Before the Storm. Diane Chamberlain

      “I’m so sorry,” I said. Emily had suffered brain damage at birth, and I knew how far they’d come with her over the years. How hard it had to be to have a child who hated to be touched! Many FASD kids hated being touched, too, but I’d gotten lucky with Andy; he was a hugger. I needed to rein that hugging in with people outside the family, though, especially now that he was a teenager.

      Robin looked behind us. “So many people affected by this…mess,” she said.

      I didn’t turn around. My attention was drawn to the Surf City firefighters who were now filing into the seats reserved for them. In their dress blues and white gloves, a more sober looking bunch of men—and three women—would be hard to find, and as they sat down, a hush washed over the crowd. I saw Marcus glance at us, and I quickly turned my attention to the pink beribboned program I’d been handed when I entered the building.

      Some people had wanted to put the memorial service off for another couple of weeks so the new Surf City Community Center would be open and the event could be held in the gymnasium. But the somber mood of the island couldn’t wait that long. In the week since the fire, that’s all anyone talked about. The part-time counselor at the elementary school where I worked was so inundated with kids suffering from nightmares about being burned or trapped that she’d had to refer the overflow, those whose fears showed up as stomachaches or headaches, to me. People were not only sad, they were angry. Everyone knew the fire was arson, although those words had not been uttered by anyone in an official capacity, at least not publicly.

      Maggie hadn’t said a word since we walked into the building. I glanced at her now. Her gaze was on the firefighters and I wondered what she was thinking. I was never sure how much she remembered of her father. She had a framed picture of Jamie in his dress blues on her bureau beside a picture of Andy taken on his twelfth birthday. There was another picture, taken a couple of years ago at a party, of herself with Amber Donnelly and a couple of other girls.

      She had no picture of me on the bureau. I realized that just the other day.

      Andy started jiggling his leg, making my chair vibrate. I used to rest a hand on his knee to try to stop his jiggling, but I rarely did that anymore. I’d learned that if I stopped the energy from coming out of Andy in one place, it would come out someplace else. Jiggling his legs was preferable to slapping his hands on his thighs or cracking his knuckles. Sometimes I pictured a tightly coiled spring inside my son, ready to burst out of him with the slightest provocation. That’s most likely what happened when Keith called him names at the lock-in. It was rare for Andy to react with violence, but calling him names could do it.

      “Hey, I know him!” Andy said suddenly.

      “Shh,” I whispered in his ear. I thought he meant Marcus or Ben Trippett, but he was pointing to the third poster-size photograph at the front of the room. It was Charlie Eggles, a longtime real estate agent in Topsail Beach. Charlie’d had no kids of his own but often volunteered to help with community events. I’d been saddened to learn he was one of the fire victims. I looked at his engaging smile, his gray hair pulled back in his customary ponytail.

      “It’s Mr. Eggles,” I whispered to Andy.

      “He held on to me so I couldn’t hit Keith again.” I watched a crease form between Andy’s eyebrows as reality dawned on him. “Is he one of the dead people?”

      “I’m afraid he is,” I said.

      I waited for him to speak again, but he fell silent.

      “What are you thinking, love?” I asked quietly.

      “Why didn’t he follow me when I said to?”

      I put my arm around him. “Maybe he didn’t hear you, or he was trying to help some of the other children. We’ll never know. You did the very best you—”

      Somber piano music suddenly filled the room, swallowing my words, and Trish Delphy and Reverend Bill walked up the center aisle together. Reverend Bill stood behind the podium, while the mayor took the last empty seat in our row. Reverend Bill was so tall, skinny and long necked that he reminded me of an egret. Sara told me that he came into Jabeen’s Java every afternoon for a large double-fudge-and-caramel-iced coffee with extra whipped cream, yet there was not an ounce of fat on the man. He was all sticks and angles.

      Now he craned his long neck forward to speak into the microphone. “Let us pray,” he said.

      I bowed my head and tried to listen to his words, but I felt Maggie’s warm body against my left arm and Andy’s against my right. I felt them breathing, and my eyes once more filled with tears. I was so lucky.

      When I lifted my head again, Reverend Bill began talking about the two teenagers and one adult killed in the fire. I forced myself to look at the blown-up images to the left of the podium. I didn’t know either of the teenagers, both of whom were from Sneads Ferry. The girl, Jordy Matthews, was a smiling, freckle-faced blonde with eyes the powder-blue of the firefighters’ shirts. The boy, Henderson Wright, looked about thirteen, sullen and a little scared. A tiny gold hoop hung from one end of his right eyebrow and his hair was in a buzz cut so short it was difficult to tell what color it was.

      “…and Henderson Wright lived in his family’s old green van for the past three years,” Reverend Bill was saying. “We have people in our very own community who are forced to live that way, through no fault of their own.” Somewhere to my right, I heard quiet weeping, and it suddenly occurred to me that the families of the victims most likely shared this front row with us. I wondered if it had been necessary for Reverend Bill to mention the Wright boy’s poverty. Shrimping had once sustained Sneads Ferry’s families, but imported seafood was changing all that. There were many poor people living amidst the wealth in our area.

      I thought of Sara. Ever since I’d heard that Keith had referred to Andy as rich, apparently with much disdain, I’d been stewing about it. Andy and Keith had known each other since they were babies and the disparity between our financial situations had never been an issue, at least as far as I knew. I wondered now if there was some underlying resentment on Sara’s part. God, I hoped not. I loved her like a sister. We were so open with each other—we had one of those friendships where nothing was off-limits. We’d both been single mothers for a decade, but Jamie had left my children and me more than comfortable. We had a handsome, ten-year-old four-bedroom house on the sound, while Sara and Keith lived in an aging double-wide sandwiched in a sea of other mobile homes.

      My cheeks burned. How could I have thought that didn’t matter to her? Did she say things to Keith behind my back? Had Keith’s resentment built up until it spilled out on Andy at the lock-in?

      Sara had been at the UNC burn center with Keith since the fire, so we’d had no good chance to talk. Our phone conversations were about Keith’s condition; he was still battling for his life. Although the most serious burns were on his arms and one side of his face, his lungs had suffered severe damage, and he was being kept in a medicated coma because the pain would otherwise be unbearable.

      Neither of us brought up the fight between our sons. Maybe she didn’t even know about it. She had one thing on her mind, and that was getting Keith well. I’d offered to help her pay for any care he needed that wouldn’t be covered by his father’s military health insurance, but she said she’d be fine. Was it my imagination that she’d sounded chilly in her response? Had I insulted her? Maybe she simply resented the fact that Andy was safe and whole while her son could die.

      Everyone around me suddenly stood up. Even Andy. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t realize we were supposed to be singing a hymn, the words printed on the back of the program. I stood up as well, but didn’t bother singing. Neither did Andy or Maggie, and I wondered where their thoughts were.

      Long ago, Sara helped me turn my life around. When I got Andy out of foster care, he was a year old and I had no idea how to be a mother to the little stranger. After all, Jamie’d been both mother and father to Maggie when she was that age. It was Sara who helped me. Keith was nearly a year older than Andy, and Sara was a goddess in my eyes, the mother I wanted to emulate. Keith was adorable,