-1-

Jocelyn called me in a panic on her lunch, telling me to come to her house during the storm.

I told her we’d be fine and that I was prepared.

And I thought I had been.

Tropical storms had come through the commune all the time.We’d all be ushered to  a designated  house on the commune and sit in the basement and wait for it to pass. Sometimes the power would go , but it always came right back on.

It was close to Mason’s bedtime when this storm touched near Freeport. When the wind got so bad that the windows started rattling, I moved us into the bathroom. I put the comforters and all the pillows in the into the bathtub and lay inside the tub with Mason, gently rocking him to sleep.

 I figure we’d just go to sleep in the tub and wake up in the morning when it was over.

But when the power goes off the entire apartment goes pitch black. My startled jump makes Mason cry.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “It’ll be back in a second.”

When the power doesn’t come back on after an hour I pick him up and attempt to carefully walk out of the bathroom and into the living room, but I trip over a shoe and accidentally bump his head against the door frame. He starts screaming.

“I’m sorry, honey.” I kiss his head and try to keep back my own tears. “I’m sorry.”

 I stumble around the piles of clothes and toys on the floor until I find Rhett’s car keys on the kitchen table and click on the penlight he kept on it. I used the penlight flashlight to find some of Mason’s light up toys and bring them all into the bathroom until we are surrounded in a rainbow glow

“The power will be back on soon,” I tell him. He keeps crying, but I think he is more upset at me for interrupting his sleep than about the lights being out.

I put an ice cube I took from the freezer on his forehead to keep him cool but that upsets him more so I  give him his pacifier and  turn on some soft music on my iPod. Just as he starts to settle someone pounds on the front door.  

I was so stupid.

I didn’t know what I was doing.

I set Mason down in the tub. He spits out the pacifier and starts wailing, but I don’t know who is at the door and I don’t want them to hurt us. I use the penlight and hurriedly pull everything out of the top of our bedroom closet until I find red lockbox where Rhett kept his gun. I carefully type the code in but the lock box beeps orange and denies me. I try the code again and I get the same orange light and the box won’t open.

He’d changed the codes.

The knocking on the door pounds again.

I grab the hefty glass candy dish Rhett’s grandmother had given us and peak out the window. I see a figure, but they are too dark to make out any features.

“Juliana !” a  hoarse voice screams through the door. “Open the damn door, girl !"

Recognizing the voice as Jocelyn’s I open the door, sending in a spray of rain and wind whipping at my clothes.

Jocelyn is wearing a bright orange poncho with reflective light strips and carrying two industrial flashlights.

She walks in and shuts the door.

“You scared me--” I start

“You’re phone line fell I couldn’t call,” she says and starts walking around the apartment.  “It’s startin’ to flood and all the powers out. We need to get to the shelter. Macy’s got her kids but we need to get to Mama now. Come on, sweetie where is Mason’s diaper bag ?”

“I just have to find it,” I tell her.

“Hurry up.” she snaps at me. “We don’t have much time.”

Jocelyn hears Mason crying from the bathroom and goes to get him while I find the diaper bag in his room. She  starts barking a list of things I should put into it and I try to find them quickly. I’d never seen her this direct and I just do what she says. 

We cover Mason’s car seat with her extra poncho we run out to the car. The water outside comes to my ankles and I don’t even see where we are going with the flashlight , but Jocelyn grabs my wrist and steers me towards two blurry lights that turn out to be  her Camry.

Savannah is unusually quiet in the backseat, she just looks panicked as I force the car seat into place and we start driving. With no streetlights, Jocelyn has to use her bright lights to even get an inch of visibility in front of her.

“Shit,” Jocelyn says as the car comes to a sudden stop, sending my head into the back of the seat.

 A fallen tree lay in the middle of the road, blocking our path out.

“That wasn’t there before--we just came this way,” Savannah says under her breath.

Jocelyn quickly puts the car in reverse, but instead of moving backwards we hear a hard crunch as she hits something.

“Was that the wall ?,” I ask

“I don’t know, I can’t see a thing.”She puts on her brake lights and I can see the outline of another car behind us.

I watch a man step out of the car yelling, Jocelyn locks the doors and rolls down her window as he approaches, the rain instantly drenching his suit.

“What the fuck, lady ?,” the man shouts over the rain.

“You’re lights weren’t on, sir,” Jocelyn shouts back.

“Yeah. They’re broken--”

“Well, this is a storm and I have children--”

“Then you should be inside,” he barks at her. “What ? You think you can just get away with that--”

“Are you serious, right now ?" Jocelyn quickly writes her phone number down on a piece of paper and hands it to him before pulling away.

“Mama, maybe we should just go back to the house,” Savannah says, she sounded like she was crying.

“No, honey,” Jocelyn says. “We need to get Nana. The shelter will have a generator. It’ll be fine, girls.”

Jocelyn takes a backroad to the Mississippi border going just 10 miles an hour. We somehow make it to her mother's house with the car half driving and half gliding over the water.

Jocelyn's mother, Mrs. Sullivan, seems to think Jocelyn is overreacting when we finally get to her house and get her in the car, but Jocelyn is determined.  We're on our way to Southaven Bible Church just as all the other lights in the neighborhood go out.

When our car pulls up to SBC,  a group of men run out with large umbrellas. They help Mrs. Sullivan in and we follow behind them. We walk right past where they usually held service and into the church basement  where cots and chairs have been set up around the recreation space.

“Joss! Over here !,” Aunt Macy yells from where she’s sitting on the floor between cots and chairs.

Her kids, who were usually so well behaved, were crying and climbing all over her asking her when they could go home. She and Jocelyn immediately hug and help situate Mrs. Sullivan on to one of the cots. I notice one of the men who helped us inside is West, Rhett’s cousin. His entire body is soaked, he must have been running out to get people all night.

“Ya’ll okay ?,” West asks Savannah and I.

“I think we’re okay,” I say even though Savannah looks shaken. 

“Have you heard from Rhett ?,” West asks me, rubbing Savannah’s back.

“No. I…I forgot the cell phone,” I realize. “How long do you think we will be in here ?”

He shrugs

The lights in the basement flicker out and a few people scream.

“I better help Dad with the generator,” West says and leaves.

With all of the people and commotion Mason is suddenly no longer interested in sleeping. I lay a blanket out on the floor and let him lay on it. He was almost six months had started army crawling a little bit. If he saw something he wanted he would do everything in his power to get to it, much to the amusement of the people around us. I put his pacifier just out of reach and he’d reach and reach until he could get it and squealed in delight when he got it.

As the night goes on new people begin to pour into the church basement and I catch snippets of stories about trees crashing through houses, buildings being blown away and flooding.

“Cookie?,” a bright voice offers.

I turn to see Brooke situating herself  between Savannah and I with a plate full of carefully arranged store bought chocolate chip cookies

“Isn’t it a little late for cookies ?,” Savannah asks.

It was well past midnight now.

“I think it’s fair to say the rules don’t apply right now,” Brooke sighs.

“What are you doing in Southaven ?,” Savannah asks Brooke.

Brooke lived in the same trailer park in Freeport as Deacon. I suddenly couldn’t remember if Deacon was home or on the road this week.

“Amber was coming to the church to help since she works here part time so I came too,” Brooke says. “We don’t have AC, so when the power went off we had to get out of dodge.”

She gestures over to where Amber was enthusiastically leading a group of kids in a song and dance. Brooke waves and blows kisses towards Cayden, the youngest boy in the group, who giggles back at her.

“This kinda reminds me of a lock in,” Brooke shrugs eating a cookie. “It’s kind of fun.”

I didn’t know what a lock in was. This reminded me more of being on the commune but I don’t say that in front of Brooke and Savannah.

“In that case this is my first lock-in,” Savannah huffs. ”I wish I knew where Caleb was. Mama just freaked out and wouldn’t let me call anyone--,”

“He lives in the same neighborhood as Amber, right ?,” Brooke says. “Those split level brick houses are always fine. Have ya’ll talked to Rhett ? I bet he’s freaking the fuck out.”

“No,” Savannah says. “But Aunt Macy has a phone and been trying to call his school to tell him we’re okay.”

As the night goes on more  people are escorted into the church basement.  I knew I wasn’t going to sleep so I happily give up my cot as space becomes sparse.

There was a TV on mute in the corner that a large crowd was gathered around, glued to the screen. I wasn’t sure I was ready to see what was going on out there. We’d had storms, but this seemed like something worse.

I go to the little stack of books that had been brought down from the staff offices and use the penlight to browse. Most of them were confusing biblical texts that I put down after a few pages. Just when I settle into a novel called The Shack  I feel a tap on my shoulder.

I jump and find Reverend Ellis looking down at me.

He looked like the news anchors currently on the television--uncharacteristically disheveled and tired. 

“Can’t sleep?,” he asks me

 I shake my head.

“How would you like something to keep you busy ? We could use some help getting breakfast ready.”

 “I’d be happy to,” I say even though I’m not sure that is the truth.

 I walk with him upstairs and as we get to the kitchen he pauses at the door. I can hear the flurry of activity on the other side.

“I have a feeling the next few days will be…interesting,” he says quietly. “Can I talk to you for a minute in my office ?”

I  freezes and quick terror runs through my body at his words. Unlike the basement and kitchen, the upstairs didn’t have power and the idea of being alone in a dark office with a man makes me want to run. My sensible brain knew that Reverend Ellis wasn’t dangerous, but the broken part of my brain just saw him as a threat.

“Um,” I start in a near whisper. “Can we just talk right here ?”

“I don’t think it’s best,” he says in a low voice. “It’ about your marriage certificate…It’s been invalidated.”

“Why ?,” I ask.

“The paperwork is in my office,” he tells me.

I reluctantly follow him into his office where he quickly lights some candles and turns on flashlights.  Rev. Ellis sits behind his desk and motions for me to sit on the other side. He leaves the door open.

“Did this happen because I lied about being married before ?” I ask him. “I’m sorry I lied--”

“Not exactly,” he says pulling out an envelope from the state of Louisiana. “It’s because you’re still married.”

“No,” I say. “No, I signed the papers. That marriage should have been annulled.”

“According to this letter neither your or your ex-husband were legal residents of Florida so the annulment was rejected. The rejection paperwork was sent to your Florida address--”

“He doesn’t live there,” I explain. “It’s been years. I just assumed it was done. Rhett is going to kill me--”

“It’s not your fault. We can fix this--”

“Okay. What do I need to do ?”

 “It’s quite a process. You’ll need to go to the parish where you are married, fill out a petition, serve your former husband the papers and go before a judge who will determine if it can be annulled…Juliana I have to ask if Rhett knows--”

“Yes,” I said. “It was an  arranged marriage--”

He tries to act calm, but his eyebrows lift at this.

“I mean—it’s a long story,” I add.

“I’m sorry to get involved,” he tells me. “But you weren’t responding to the letters from the clerk’s office--”

“I must have missed it,” I said, mentally kicking myself for never checking the mailbox.

“Well…I’m always here to help,” he says handing me the notices and standing. “Once all of this dies down, of course.”

 I slip the paperwork in my pocket and he leads me out of his office and into the kitchen where I am quickly recruited into pouring hundreds of bowls of cereal. By 9AM the chapel was filled with men, women and children sitting in the pews eating their breakfast while sharing short testimonies.

Towards the end, when people were getting antsy, a group of musicians started leading the group in prayer songs and hymnals. Mason had just started learning to clap and I clapped his hands together to the beat of the music. It was informal and spontaneous and the most fun I’d had sitting in that chapel.

But the fun wore off quickly.

We were stuck in the church basement for 2 days before the roads were deemed drivable. More and more people came to take shelter and many of us who went to the church were put to work--which I was thankful for. It kept us busy as people became angry and belligerent. There were several fights. The generator had to be turned on and off  to preserve the oil and we were all surviving mostly on peanut butter sandwiches and dry cereal by the last day.

But we were the lucky ones.

 

***

 -2-

When we leave the shelter the weather outside feels exactly the same, but everything else was different.  Power lines criss crossed over the streets and rows of trees were leaning to the side. Some of the cars were so water damaged they couldn’t run, but Jocelyn’s Camry still worked.

We take a quick personal tour of the destruction.

All of the trees in Macy’s yard had fallen and her windows were blown out. The rain had pelted inside her living room and the carpet smelled molded and water logged but the rest of the house looked fine.

“I always wanted hardwood,” Macy says through a nervous laugh.

Mrs. Sullivan’s house doesn’t fair as well. Her house had been built in the 1940’s and  the pipes had burst and flooded the entire place. The awning she kept her car under had fallen and smashed her only car.

On the way back to Freeport we stop by Wil and Aubrey’s house. Two trees has crashed through their roof and their entire top floor was soaked in water. They’d all been taking shelter in their basement when it happened.

As we got closer to Freeport I notice Savannah getting more upset, I think she was afraid her home would be gone. I was a little afraid myself, but I tried not to let it show.

But despite it all the yellow house was mostly standing. The sunroom screen was gone, the walls and roof were leaking and the power was out but the house still stood.

Rhett and I's apartment was another story. The roof and plumbing of the building had never been stable and the pipes had cracked. Dirty water  leaked into every crevice and had already started molding in the walls causing big gaping holes. The windows were gone and the front door had been blown off the hinges, tracking windblown dirt through the floor.

We spend all day packing up everything we can salvage and moving it to Jocelyn’s house. When night falls  we take any non-perishable foods that we have and head back to the church, where atleast there is power.

On the way back to the church I call Rhett’s school.

"It's Juliana--"

“I’m sorry,” Shay, the receptionist on base answers on the other end before hanging up.

I’d been calling her four times a day since the storm hit. She was answering dispatches and her phone lines were so busy we’d developed a short hand. I knew Rhett wasn’t at school anymore, but I just wanted to know where he was.

As we pull back into the Southaven Bible Church I spot West, Brooke and Amber carrying supplies into a truck. Amber waves Savannah and I over while Brooke keeps working, she’s practically running back and forth with big cases of water.

“Did ya’ll see Choctaw Park ?,” Amber asks.

I shake my head, we hadn’t had time. That was the mobile home park Brooke and Deacon lived in.

“Gone,” Amber says quietly. “…It looked like rubble,”

“Oh my god,” Savannah says behind me.

“What is she going to do ?,” I ask looking towards Brooke who was taking instructions from West.

Amber shrugs.

“We sorted through the rubble and Cayden’s Dad’s parents took him ,” she says. “Brooke’s kind of a mess. She may have to go back to her parents but I think I’ll offer her to stay with me. Right now she's coming to New Orleans with me--she needs the distraction."

"What's in New Orleans ? I thought we were supposed to stay in shelters ?," Savannah asks.

"Reverend Roads thinks they'll be a call for relief missions soon so we're getting a head start," West  explains.                                                

“What about the people here ?,” I ask, thinking of the hundreds of people from who had taken shelter in the church basement.

"They're fine here. It’s even worse in the city…I guess the levys broke,” Amber tells me. “Parts of the city are…just gone, like underwater.”

“I want to come too,” Savannah says eagerly. “It’s better than staying here until our power comes back on.”

“You might have to convince Ms. Jocelyn,” Amber says. “You’re underage.”

Jocelyn doesn’t end up needing that much convincing. The power in the salon wasn’t going to be on for a month at the earliest and she didn’t have anything to do but be on hold with insurance agents. So, we went to New Orleans.

 

***
-3-

“Look how tiny,” I say to Mason holding up the newborn onesie. He makes a noise and reaches for it. The little outfit practically fit in the palm of my hand.

“So, cute!” Macy says next to me.

I fold the onesie and put it in the white paper bag of clothes before handing it to the mother in front of me.  She smiled as she took the bag of clothes but her eyes looked tired and defeated. Her baby was only a few weeks old and seemed so tiny and fragile compared to Mason. She’d had the baby two weeks ago and had lost everything when her home in the city flooded.

 “Thank you,” the mother says. Her baby was a girl, but I’d given her some of Masons clothes and any newborn things I had been able to save from our apartment.

The relief effort had been set up at New Faith Ministries, an enormous, sprawling megachurch just outside of the city. The church has a large campus and much like us, other churches came with a caravan of volunteers to pitch in where they could. We’d been there for two days when federal agencies and other nonprofits showed up  with their tents and resources

Savannah and Jocelyn had actually gone off into the city to help people sort  for anything they could keep. Because I had Mason with me I was mostly washing and sorting through the donated clothes and setting them up for display in the large tent marked clothing. It seemed more decent for people to pick clothes that had been folded and sorted than to  have to look in piles.

There were thousands of people wondering the church grounds and I kept Mason in a carrier on my chest so he wasn’t in the way. He learned to occupy himself by trying to pull my ponytail.   

When the mother with the infant leaves, Macy hugs me.

“Praise the lord,” she says under her breath.

She’d been doing that a lot.

Every night a large group would gather in one of the chapels and people would just tell their stories.  We heard terrible things. Part of the 9^th ward were flooded to the rooftops and some residents were still trapped. Some  stood and admitted they questioned if God even existed anymore, but quite a few people still had their faith.  I wasn’t sure  what I believed. 

A volunteer dumps another pile of donations on the table and Macy lets go of me so we can go back to sorting. The silence of our work is broken by her suddenly her half gasping and half screaming before grabbing my arm.  

At first I think it’s an insect—we’d found quite a few abnormally large bugs in the donations.

“What is--?,” I ask her.

“J!” I hear someone call behind me.  I turn so quickly that I forget Mason is on my chest and loose balance, stumbling a little.

It’s was so strange seeing him here.

I race across the parking lot until we meet half way on the grassy field. Rhett pecks my lips and hugs me hard. For the first time since this all started I start crying. I’m shaking as Rhett pulls Mason out of the carrier and hugs him.

Rhett was wearing his dark blue operational uniform with work boots. It was a standard work uniform for Coast Guardsman. I’d seen a lot of Guardsman around the church grounds, but none of them knew Rhett and I’d given up the chance of seeing him here.  

“You found us,” I say breathlessly as Mason starts crying and reaching for me.

Rhett shushes him softly and rocks him back and forth.

“I’ve been here all week,” Rhett says. “We’ve been working these crazy 12 and 18 hour shifts…shit is real bad, baby. It's so fucking bad.”

“I know,” I say.

“I heard there was a group from Southaven here and I figured I was going to find someone to get a message to you…… I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Your Mom wanted to help and I kind of got into it,” I tell him and he kisses my forehead.

Rhett walks with me back  to the clothing donations table, he hugs and kisses Macy too. He stands off to the side, playing with Mason while we manage the donations. Sometimes people see his uniform and pepper him with questions which he tries to answer with more patience than I'd ever seen him use.

I tell him about how we took shelter in the church and about the damage to the apartment. When Rhett has to go back to base it strikes me how uncharacteristically quiet he was as he listens to Macy and I talk.

It scares me.

 

***

-4-

“You do know we could all fucking get together and sue you, right ?,” Rhett snaps into the phone.

“You’d lose more money than you’d get,” Mr. McAllister, our (former) landlord fires back over the speakerphone.  “I have a lot of shit on my plate now, Rhett. Ya’ll should have had renter’s insurance. I told ya’ll.”

“What about the deposit ?,” I ask in the sweetest voice I can summon.

“Look, the lease agreement says you can only get the deposit back if the apartment was in the same shape it was when I rented it to you and it ain’t," Mr. McAllister says. "Ya’ll should be lucky I’m not charging you a fee for breaking the lease--”

“There’s a god damn half inch of water in the place because that  roof was a piece of shit,” Rhett retorts

“A lease agreement is a lease agreement," he argues.  "You could have inspected it. I’m having this conversation 10 times a day  with you ungrateful renters and you sure as hell aren’t going to change anything. I wan’t ya’ll out by next month so I can have the appraiser come through and if you keep talking back to me it will be sooner. Do you understand, boy ?”

Rhett snaps the cell phone shut instead of answering..

“Rhett--” 

“He’s a fucking asshole. I bet his summer house in Baton Rouge is just fine.”

We were sitting in the bed of Rhett’s truck in front of the New Faith Ministries chapel parking lot. It had been a week since I’d last seen him. I'd been sleeping at the relief site, but the government has asked the churches to clear out to make room for FEMA transport buses so we were headed back to Freeport today. Rhett had been working everyday for the past week and had been granted three days of leave so we could figure out our living situation.

Instead of using the insurance money to fix up our apartment complex our landlord had decided to call it a loss and not fix the building—which left us as renters with nowhere to live.

“I’m sure he has his reasons,” I reason.

“Bullshit,” Rhett says under his breath, flipping the phone open and close.

“We could always move back in with your Mom,” I tell him. “We’re practically paying rent already.”

 “Is that supposed to be a joke ?,” Rhett says narrowing his eyes at me.

I suddenly wish I could take it back. I don’t know why I’d let that slip out. I didn’t care that Rhett helped Jocelyn pay her mortgage.

One of the most miraculous things about the time I spent with Rhett in New Orleans had been that we weren’t bickering or fighting. We had too much to do. He hadn’t yelled at me once and I didn’t want to ruin it.

“No,” I say quickly. “I’m just saying...we wouldn’t just be freeloading if we had to move in for a while.”

“I bet you anything McAllister knew that place wasn’t up to the storm safety codes,” Rhett says and gives me a dark smile. “Do you think we should call Raleigh Cameron ?”

I give him a half smile and he leans over kissing my forehead. We sit like that for a few minutes.

“Do you know her ?,” I ask Rhett, nodding behind him.

I’d just noticed a woman in a Coast Guard dress blues approaching us at an easy pace. She was rolling a utilitarian looking black tote bag with a Coast Guard crest and  cradling a laptop. 

Rhett turns and squints at the approaching woman.

“Nah,” he says.

The woman notices us watching her and she waves as she walks the last few feet, a friendly smile on her face.

She’s not like any other female guardsman I'd seen since we've been here—she looks polished. Her dark brown hair is pulled back in an intricate French braid and her eyeliner makes small wings at the end of her eyes. Rhett regards her with a blank stare and while she looks to be in her early 30’s I  can’t tell if she is a higher rank than him or not.

“Ensign Clark ?,” the woman asks Rhett.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says standing

“Olsen,” she says holding out her hand. Her nails are painted gold and she’s wearing a ring with a polka dot anchor on it.

Rhett gives Olsen a short handshake and she turns to me.

 “I’m Juliana,” I say and point to where Mason was sitting on my lap playing with his bottle. “This is Mason.”

“Hi ! I see somebody’s hungry,” she smiles at him before turning back to us.

“Can we help you, ma'am ?,” Rhett asks.

“Actually, I have something you two might like to see.” Olsen says

She opens the laptop and balances it on her knee, clicking a few buttons before tilting the screen towards us.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but what she showed me made put a lump in my throat.

It was a photograph of the moment right a few days ago when Rhett has called my name and we met in the middle of that field. In the photo Rhett’s  arms are wrapped tightly around me and our body language complemented each others  like it was natural. We looked like a couple in a movie, like long lost lovers reunited after years. Like our last conversation hadn’t been a  fight over an electric bill.

And then there was Mason.

He was still in his carrier in the photo. He was pressed right up against my chest and instinctively holding on to my shirt because I’d jumped up to kiss Rhett, but in the picture it looks like he was snuggling into me. He looked like the cutest baby in the world.

In the background there was the blurred out suggestion of the activity of  the relief camp and all the people milling around. The only clear piece of background was the beautiful cross jutting out of the New Faith Ministries' Main Chapel.

I looked at Rhett and he was staring at the picture with as much disbelief as I was. I couldn’t believe someone had captured that moment so perfectly.

 “It’s beautiful,” I tell Olsen.

She scrolls through other snapshots capturing the rest of that moment up until we walk over to Macy.

“I took it earlier and I thought you might want to see it,” she smiled. “I’m from the Public Affairs office. The Coast Guard is putting together an oral history of the Coast Guard's work during the storm.  I’m on a team that is gathering as many first person accounts as we can get. We’re archiving the photos, but I’d like to interview you. Do you  have time ?”

“I’m kind of off the clock,” he tells her. “Maybe we can meet on base--”

“The New Orleans Base is a mess as I’m sure you know,” she said. “It will only take 30 minutes.”

Rhett gives me a look like he was asking permission, which was new. I nod.

“It’s fine,” I tell him.

We scoot back farther into the bed of the truck and Olsen props herself up on the edge. She goes through her rolling bag—which has a pin that says 'Writers do it AP style'-- and pulls out a microphone. She asks our ages, where we lived, how long we’d been married and how long we’d been separated when that picture was taken.

Between attempts to keep Mason from touching her microphone we manage to have a nice conversation. I was surprised how Rhett opened up about missing a lot of time because he was away at school. The tone only shifts when she asks Rhett about where he’d been stationed during the evacuation and rescue efforts.

He goes quiet.

“Yeah…I don’t feel comfortable talking about that in front of the kid,” Rhett says and Olsen nods.

The pit in my stomach drops at the switch in his tone. His voice goes serious and I want to know what he was being so secretive about but I don’t push. I stay in the truck with Mason while he and Olsen walk a few feet away to stand under some trees.  

It’s quiet in this area of the parking lot and I can still make out some of their conversation. They are talking in Coast Guard jargon for a while and then I hear Rhett talking in an even softer voice, he says something about corpses and he sounds shaky. His eyes flick to me and he gives me a weak smile.

It hits me then.

It wasn’t Mason that Rhett was worried about overhearing what he’d had to do in New Orleans.

It was me.

***

 

With no other option Rhett and I move back into Jocelyn’s house, but this time I decide make the room look  more like it belonged to a married couple than to teenaged Rhett. I replace the plaid comforter with the poppy bedspread that had been spared from the apartment damage because it was in the bathtub. 

The power was still out in Freeport , but Deacon  bought a generator. Jocelyn and Rhett tried to pay for part of it but he refused. Deacon had  lost his house and his truck--which meant he couldn’t take work until his insurance came though. He was sleeping on Jocelyn’s couch and was still trying to make sense of what to do next.

He seemed to think he could make money gambling professionally.

We move Mason’s crib into Rhett’s childhood room too. The crib bedding had been ruined, but I stuff it with the plaid comforter and set Mason down in it. Once he's settled I grasp the bars of the crib and kneel next to it and do something I’d never done.

I pray.

I’m not even sure I was doing it right or why I was doing it but I was starting to believe I wouldn’t be enough to keep him safe. A piece of me was hoping I’d feel some kind of presence or hear a voice or something but I don’t.

I don’t feel or hear anything.

Except the sound of glass breaking against the house.

I get off my knees and look out the window overlooking the crib to see Rhett and Deacon in the backyard sitting in a pair of lawn chairs that had blown in the backyard from another house. One of them had just thrown an empty beer bottle against the house.  Rhett was standing and using his entire weight to help his uncle out of the lawn chair. Deacon stumbles and falls, laughing and Rhett pulls him up.

***

-5-

 I look away from the backyard and turn on the big box fan in the corner  of the bedroom to cool the room down. The generator couldn’t power the air conditioner and the house was sweltering. I close the curtains on the window and remove my clothes until all I’m wearing  is  one of Rhett’s white t-shirts and nothing underneath.

When Rhett comes into the bedroom an hour later he’s showered and  has a towel around his waist. His skin is damp and the light sheen makes  the hard muscles in his chest and arms stand out. There’s a deep V at his waist that I’d never seen before and I’m embarrassed how looking at him warms the center of my body.

I tried not to think about sex in general, but now I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I knew it was inappropriate during the worst time in our and a lot of other people’s lives.

“How is he—I mean, Deacon ?,” I ask Rhett to distract myself.

Rhett shrugs.

“I ain’t never seen him like this…like I’m the adult. It’s weird.” he says. His eyes roam over me and a crooked smile forms on his face. “What are you doing ?”

When I realized he’d be babysitting Deacon for a while I’d started folding and packing Rhett’s bags. His three days of leave were over and he had to report back to the New Orleans base tomorrow to help with the rest of the recovery mission.

“I’m just being helpful,” I shrug, zipping up the bag.

He  shakes his head.

“I hope you saved me something to sleep in,” he says.

He walks between the small space between the crib and the bed to stand on my other side and look through the bag I packed. When he brushes past me something becomes distractingly obvious.

I watch him as he finds a pair of boxers in the bag and it only becomes more obvious the he is hard. He catches me staring at him.

I turn to look into the crib where Mason is sure to sleep for another 2 hours. I reach behind me  and turn up the fan, the air in the room increases and, more importantly, the hum of the blades gets louder.

“This thing is pretty loud,” I tell him.

His eyes trail me as I open one of our storage boxes and take out a thin pink blanket. I roll back the heavy comforter and lay on the sheets covering my waist with the blanket.

Rhett smiles and throws the towel around his waist to the floor and slides into bed next to me. He kisses me on the cheek before sliding his hand between my legs.

The innocent kiss gets rougher and our tongues lock. I can feel how hard he is against my thigh and desire surges through me. He’s barely been touching me for 30 seconds when I have to bury my head in his bare shoulder to keep quiet.

He cups my face with his hand to give me a look that probably says “what hell has gotten into you” but I don’t meet it because I don’t know what has gotten into me.

Rhett throws his leg over my body and kneels over me. He  pulls my body to him and wraps  my legs are around around his waist. The muscles in his stomach are pulled tight and strain as he lowers towards me.   I can feel just the tip of him. Before I can take a breath he leans down to brush my lips with his  and pushes himself into me. The blanket  covering our mid sections slides up and down along with his thrusting body and it adds a new sensation against my thighs.

Hundreds of emotions attack my brain at the same time but for once they are good emotions. Really good emotions. It was probably all chemical, but it felt perfect and I knew it was because—in that moment at least—I knew Rhett loved me.

He turns my head so we're eye to eye and with each thrust he kisses me and mumbles something into my ear, but I can't hear it over my own attempts not to moan.

I can feel him about to pull out  and I put my hand on the back of his neck.

“Don’t,” I gasp, because the breath had been knocked out of me for the second time in five minutes.

“Exhibit A,” he grunts nodding his head to where Mason was thankfully still asleep.

“It’s fine,” I tell him—I’d learned a lot reading pregnancy books and I have to tell him the least sexiest thing in the world.

“I’m not....I'm not ovulating,” I explain.

He doesn’t try to argue with me about it, instead he just pushes himself deeper into me than he ever has before. He hits a sensitive part of my body and it hurts a little, but he's going so fast it’s over before I can say anything and by then my entire body is convulsing around him, my hands digging into his bare back.

He lays on top of me for a second before pulling himself up. He’s breath is shallow and his chest rises and fall like he’d run a marathon. My limbs feel liquefied and I can only lay there as he finally pulls out and wipes himself with the towel. He tries run the towel over my body, but I shake him off because I’m still so sensitive.

Rhett puts his head on the same pillow as me and pulls me close so my head is on his chest. He rests his arm around me.  It’s the arm with the horizontal bar tattoo covering his UL marks. I hated that tattoo and really wished I was on his other side.  

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes after the afterglow has settled.

“Your mom hates it when you say that,” I remind him

“Don’t tell me she’s indoctrinated you,” he deadpans. “You should never spend as much time as you did in that shelter with religious nutjobs.”

“She did not do that.” I say, even though I’m not sure what indoctrinated means “I  liked going to that church.”

“How can you of all people believe in that shit ?”

“I don’t,” I tell him. “But I want to--”

“Fuck, J--”

“I was going to say I  want to understand,” I finish. “I don’t think it’s crazy to believe that we’re not just out here randomly with no reason for anything. I like the chance that maybe someone is listening--”

“Have you read a Bible ?,” he asks me. “Cause I have and it’s the biggest piece of bullshit--”

“ I just kind of need to believe in something--” 

“You’ve been in one cult, baby. Why the hell  would you want to be in another--”

“It is not a cult,” I tell him sharply and then lower my voice. “Cults are all about alienating people and mind control and lies-- you know that.”

I turn away from him and get out of bed, pulling on underwear and a pair of jogging pants

“I want to get Mason baptized.” I tell him.

“Like hell you are.”

“Don’t be like that, Rhett. I am giving him a place to belong and a place where he will be loved and if he becomes cynical and jaded like you he can always leave but for now I want--”

“Don’t do it,” he says in a tone close to an order. “God, leave it to you to ruin the moment right after best sex I’ve ever had.”

I usually try and diffuse our fights but something about his wording just nags at me and the next comment is out of my mouth before I can stop it.

“Best you’ve ever had ?  So, I’m in first place now ?,” I say. “Did I knock of Amber or Brooke or Lea ?"

I expect him to roll his eyes and call me naïve or jealous or accuse me of being a slut again, but he  does something worse. He bites back.

“Don't forget Cody’s stepsister,” he says in an arrogant tone.

I'm speechless and don’t have a comeback and he knows it. I walk to the door and stand with my hand on the knob.

“What do you think happens when we die ?,” I ask him.

“Are you making plans for me ?”

“Are you watching the news ?," I say through my teeth. "Rhett, I’m terrified of one of us dying everyday so if you can tell me what happens after that I will apologize to you--”

“Nothing happens--”

“So, that’s it. Everything is gone ?”

“Maybe ? I don’t know.”

“Well, neither do I and  don’t like believing in nothing anymore.” I tell him. "I want to believe there is something peaceful and benevolent after we die. I don't care if it's true or right. I just want to believe."

I open the  bedroom door and acting on impulse I  slam it behind me. I hear Rhett curse as Mason wakes up and  I hear a another curse as Deacon mumbles something incoherent but vulgar from the fold out couch.

---

-6-

At breakfast I breakdown and whisper an apology to Rhett while he’s making some kind of hangover cure for Deacon. He accepts it—even though I don’t know what I’m apologizing for—and we move on.

After breakfast I drive with him down I-10 until we get to a federal checkpoint where there is a military truck waiting to take him and other armed service members back into the New Orleans Base.

Rhett picks up Mason and holds him to his shoulder and we have a long goodbye kiss.

“Stay safe,” he whispers to me, giving Mason back to me.

“You too,” I tell him and my voice cracks.

He turns to walk away from us and then turns back. He pulls his wedding ring off his finger and pushes it into my hand.

“Hold on to this for me, baby.” he says. “I don't want to lose it in the water.”

I nod. He walks away from me without looking back and gets into the waiting Humvee. 

I clear my eyes, put Mason back into his car seat and turn around to drive us home. The traffic going north is worse than going south and we sit in one spot for nearly an hour. Rhett’s last comments echoes in my head.

I can't wear it in the water.

Water.

He was going back in the water.

I’d heard on the news the flood waters were chemical waste at this point.

 I change the radio to the inspirational radio station and I let the soft voices and soaring chords calm me down. I start singing along softly to some of the songs and it makes Mason start his baby talk to me. Hearing him trying to talk to me fills in the little hole in my heart left every time Rhett walked away from me.

When I make a left and pull off the main freeway early  I don’t even think about it consciously.  We drive for miles down a two lane country road and I’m not even sure it’s the right exit, but then I see a sign for Chicory Horse Farms.

Mason starts fussing louder at me like he knows I’m going somewhere I shouldn’t be.

I know it’s nearly impossible to get there from the road, so I put Rhett’s truck to the test and drive across the empty field. There are rows in the field where the grass is dead because other cars had driven across it  and I follow the trail of dead grass to the commune.

After all these years it was still very much the United Light commune. There were some no trespassing signs hanging on the open gates and two big cell phone tower in the middle of what had once been a baseball field but besides that it was eerily the same.  Caine Sr. was smart when he had these houses built and they’d mostly survived the hurricane.

I drive through the gate and park in front of the house that was my home for 18 years. I sit in the truck for a second and then turn it off and take Mason out of his car seat.  We pace in front of the sidewalk for a few moments.  I spot a grenade pin in the road from the night of the raid.

“This is where mama grew up,” I tell Mason.

I know the door is unlocked because there were no locks on the commune. I take a deep breath and walk inside the house. It’s mostly empty, there are still some nonperishables in the pantry and some little nic nacs scattered on the floor.

I open the door to my old bedroom and there is a perfect ray of sunshine coming through the bay window hitting the spot where my bed used to be. I remember lying in that spot  for hours doing whatever I wanted because that was the motto of United Light; Do Whatever You Want (and don't ask questions).

I was so naïve then. I knew there were things I didn’t know or understand about the world but I didn’t care back then.

I sit in the large sill of the bay window. Mason puts his little hands up against the window and makes a sqwaking sound. When I move his hands he just giggles and buries his head into my stomach. I kiss him and hold him tight.

"I love you so much," I whisper to Mason. “Is this why you saved me?,” I ask to nobody.

Hot tears escape from my eyes as I remember everything that happened in this room and just outside of it. At my lowest point I’d foolishly tried to kill myself because Caine had intended to marry me. He was never even going to touch me if I went along with him  but I’d been so selfish I’d decided death was better. I’d stood on the banister of his house, ready to break my own neck and

Rhett had stopped me.

He always told me he didn’t know why he saved me. Maybe this moment is why. Maybe Mason is why.

My chest tightens at the memory.

Rhett had saved my life.

And as much as I know he’d hate me for doing so, I pray. I pray that he is there to save it next time.

------------------------------

A/N

If I was a fancy literary author I could probably end the entire serial there, but we have a few more leaves to overturn.

You: Part I ? Since when there was a Part I ?

Me: Yeah...I just kind of came up with the whole parts thing. This story will be in 4 parts now

You: 4 parts ? This part was 14 chapters ! How long is each part ?

Me: Erm.....*shrugs*

But seriously, these parts are mostly for organizational purposes.

.