A Roof Over Their Heads. M. K. Stelmack

      “Next time you call her,” Seth said.

      “I can’t. I don’t have a cell phone,” Mel explained. “Oh, look. Ben’s here.” And in a clear-cut case of ducking the issue, Mel was off, abandoning his box. Seth peeked inside. Empty. Of course.

      He picked up Mel’s garbage and carried it to the trash can at the edge of the field. He should be sorting everyone into teams but he needed a moment to calm down. He always had to after dealing with Connie. Tonight’s call had left him more than normally irritated. Thirty-two years old, and still acting like a teenager. Worse than a teenager, because at least then all her rebellions had been about making something of herself. Now she was messing around and messing up, creating havoc wherever she went.

      The widow and her kids were only Connie’s latest victims.

      Hard to think of the mom as a widow. She was too young—he doubted she was as old as him. And too beautiful. Too beautiful to have her face twist in sorrow when her boy let drop about his dead dad. Seth understood why the kid had said it. His own dad had passed twenty years ago, and he’d never forget the day it happened.

      Seth cut over toward Ben’s truck to thank him for the bats. Sure enough, he’d brought the pink-and-purple one. Paul was using it to lob a long one into the outfield. Mel went tearing after it, like a dog playing fetch. But it was only when Seth was up close that he saw the second bat. It was the big old wooden one. Seth should’ve known.

      There was a time when Ben might’ve gone from friend to brother. About two years ago when Ben loved Connie, and Connie had loved him right back. When she’d bought him the heaviest slugger she could source, Ben converted her pitches into home runs, and she watched with a silly grin as he circled the bases, circled her—just like they were kids again.

      But then she’d cheated on him in plain sight, and Ben had been forced to see her for what she was. Seth avoided talking about her as much as possible in front of Ben.

      Mel had no such discretion, it turned out. On their way to the diamond, Ben said to Seth, “Mel told me you called Connie. She tell you she’s in Las Vegas?”

      Seth stopped cold. How was Connie going to help the widow from there? Answer: she wasn’t going to.

      Next question: Who would help the widow?

      Ben stopped, too. “She left Monday with that guy she’s with now.” He put a choke hold on Connie’s bat.

      Trevor. A real piece of work. Of all the morons Connie had hooked up with since Ben, this one scared Seth with his level of pigheaded stupidity.

      “She needs to come home,” Ben declared.

      “You know what she’s like,” Seth said.

      Ben stepped back and swung the bat so hard, it whistled. “No. You know what she’s like. I know what she can be like.”

      Ben continued on to the diamond, putting distance between them. In another country and Connie could still screw up their lives.

       CHAPTER THREE

      ALEXI WOKE TO wind attacking the tent. The wall beside her buckled inward, and the nylon formed a cold suction over her face, then released as it was sucked outward. Thunder rumbled on and on, low and disgruntled like how she felt.

      As if her day hadn’t been bad enough, now there was a night storm to endure. She hadn’t thought to check the weather since the evening had been so calm and cloudless.

      Payback for making assumptions about how things ought to be. She fumbled for her cell phone. It was 1:17 a.m. And 2 percent battery. More payback for waiting on a call from the landlady that never came. She would’ve given up a lot sooner if she’d known the charger was missing. Payback again for not thinking ahead. After patting down the van seats and floor where it ought to be, she’d crawled into the tent, ankle and head throbbing, drawn a bath towel over herself as a blanket and passed out.

      She shut off her cell just as the wind threw itself against the adjacent wall where the four cocooned kids slept, Matt on the far side. The wall pulled straight but the wind hit again, and this time tore out a tent peg, that part of the wall collapsing on the smallest cocoon. Callie.

      Her small daughter thrashed about, her body caught inside her sleeping bag, ramping up her panic into train-whistle screams.

      That snapped Bryn upright. “Bears! Bears!”

      Alexi’s half hour of cuddling and low-talking at bedtime to convince Bryn that Spirit Lake was a bear-free zone was blown to pieces because she’d used a rock instead of a hammer, packed who knows where, to drive in the tent peg. Payback.

      “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Alexi slurred. She flipped back the towel and tugged Callie away from the slumped tent wall. Another part of the tent dropped onto Alexi’s back like a predator. Great, the six-man tent was now four-and-falling.

      “S’okay, Callie. Mommy’s here.” She held out her hands in the dark until Callie’s arms whacked them. She snapped her fingers around them and pulled Callie’s warm, vibrating body against her. “It’s okay. No bears. Part of the tent just came down.” She half dragged, half lifted Callie and her bag closer to Matt’s side of the tent.

      The news was not comforting to Bryn. “We’ll all suffocate and die!”

      “No, we won’t—”

      A vicious shriek of wind smacked the tent, and a section slumped onto Bryn’s head. Now all four kids, Matt included, were screaming.

      The dark form of Bryn bowled his way past Alexi to the zippered opening. “I’m dying! I’m dying! We’re all going to die!”

      With Callie clamped to her, Alexi caught the back of Bryn’s pajama top, which threw him into more of a frenzy. She felt the cloth twist, Bryn stripping out of it. “No, Bryn, wait!” And he broke out of the tent.

      “No!” Her cry was shredded in the wind, weak and useless. Cold air circled them. Icy air not right for a hot summer night.

      The first hailstone bonked off the main pole.

      The second, third, fourth thudded and rolled along the part of the tent still erect. And then the number was no longer distinguishable as hail descended in a hard torrent.

      They needed to get to the house fast.

      She reached for Matt, banded her fingers around his upper arm. “Take Amy. Run into the house. Stay there.” She groped for Amy who, good girl that she was, had already shimmied out of her sleeping bag. Alexi hauled a sleeping bag up and over their heads. “Okay. Hold it up. Keep together.” She widened the tent flap for them. “Go. Don’t stop.”

      She didn’t wait to see if they made it. She needed to get Callie inside and then twice in one day, call the police for the exact same reason. A runaway. There would be a report this time. Payback, payback, payback.

      At least she had enough charge to call. She tucked her phone down inside her bra, and using both hands, since there was no way on God’s green earth Callie would let go anyway, she settled her bath towel above their heads.

      “Okay, Callie, on the count of three, I will run to the house and you just hold on tight to me with your arms and legs, okay?” Callie flattened herself even more against Alexi, the sides of her knees like hammerheads against Alexi’s ribs. “One, two, three!”

      And they were off. The wind immediately snatched the towel from her hands, and hailstones pummeled her. She shaped one arm into an umbrella over Callie and hobbled double-quick. On the back stairs, her bare feet skidded on hailstones and she flung out her arms to grab hold of the railing.

      Exposed to the ice chunks, Callie howled. Alexi hauled herself and Callie up the last remaining steps and to the door illuminated by the outdoor light.

      It was flung open as she approached,