The air smells of mud, heavy and earthen. Like it’s packed into my nostrils.
Water drips through the wood slats above us.
But the wind is gone, leaving a quiet that feels preternatural.
Clay walks up the steep set of stairs, touches the door.
“Clay,” I say, afraid for some reason, not wanting him to open it. Afraid of what we’ll find on the other side. But he turns the knob, pushing against the wooden door with one hand. It refuses to open. He tries again, more forceful this time. Still nothing. He swallows, angles himself, then rams his shoulder against the door. It gives way a couple inches. He does this again, using his full weight to muscle the door back.
Light spills into the cellar, and I feel hesitant to breathe.
Clay steps up into the kitchen, then holds down a hand to help me up.
The old farmhouse is still standing. The kitchen is still intact. Mostly.
The back door was blown in, broken free from its hinges, water and sand soaking the wood floor. The kitchen table was thrown back against the cellar door—blocking our way free. Plates and mugs are shattered across the floor.
We walk into the living room. The front door is still on its hinges, but it’s wide open, resting back against the wall, allowing the same rain and seawater to spill into the house. Only one of the windows is broken, shards littering the floor; the wood shutters protected the rest of them. Even on the second floor. Thankfully, our bedroom looks strangely untouched. Not a thing out of place.
The farmhouse held up somehow.
But when we step outside, the landscape of the island is unrecognizable.
I nearly drop to my knees.
Clay stops only a few paces from the front porch, running his palms over his head. I stand beside him, my body shaking.
Everything he has built—the garden, the greenhouse, the barn for the sheep, the chicken coop, even the tiny tool shed… it’s all gone.
Splintered apart and sent out to the sea.
And now, the land is scarred and torn, leaving a wet, muddy wasteland. Not even a tomato vine or cabbage remains in the soil.
I leave Clay where he stands, and I walk out toward where the barn once stood. I’m hoping to find a chicken still alive, the herd of sheep, the lamb who’s now grown. But there are only a few fragments of wood, a nail or two. The storm took the rest.
I feel the tears coming. The hollow opening in my chest, grief and loss taking up residence. Gone. All gone. I want to scream.
I look back at Clay, at the battered house standing tall behind him.
How did the house survive, while the winds took everything else?
A house held together by fate and spite and grief. A structure that’s lasted far longer than it should have.
Clay looks at me, and the hurt in his eyes can’t be measured.
Maybe it would have been kinder if the storm had taken him too, flattened the house and both of us in it.
But it kept us alive. Kept him alive—so he’s forced to go on, rebuild somehow.
I wipe at my eyes, not wanting him to see me cry.
But when I blink, focusing beyond the farmhouse, I see something.
“Clay,” I say, pointing behind him. “Look.”
In the distance, a clot of palm trees sways in the calm morning breeze.
The storm pushed us toward a large mass of land, and now we’re perched against a long strip of reef only a few feet below the clear water’s surface.
