Before the Storm. Diane Chamberlain

they in an accident?”

      “You’re awfully pushy.” I laughed, but he didn’t crack a smile.

      “Seriously,” he said.

      I sighed then and told him about the fire on the cruise ship that killed fifty-two people, my parents included.

      “Fire on a cruise ship.” He shook his head. “Rock and a hard place.”

      “Some people jumped.”

      “Your parents?”

      “No. I wish they had.” Before I’d perfected my counting-backward-from-one-thousand technique, vivid fiery images of my parents had filled my head whenever I tried to go to sleep.

      Jamie read my mind. “The smoke got them first, you can bet on it,” he said. “They were probably unconscious before the fire reached them.”

      Although I hadn’t wanted to talk about it, I still took comfort from that thought. Jamie knew about fire, since he was a volunteer firefighter in Wilmington. For days after he’d fight a fire, I could smell smoke on him. He’d shower and scrub his long hair and still the smell would linger, seeping out of his pores. It was a smell I began to equate with him, a smell I began to like.

      He took me to meet his family after we’d been seeing each other for three weeks. Even though they lived in Wilmington, I was to meet them at their beach cottage on Topsail Island where they spent most weekends. I’d probably been to Topsail as a child, but had no memory of it. Jamie teased me that my mispronunciation of the island—I said Topsale instead of Topsul—was a dead giveaway.

      By that time, he’d bought me my own black leather jacket and white helmet, and I was accustomed to riding with him. My arms were wrapped around him as we started across the high-rise bridge. Far below us, I saw a huge maze of tiny rectangular islands.

      “What is that down there?” I shouted.

      Jamie steered the bike to the side of the bridge, even though ours was the only vehicle on the road. I climbed off and peered over the railing. The grid of little islands ran along the shoreline of the Intracoastal Waterway for as far as I could see. Miniature fir trees and other vegetation grew on the irregular rectangles of land, the afternoon sun lighting the water between them with a golden glow. “It looks like a little village for elves,” I said.

      Jamie stood next to me, our arms touching through layers of leather. “It’s marshland,” he said, “but it does have a mystical quality to it, especially this time of day.”

      We studied the marshland a while longer, then got back on the bike.

      I knew Jamie’s parents owned a lot of land on the island, especially in the northernmost area called West Onslow Beach. After World War II, his father had worked in a secret missile testing program on Topsail Island called Operation Bumblebee. He’d fallen in love with the area and used what money he had to buy land that mushroomed in value over the decades. As we rode along the beach road, Jamie pointed out property after property belonging to his family. Many parcels had mobile homes parked on them, some of the trailers old and rusting, though the parcels themselves were worth plenty. There were several well-kept houses with rental signs in front of them and even a couple of the old flat-roofed, three-story concrete viewing towers that had been used during Operation Bumblebee. I was staggered to realize the wealth Jamie had grown up with.

      “We don’t live rich, though,” Jamie had said when he told me about his father’s smart investments. “Daddy says that the whole point of having a lot of money is to give you the freedom to live like you don’t need it.”

      I admired that. My aunt and uncle were exactly the opposite.

      All the Lockwood houses had names burned into signs hanging above their front doors. The Loggerhead and Osprey Oasis and Hurricane Haven. We came to the last row of houses on the Island and I began to perspire inside the leather jacket. I knew one of them belonged to his family and that I’d meet them in a few minutes. Jamie drove slowly past the cottages.

      “Daddy actually owns these last five houses,” he said, turning his head so I could hear him.

      “Terrier?” I read the name above one of the doors.

      “Right, that’s where we’re headed, but I’m taking us on a little detour first. The next house is Talos. Terrier and Talos were the names of the first supersonic missiles tested here.”

      Those two houses were mirror images of each other: tall, narrow two-story cottages sitting high on stilts to protect them from the sea.

      “I love that one!” I pointed to the last house in the row, next to Talos. The one-story cottage was round. Like all the other houses, it was built on stilts. The sign above its front door read The Sea Tender.

      “An incredible panoramic view from that one.” Jamie turned onto a narrow road away from the houses. “I want to show you my favorite spot,” he said over his shoulder. We followed the road a short distance until it turned to sand; then we got off the bike and began walking. I tugged my jacket tighter. The October air wasn’t cold, but the wind had a definite nip to it and Jamie put his arm around me.

      We walked a short distance onto a spit of white sand nearly surrounded by water. The ocean was on our right, the New River Inlet ahead of us and somewhere to our left, although we couldn’t see it from our vantage point, was the Intracoastal Waterway. The falling sun had turned the sky pink. I felt as though we were standing on the edge of an isolated continent.

      “My favorite place,” Jamie said.

      “I can see why.”

      “It’s always changing.” He pointed toward the ocean. “The sea eats the sand there, then spits it back over there,” he moved his arm to the left of us, “and what’s my favorite place today may be completely different next week.”

      “Does that bother you?” I asked.

      “Not at all. Whatever nature does here, it stays beautiful.” Neither of us spoke for a moment. Then Jamie broke the silence. “Can I tell you something?” For the first time since we met, he sounded unsure of himself. A little shy.

      His arm was still around me and I raised mine until it circled his waist. “Of course,” I said.

      “I’ve never told anyone this and you might think I’m crazy.”

      “Tell me.”

      “What I’d really like to do one day is create my own church,” he said. “A place where people can believe whatever they want but still belong to a community, you know?”

      I wasn’t sure I understood exactly what he meant, but one thing I’d learned about Jamie was that there was a light inside him most people didn’t have. Sometimes I saw it flash in his eyes when he spoke.

      “Can you picture it?” he asked. “A little chapel right here, full of windows so you can see the water all around you. People could come and worship however they chose.” He looked toward the ocean and let out a sigh. “Pie in the sky, right?”

      I did think he was a little crazy, but I opened my mind to the idea and imagined a little white church with a tall steeple standing right where we stood. “Would you be allowed to build something here?” I asked.

      “Daddy owns the land. He owns every grain of sand north of those houses. Would nature let me build it? That’s the thing. Nature’s got her own mind when it comes to this spot. She’s got her own mind when it comes to the whole island.”

      The aroma of baking greeted us when we walked into Terrier. Jamie introduced his parents Southern style as Miss Emma and Mr. Andrew, but his father immediately insisted I call him Daddy L. Miss Emma had contributed the gene for Jamie’s full head of wavy dark hair, although hers was cut in a short, uncomplicated style. Daddy L was responsible for Jamie’s huge, round brown eyes. They each greeted their son with bear hugs as if they hadn’t seen him in months instead of a day or so. Miss Emma even gave