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My phone rang, and even though I was crouched in a corner without room to flex my elbows, I wrangled my arms around enough to answer it. “What’s going on? Are you still down there?” Dave asked, seeming to assume that I was awake and alive despite the hour.
I checked the back of the phone, and it told me we were creeping up on 3:00 A. M. “I’m still down here,” I confirmed. “Down at the Read House, now. ”
“What? Why?”
“Because . . . it’s a long story. Nick’s here,” I told him, as if it explained everything—even though it didn’t.
“Lu’s asleep finally, but barely. I couldn’t join her though, so I thought I’d call. What about—I mean, have you reached or seen Harry? Or you know, Malachi?” It cost him to say that second name. I could hear him trying to keep the syllables from sounding too angry.
“I found them. They’re over at the Choo-Choo. They stayed> there, I told them to. They’re going to go on home, whenever they can. So you can tell Lu she can rest a little easier, not having to sit down at the same table with them. ”
“That’s not going to help her. Not going to help me, either. We want you to come home. ”
“You and me both, man. But right now? I can’t imagine how it could happen. I’ll just hole up for the night, and one of these days they’ll have to open the bridges again. Won’t they?”
“I thought you were going to hole up with Harry and your brother?”
“It didn’t work out. But I didn’t go far and I made it somewhere safe, so you can stop worrying. Go get some sleep for yourself. ”
Nick wrangled his way back to me, having briefly left my side to see if he could beg a refill from the Red Cross people.
“Who is it?”
I pulled the phone down against my neck to quickly answer, “My uncle,” then returned my attention to Dave. “I’m safe. Everything’s fine. Go to bed. ”
He begged to differ. “Everything’s pretty far from fine, princess. Chattanooga’s on CNN and all the major networks. And there are rumors coming out—there’s footage, baby. ” Oh, I could really hear it then—the worry. The fear. The wish that we could reverse time a day or two and have nothing more to fear than an awkward dinner with strange relatives.
“Footage,” I echoed weakly.
“Footage, yeah. Things in the river, down there. And there are riots, and gangs, and there’s looting, and—”
“And right here at the Read House,” I cut him off, “there’s Red Cross coffee that actually tastes better than the Starbucks stuff they were handing out earlier. There are people sleeping on the floor wrapped in jackets and blankets, and there isn’t enough space to go around. But it’s pretty quiet. There are cops, and there are a few firefighters, and we passed some paramedics in the hall a few minutes ago. Dave, I swear to God, it’s not that bad here. Not like what you’re seeing on the news. ”
Nick heard that much and his interest was piqued, but he knew better than to interrupt. Instead, he shimmied himself closer to me and listened.
“Stay there, then,” Dave begged. “Promise me you’ll stay put. They’ll be evacuating people for days—but if you’ve got to stay someplace, better the hotel than anywhere down by the river. No one knows what to call it, but I’ve seen the footage, from people with little digital cameras and from some of the more ballsy news guys. It looks like hell down there. Please promise you’ll stay at the hotel. ”
“I . . . I can’t promise you that. I don’t know what’s going to happen an hour from now, or come morning. They might make us move—like you said, they’re evacuating people all over the place. ”
“Then promise me you won’t leave unless they make you. Promise you’ll stay unless it’s safe to leave. ” He was begging. He didn’t ever beg, not like that.
“I promise I’ll do my best to stay safe,” was all I managed. It was a watered-down promise and we both knew it. But it was the best I could do.
“That’s not enough to let us sleep. ”
“But this is—this is a fluid situation,” I told him, borrowing some sound bite I’d overheard on television. “I’ll do my best. It’s what I always do. And—I’d like to point out—I’ve survived this long with nothing but my best. You’re going to have to trust me to take care of myself. ”
“I do trust you that far. I do, I swear. But please—don’t take any unnecessary chances. Just stay away from those chances. Think of your poor old Lu and Dave up here, and then, if you get a chance to do something crazy—think twice. Will you do that for us?”
“Of course I will. You don’t even have to drag the promise out of me. You ought to know better. ”
“Then why don’t I feel any better?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I almost felt like crying, except that it wouldn’t have done either of us any good. “But I’ll be careful. And I’ll call. Or you can call me, just as long as this phone lasts. ”
“Hey,” Nick squeezed my arm and pointed out through the glass doors. “Friends of yours. ”
