted us and leaped off the bed, the gauzy dressing dangling from his arm, the cannula snapping off his face.

“Mom!” he shouted. “There was a big fire and I’m a hero!”

“Andy!” the nurse called sharply. “I need to finish your arm.”

Maggie and I pulled Andy into a three-way hug, and I breathed in that horrible acrid scent from the fire in great gulps. “Are you okay, sweetie?” I asked, still holding him tight. He fidgeted beneath my arms, and I knew they’d given him something for the asthma. I could tell by the spring-loaded tension in the muscles of his back, that’s how well I knew my son. Still, I wouldn’t let go of him.

Maggie came to her senses first, pulling away from us. “The nurse still needs you, Panda Bear,” she said. She lifted his arm and I saw the angry red swath that ran from his wrist to the bend of his elbow. First degree, I thought with relief. I led him back into the cubicle and looked at the nurse as Andy climbed onto the bed.

“Is that the worst of it?” I asked, pointing to his arm.

She nodded as she fit the cannula to his nostrils again. “Check it tomorrow for blisters. We’ll give you a prescription for pain. He’ll be okay, though. He’s a lucky fella.”

“I made a new friend,” Andy said. “Layla. I saved her.”

“I’m glad, sweetie.” I dusted ashes from his hair until its nutmeg color showed through.

The nurse carefully taped the gauze to his arm again. “He doesn’t seem to feel pain,” she said, looking at me.

“Not when he’s wired like this.” Maggie boosted herself onto the end of the bed.

“He’ll feel it later.” I remembered the swim meet last year when he hit his head on the side of the pool. He swam lap after lap, blood trailing behind him, not even aware he was hurt until the adrenaline had worn off.

“Did you hear me, Mom?” Andy said. “I saved Layla.”

“Emily’s mother told us you saved several people.” I smoothed the elastic strap of the cannula flat behind his ear. My need to touch him, to feel the life in him, was overpowering. “What happened?”

“Not several,” he corrected me. “Everybody.”

“You need to talk to him?” The nurse was looking over our heads, and I turned to see a man in a police uniform standing a few feet behind us. He looked at Andy.

“You Andy Lockwood?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered for him.

The man took a few steps closer. “You’re his mother?”

I nodded. “Laurel Lockwood. And this is my daughter, Maggie.”

The nurse patted Andy’s bare shoulder. “Give a holler, you need anything,” she said, pulling the curtain closed around us as she left.

“I’m ATF Agent Frank Foley,” the man said. “How about you tell me what happened tonight, Andy?”

“I was the hero.” Andy grinned.

The agent looked uncertain for a moment, then smiled. “Glad to hear it,” he said. “We can always use more heroes. Where were you when the fire began?” He flipped open a small notebook.

“With Emily.”

“That’s his friend,” I said. “Emily Carmichael.”

“Inside the church?” Agent Foley asked, writing.

“Yes, but she’s my friend everywhere.”

Maggie laughed. I knew she couldn’t help herself.

“He’s asking if you and Emily were inside the church when the fire broke out,” I translated.

“Yes.”

“Where in the church were you? Were you standing or sitting or…”

“One question at a time.” I held up a hand to stop him. “Trust me,” I said. “It’ll be easier that way.” I looked at Andy. “Where were you in the church when the fire broke out?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Try to think,” I prodded. “Were you by the front door or closer to the altar?”

“By the baptism pool thing.”

“Ah, good.” The agent wrote something on his notepad. “Sitting or standing?”

“I stood next to Emily. Her shirt was inside out.” He looked at me. “She used to do that all the time, remember?”

I nodded. “So you were standing with Emily near the baptism pool thing,” I said, trying to keep him focused. “And then what happened?”

“People yelled fire fire fire!” Andy’s dark eyes grew big, his face animated with the memory. “Then they started running past us. Then some boys grabbed a…the long thing and said one two three and broke the window with the bald man.”

It was my turn to laugh as the words tumbled out of his mouth. An hour ago, I’d been afraid I’d never hear my precious son speak again.

Agent Foley, though, eyed him with suspicion. “Were there drugs there, Andy?” he asked. “Did you drink or take any substances tonight?”

“No, sir,” Andy said. “I’m not allowed.”

The agent stopped writing and gnawed his lip. “Do you get it?” he asked me. “The long thing? The bald man?”

I shook my head.

“Are you still talking about being inside the church, Panda?” Maggie asked.

“Yes and the boys caught on fire, but there were no ladders, so I told them to Stop! Drop! Roll! and some of them did. Keith was there.” He looked at me. “He was mean to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Sara was my best friend and I was worried sick about her son, but Keith could be a little shit sometimes. “You mean there were no ladders to escape the fire, like the ladder we have in your room at home?”

“Right. There weren’t any,” Andy said.

“Okay,” Agent Foley said. “So while this was happening, where were you?”

“I told you, at the baptism thing.” Andy furrowed his forehead at the man’s denseness.

The agent flipped a few pages of his notepad. “People told me you got out of the church and—”

“Right,” Andy said. “Me and Emily went out the boys’ room window, and there was a big metal box on the ground, and we climbed onto it.”

“And then what happened?”

“We were outside.”

“And what did you see outside? Did you see any person out—”

“One question at a time,” I reminded him.

“What did you see outside, Andy?” Agent Foley asked.

“Fire. Everywhere except by the metal box. And Emily was screaming that nobody could get out the front door because fire was there. I saw somebody did get out the door and they were on fire. I don’t know who it was, though.”

“Oh God.” Maggie buried her face in her hands, her long dark hair spilling in waves over her arms. I knew she was picturing the scene as I was. Sitting there with Andy, it was easy to forget how devastating the fire had been for so many people. I thought again of Keith. Where was he?

“Did you see anyone else outside beside the person on fire?” the agent asked.

“Emily.”

“Okay. So you went back in.”

“You went back in, Andy?” I repeated, wondering whatever possessed him to reenter the burning church.

Andy nodded. “I climbed on the metal box and got into the boys’ room and then called for everyone to follow me.”

“And they did?” the agent asked.

“Did they what?”

“Follow you?”

“Not exactly. I let some of them, like my friend Layla, go first.” He pulled the cannula from his nostrils and looked at me. “Do I still have to wear this?”

“A little longer,” I said. “Until the nurse comes back and says you can take it off.”

“So you let Layla go out the window first?” Agent Foley nudged.

“And some other kids. Then I followed them. But some were still following me, too.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s hard to explain.”

“You’re doing fine, sweetie,” I said.

“How did you know the…metal box was there?” the agent asked.

“I don’t remember.”

“Try to remember,” I said.

“I saw it when I went to the bathroom.”

“When was that?” the agent asked.

“When I had to pee.”

Agent Foley gave up, closing his notepad with the flick of a wrist.

“Sounds like you are a hero, Andy,” he said.

“I know.”

The agent motioned me to follow him. We walked outside the curtained cubicle. He looked at me curiously.

“What’s his, uh, disability?” he asked. “Brain injury?”

“Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder,” I said, the words as familiar to me as my own name.

“Really?” He looked surprised, glancing over my shoulder as though he could see through the curtain. “Don’t those kids usually…you know, have a look to them?”

“Not always,” I said. “Depends on what part of them was developing when the alcohol affected them.”

“You’re his adoptive mother then?”

The police on Topsail Island know me and they know Andy and they know our story. An ATF agent in Wilmington, though, was a world away.

“No, I’m his biological mother,” I said. “Sober fifteen years.”

His smile was small. Tentative. Finally he spoke. “You’ve got a year on me,” he said. “Congratulations.”

“You, too.” I smiled back.

“So—” he looked down at his closed notepad “—how much of what he says can I believe?”

“All of it,” I said with certainty. “Andy’s honest to a fault.”

“He’s an unusual kid.” He looked over my shoulder again.

“You don’t need to tell me that.”

“No, I mean, in a fire, seventy-five percent of the people try to get out the front door. That’s their first reaction. They’re like a flock of sheep. One starts in that direction and they all follow. The other twenty-five percent look for an alternate exit. A back door. Bash open a window. Who’s the bald-headed guy he was talking about?”

“I have no idea.”

“Anyway, so Andy here goes for the window in the men’s room. Strange choice, but turns out to be the right one.”

“Well,” I said, “kids like Andy don’t think like that first seventy-five percent, or even the twenty-five percent. It was sheer luck. He could just as easily have gone for…I don’t know, the ladies’ room window, let’s say, and still be stuck there.” I hugged my arms across my chest at the thought. “Do you know if everyone got out okay? I heard rumors that some didn’t.”

He shook his head. “This was a bad one,” he said. “Last report, three dead.”

I sucked in my breath, hand to my mouth. “Oh, no.” Some parents wouldn’t have the luxury of hearing their children tell what happened tonight. “Do you know who?” I thought of Keith. Of Marcus.

“No names yet,” he said. “Two of the kids and one adult is all I know. A lot of serious burns and smoke inhalation. This E.R.’s packed tight as a can of sardines.”

“What’s the metal box?” I asked.

“The AC unit. Whoever laid the fire skipped around it.”

“Whoever…You’re saying this was arson?”

He held up a hand as if to erase his words. “Not for me to say.”

“I know there was an electrical problem at the youth building. Could that have affected the church?”

“There’ll be a full investigation,” he said.

“Is that why you asked Andy if he saw anyone else outside the church?”

“Like I said, there’ll be a full investigation,” he repeated, and I knew that would now be his answer, no matter what question I asked.

I opened the curtain around Andy’s bed once I returned to his cubicle, and noticed a man sitting on the edge of a bed on the other side of the room. His head was bandaged and his T-shirt-clad broad shoulders drooped. When he looked up to say something to his nurse, the movement made him wince. I recognized the dark hair, the thick-lashed brown eyes. He passed a tremulous hand over his face and I saw the sheen of tears on his cheek.

Andy’s nurse was listening to his lungs. She asked him to breathe deeply. To cough. I took that moment to whisper to Maggie.

“Ben Trippett’s over there,” I said. Ben was a volunteer firefighter, twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He was also Andy’s swim-team coach and I wasn’t sure how Andy would react to seeing him there, injured and upset.

Maggie started as if I’d awakened her from a dream, then followed my gaze to the other side of the room. She knew Ben fairly well, since she coached the younger kids’ swim team.

Maggie got up, and before I could stop her, walked across the room toward Ben. He’d be embarrassed that we’d seen him crying, but Maggie was seventeen and I had to let her make her own errors in judgment. Her back was to me as she greeted Ben and I couldn’t see his reaction. But then she pulled a rolling stool close to the bed and sat down and they talked, both of them with their heads bowed as though they were sharing a prayer. Ben’s shoulders shook, and Maggie reached out and rested her hand on his wrist. She amazed me at times. Had she learned that compassion from me, watching me with Andy? I doubted it. All good things about Maggie had been Jamie’s doing. A seventeen-year-old girl finding it in herself to comfort a grown man. I was, for just a moment, in awe of her.

Andy’s nurse straightened up. “Let me take your vitals and then I’ll see about getting you discharged,” she said.

Andy stuck out his left arm for the blood pressure cuff.

“Your other arm, Andy,” the nurse said. “Remember? You need to be careful with the burned arm for a few days.”

She took his blood pressure and temperature and then left us alone.

“I’m going to write a book about being a hero,” Andy said, as I reached beneath the bed for the plastic bag containing his shirt and shoes.

“Maybe someday you will.” I considered bringing him down to earth a little, but how often did he get to crow about an accomplishment? Other people would not be so kind, though.

Opening the bag, I recoiled from the pungent scent of his clothes. “Andy, what you did tonight was very brave and smart,” I said.

He nodded. “Right.”

I thought about letting him leave the hospital without his odorous shirt or shoes, but it was chilly outside. I handed him the striped shirt.

“But the fire was a very serious thing and a lot of people were hurt.” I hesitated. It was best that he heard it from me. “Some died.”

He shook his head violently. “I saved them.”

“You couldn’t save everyone, though. That’s not your fault. I know you tried. But don’t talk to people about how you’re a hero. It’s bragging. Remember, we don’t brag.”

“Is it bragging if it’s in a book?”

“That would be okay,” I said.

Behind me, the glass door plowed open and I turned to see Dawn Reynolds fly through the room toward Ben.

“Oh my God! Ben!” She nearly knocked Maggie off the stool as she rushed to pull Ben into her arms. “I was so scared,” she said, crying. Tears welled in my own eyes as I watched the love and relief pour from her. She and Ben lived together in a little beach cottage in Surf City, and Dawn worked with Sara at Jabeen’s Java.

“I’m okay.” Ben rubbed her arms in reassurance. “I’m all right.”

Maggie quietly stood up, offering the stool to Dawn, then walked back to us.

“Is he okay?” I nodded toward Ben.

“Not exactly.” She bit her lip. “He has a seven-year-old daughter who lives with his ex-wife in Charlotte. He keeps thinking about her being trapped like that. He’s upset that people…” She looked at Andy, then me. “You know.”

“I explained to Andy that some people died in the fire,” I said.

Maggie started to cry again. She reached in her jeans pocket for her shredded tissue. “I just don’t understand how this could happen.”

“I’m going to write a book about it so it won’t be bragging,” Andy said as he pulled on one of his shoes.

Maggie stuffed her tissue in her pocket again. She lifted Andy’s leg so his foot rested on her hip as she tied his shoelaces. “Ben said a beam landed on his head,” she said. “Uncle Marcus was with him.”

Marcus. I remembered what the ATF agent had said: Two kids and one adult. And for the second time that night, my fear and worry shifted from my son to my brother-in-law.