Page 71 of Stand

Everyone had been listening. The whole time. What could Ty do about it? Not a damn thing.

“I’ll take mine black,” he said. And a loose line formed at the machine. Sam stayed with the kids, so he got her a coffee, too, as well as a couple of granola bars and dried apple chips. The four of them sat in a chewing silence while the rest of the group returned to their original conversations or sat staring at the ceiling, as though they could tell what the tornado was doing from where they were.

Ty was halfway through his second granola bar when the farmer said, “Warning ran out. We should be good now.” Everyone sat up. Real life was back. And the aftermath of being in this bunker might be scarier than staying right here.

The farmer and the man who’d helped him call them to the bunker tried the doors, which opened freely, letting in a shower of debris that rolled down the concrete stairs. The air that came with them was sharp and metallic, charged and uneasy. Like Ty felt around Sam, now that he’d given her everything.

“Yep,” the farmer said. Ty was really going to have to ask him his name. “Y’all can come up now.”

So like groundhogs blinking from their nests, they crunched over the leaves and dirt under their feet and stepped back into the world.

Chapter 20

“Let me and your dad go first,” Sam warned the kids, in case the wind was still blowing branches around. She nodded at Ty, who smiled for some damn reason.

What had that look been, before? And what the hell did he mean, she could always call on him if she needed him? Didn’t he know that Sam Fielding didn’t need anyone? He might have soothed the kids with that BS, but Sam knew better. Hadn’t she told Cat? She didn’t need family. Didn’t want it. Family meant people relied on you. And you relied on them. And they’d leave you right when you needed them most.

But if that were the case, why hadn’t she been able to look away when he’d told her he’d always be there for her? Why had a huge part of her heart reached out to him, begging him to be right, to make it real? To never, ever leave her. In return, she’d…

Ugh. She shook her head and followed him up the stairs. The first thing she saw was her car, on the road where she’d left it. A high-sided Jeep had been blown on its side, but the rest of the vehicles were in good shape. The wind was strong but not uncomfortable, and the rain had disappeared as fast as it had come. To their left, they saw sunshine. The sky on the right was still dead gray and churning as though sharks were feeding above the clouds.

“Midtown’s gonna need help,” the farmer said, looking in that direction. But Sam was relieved to see that his house looked untouched, apart from a couple of small branches on the roof.

“Joe, get the quad and check the south field,” the farmer said, and the other man nodded and jogged to the large barn next to the house. “We’ll use the winch on the tractor to get your car up good as new. And y’all are welcome to stay until you feel safe, but if you got a little time, next town over looks like it’s gotten hit.”

“Of course we’ll go help,” Sam said at once. “Can we bring anything?”

Inside fifteen minutes, while Joe came back and reported that the tornado had indeed touched down south of the farm, chewing up a planted field, and Sam learned that the farmer and his wife were called Clive and Sue, they all had gloves, shovels, and boxes of garbage bags. Sue and her kids stayed on the porch and waved them off.

Clive led those who could help down the low-lying road into a town that looked exactly like the others they’d driven through today. Or it would have if it weren’t for the storm that had just picked up the vulnerable buildings and tossed them about like a waiter showing off with a salad. The outskirts of town were the worst. Mobile homes had their roofs peeled off, and some were no more than matchsticks, their window frames deposited on top of the parked cars. Trees had fallen on several more, and a small farm stand by the road sat next to its display cases, as if it had gotten tired of them and thrown them out through the roof.

“God,” Alyssa said. “How are we going to help them?”

“However they ask us to,” Sam said.

Since Clive was still moving, Ty didn’t stop until they’d arrived at the town’s fire station, joining a crowd of pickup trucks and emergency vehicles that came and went in a dizzying ballet of urgency and efficiency. Sam’s car was waved into a spot, and a soft-spoken young man with a military haircut and a HiVis vest nodded to them.

“You guys okay?” he asked after they got out of the car.

Belatedly, Sam remembered her scratches, Ty’s cheek, and Matt’s eye. “Oh, yeah,” she said as though bruises and black eyes were everyday occurrences. “These aren’t from the tornado. How can we help?”

Rather than helping at the mobile home park, they were sent a few blocks south, where the tornado had skirted the town but hit a development tucked into an old field. The houses were still standing, but debris was everywhere. A man in a T-shirt with a firefighter logo, but nothing else to explain his authority, told them to clear the road. “But don’t touch glass or wires, and don’t touch nothing without your gloves. You better keep your dog away too.”

So Alyssa tied Cairo to a road sign, and Sam gave him an apologetic kiss before they moved away, clearing up the road as they went.

Several people asked them if they were okay, which made Sam realize how isolated they’d been so far on this trip. Hotel staff were too polite to mention their injuries.

With only each other for company and the high emotions that had caused them to leave, it was no wonder Ty had decided she was looking for someone to lean on.

Which, of course, she wasn’t. Was she? And if she looked around for Ty several times that afternoon, just to make sure he was safe, that was on his kids’ behalf. Right?

The residents of the neighborhood came out of their beaten-up houses and helped, which then led to groups of people going back with them to help clear out broken decks or mangled patio furniture. When Sam next looked up from the pile of brush she was collecting to one side of the road, she couldn’t see Ty or the kids.

A shout and a crashing noise came from her left.

She was running before she knew it. Others ran alongside her, but she couldn’t see them. “Tyler!” she shouted. “Matt! Lyss!”

A cacophony of sound came from one house that stood in its own small yard. Its front windows were broken, and some strips of roof tile had peeled off and lay drunkenly in the yard. One of the cars in front of the open garage had slid into the other. Sam noted all these things with the detail of an archaeologist’s eye, as though she would have to put everything back in place later, but she was mostly just running, running straight for the front door.

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