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“No, don’t hang up yet.”
“Why?”
Sheets rustled. “Because if I was there, I would never let you sleep alone after that. I’d be curled around you, taking up all the room in the bed and stealing the covers.”
“Pike.”
“Shh, we don’t have to talk. Just picture me there with you. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“But—”
“Sweet dreams, mama. Get some rest.”
She waited for the dial tone but none came. She heard a few quiet movements, maybe him cleaning up. But then the bed squeaked again and a few minutes later, steady breathing.
She listened to him for as long as she could, falling into the soothing pattern of his breath. But soon her own lids were drooping. She pulled her headset off, left her phone on speaker, and closed her eyes.
When she woke up the next morning, her phone was dead. But neither of them had hung up.
The man on the phone had stayed the night.
No one had ever stayed the night.
FOURTEEN
Oakley walked into the main office at the Bridgerton Academy, hair dripping and the bottom of her pants soaked. Her shoes squeaked on the floor as she made her way to the desk.
Mrs. Daley, the secretary, lifted her head and got to her feet when she saw Oakley’s state. “Oh, you poor thing. Let me take your jacket.” She grabbed Oakley’s windbreaker and now-useless umbrella and hung them on a peg by the door. “Do you want me to grab you a school sweatshirt or something? You must be freezing.”
Oakley waved her off. “Thank you, but I’ll be okay. The umbrella flipped inside out halfway across the parking lot.”
Mrs. Daley frowned at the scene on the other side of the glass doors. “Another half hour of this and the street is going to flood.”
Oakley lifted her leg and pointed at her black slacks. “Already about three inches deep in the lot.”
“I’m so sorry we had to call you out in this. But—”
“It’s fine,” Oakley said quickly. “I want y’all to call me when she gets like this. I can deal with the weather.”
To get to her kid, she’d take a damn canoe here if she had to.
Mrs. Daley nodded. “I understand. She’s in Mr. Craig’s office. She’s settled down a lot since the lights came back on.”
Oakley thanked her and headed toward the back where the offices were. Sure enough, when she entered the school counselor’s office, she found Reagan curled into a chair, headphones on and eyes closed. Her small fingers were interlocked and flexing, the only outward sign that she wasn’t as peaceful as she might appear.
Mr. Craig looked up with a sympathetic smile. “She wasn’t up to talking, but she’s done a good job calming herself down in the last half hour or so. The music does help.”
Oakley nodded. “Thank you for letting her take a break in here.”
“My door’s always open for her. It was an unsettling day for all the kids with the lights flickering and the tornado siren going off.”
She appreciated his attempt to make her feel better, the sentiment being that if the typical kids had been affected, Reagan wasn’t all that different. But Oakley knew that the level of anxiety was not near the same. With Reagan’s sensory issues, alarms and sirens hurt her ears in a physical way. And ever since Rae had seen a documentary about a destructive tornado in Oklahoma years ago, she’d held a deep-seated phobia of bad weather.
Oakley crouched down in front of the chair and touched Reagan’s knee. Reagan jumped and opened her eyes. Relief filled her reddened eyes. “Mom.”
“Hey, baby.”
Reagan hit Pause on her iPod but didn’t take off the headphones. “Is it still raining?”
