Before the Storm

Chapter Three

Laurel

THERE IS ONLY ONE STOPLIGHT ON THE twenty-six miles of Topsail Island. It sits two short blocks from the beach in the heart of Surf City, and it glowed red when my car approached it and was still red when I left it behind. If there’d been a dozen red lights, they wouldn’t have stopped me. People always told me I was a determined woman and I was never more so than the night of the fire.

Miles before the stoplight, I’d seen the yellow glow in the sky, and now I could smell the fire itself. I pictured the old church. I’d only been inside it a few times for weddings and funerals, but I knew it had pine floors, probably soaked with years of oily cleaner, just tempting someone to toss a match on them. I knew more than I wanted to know about fires. I’d lost my parents to one, plus Jamie had been a volunteer firefighter before he died. He told me about clapboard buildings that were nothing but tinder. Probably one of the kids lit a cigarette, tossed the match on the floor. Why oh why did I listen to Maggie? I never should have let Andy go. Maggie was around him so much, she thought of him as a normal kid. You got that way when you were around him a lot. You got used to his oddities, took his limitations for granted. Then you’d see him out in the world and realize he still didn’t fit in, no matter how much you’d tried to make that happen. It was easy to get seduced into thinking he was okay when the environment around him was so carefully controlled and familiar. Tonight, though, I threw him to the wolves.

The street near Drury Memorial was clotted with fire trucks and police cars and ambulances and I had to park a block away in front of Jabeen’s Java and The Pony Express. I’d barely come to a stop before I flew out of my car and started running toward the fire.

A few people stood along the road watching clouds of smoke and steam gush from the church into the bright night sky. There were shouts and sirens and a sickening acrid smell in the air as I ran toward the front doors of the church. Huge floodlights illuminated the building and gave me tunnel vision. All I saw were those gaping doors, smoke belching from them, and they were my target.

“Grab her!” someone shouted.

Long, wiry arms locked around me from behind.

“Let go of me!” I clawed at the arms with my fingernails, but whoever was holding me had a grip like a steel trap.

“We have a staging area set up, ma’am,” he shouted into my ear. “Most of the children are out and safe.”

“What do you mean most?” I twisted against the vise of his arms. “Where’s my son?”

He dragged me across the sandy lot before loosening his hold on me. “They’ve got names of the children on a list,” he said as he let go.

“Where?” I spun around to see the face of Reverend Bill, pastor of Drury Memorial. If there was a person on Topsail Island I didn’t like, it was Reverend Bill. He looked no happier to realize it was me he’d been holding in his arms.

“One of your children was here?” He sounded stunned that I’d let a child of mine set foot in his church. I never should have.

“Andy,” I said. Then I called his name. “Andy!” I shaded my eyes from the floodlights as I surveyed the scene. He’d worn his tan pants, olive green-striped shirt, and new sneakers tonight. I searched for the striped shirt, but the chaos of the scene suddenly overwhelmed my vision. Kids were everywhere, some sprawled on the sand, others sitting up or bent over, coughing. Generators roared as they fueled the lights, and static from police radios crackled in the air. Parents called out the names of their children. “Tracy!” “Josh!” “Amanda!” An EMT leaned over a girl, giving her CPR. The nurse in me wanted to help, but the mother in me was stronger.

Above my head, a helicopter thrummed as it rose from the beach.

“Andy!” I shouted to the helicopter, only vaguely aware of how irrational I must have seemed.

Reverend Bill was clutching my arm, tugging me across the street through a maze of fire trucks and police cars to an area lit by another floodlight and cordoned off with yellow police tape. Inside the tape, people stood shoulder to shoulder, shouting and pushing.

“See that girl over there?” Reverend Bill pointed into the crowd of people.

“Who? Where?” I stood on my toes trying to see better.

“The one in uniform,” he shouted. “She’s taking names, hooking parents up with their kids. You go see—”

I pulled away from him before he could finish the sentence. I didn’t bother looking for an entrance into the cordoned-off area. Instead, I climbed over the tape and plowed into the clot of people.

Parents crowded around the officer, who I recognized as Patty Shales. Her kids went to the elementary school in Sneads Ferry where I was a part-time nurse.

“Patty!” I shouted from the sea of parents. “Do you know where Andy is?”

She glanced over at me just as a man grabbed the clipboard from her hands. I couldn’t see what was happening, but Patty’s head disappeared from my view amid flailing arms and angry shouting.

From somewhere behind me, I heard the words “killed” and “dead.” I swung around to see two women, red eyed, hands to their mouths.

“Who’s killed?” I asked. “Who’s dead?”

One of the women wiped tears from her eyes. “I heard they found a body,” she said. “Some kids was trapped inside. My daughter’s here somewhere. I just pray to the Lord—” She shook her head, unable to finish her sentence.

I felt suddenly nauseated by the smell of the fire, a tarry chemical smell that burned my nostrils and throat.

“My son’s here, too,” I said, though I doubted the woman even heard me.

“Laurel!” Sara Weston lifted the yellow tape and ducked under it, running up to me. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“Andy’s here. Is Keith?”

She nodded, pressing a trembling hand to her cheek. “I can’t find him,” she said. “Someone said he got burned, but I—”

She stopped speaking as an ominous creaking sound came from the far side of the church—the sort of sound a massive tree makes as it starts to fall. Everyone froze, staring at the church as the rear of the roof collapsed in one long wave, sending smoke and embers into the air.

“Oh my God, Laurel!” Sara pressed her face against my shoulder and I wrapped my arm around her as we were jostled by people trying to get closer to Patty. Parents stepped on our feet, pushing us one way, then another, and Sara and I pushed back as a unit, bullish and driven. I probably knew many of the people I fought out of my way, but in the heat of the moment, we were all simply desperate parents. This is what it was like inside, I thought, panic rising in my throat. All the kids pushing at once to get out of the church.

“Patty!” I shouted again, but I was only one voice of many. She heard me, though.

“Laurel!” she yelled. “They took Andy to New Hanover.”

“Oh God.”

“Not life threatening,” Patty called. “Asthma. Some burns.”

I let out my breath in a silent prayer. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

“You go.” Sara tried to push me away, but I held fast to her. “Go, honey,” she repeated. “Go see him.”

I longed to run back to my car and drive to the hospital in Wilmington, but I couldn’t leave Sara. “Not until you’ve heard about Keith,” I said.

“Tracy Kelly’s parents here?” Patty called.

“Here!” a man barked from behind me.

“She’s at Cape Fear.”

“Is Keith Weston on the list?” Sara shouted into the din.

I was afraid Patty hadn’t heard her. She was speaking to a man who held a pair of broken glasses up to his eyes.

“Keith Weston was just airlifted to New Hanover,” Patty called.

“Oh, no.” Sara grabbed my arm so hard I winced. I thought of the helicopter rising into the sky above me.

“Let’s go,” I said, pulling Sara with me through the sea of people. Tears I’d been holding in spilled down my cheeks as we backed away, letting other parents take our places. “We can drive together.”

“We’ll go separately,” Sara said, already at a run away from me. “In case one of us has to stay longer or—”

“Mom!” Maggie suddenly appeared at my side, winded and shivering. “They told me Uncle Marcus is here somewhere, but I couldn’t find out anything about Andy.”

“He’s at New Hanover.” I grabbed her hand. “I’m parked over by Jabeen’s. Let’s go.”

I took one glance back at the smoking church. The ragged siding that still remained standing glowed red against the eerie gray sky. I hadn’t thought about my former brother-in-law being there, but of course he was. I pictured Marcus inside the church, moving slowly through the smoke with his air pack on, feeling his way, searching for children who never stood a chance. Could he have been hurt when the roof collapsed? Please, no. And for the briefest of moments, I shifted my worry from Andy to him.

Maggie and I barely spoke on the way to Wilmington. She cried nearly the whole time, sniffling softly, shredding a tissue in her lap. My eyes were on the road, my foot pressing the gas pedal nearly to the floor. I imagined Andy trying to make sense out of the chaos of a fire and its aftermath. Simply moving the lock-in from the youth building to the church had probably been more than he could handle.

“Why did you say they moved the lock-in to the church?” I asked when we were halfway there.

“The electricity went out in the youth building.” Her voice broke. “I heard some kids died,” she said.

“Maybe just rumors.”

“I’m so sorry I talked you into letting Andy—”

“Shh.” I reached for her hand. “It’s not your fault, all right? Don’t even think that.” But inside I was angry at her, at how cavalierly she’d told me, Oh, Mother, he’ll be fine!

I tried to pull my hand from hers to make a turn, but she held it tightly, with a need that was rare for Maggie, and I let our hands stay locked together for the rest of the trip.

The crammed waiting area of the emergency room smelled of soot and antiseptic and was nearly as chaotic as the scene at the church. The throng of people in front of the glass reception window was four deep. I tried to push through, carving a space for Maggie and myself with my arms.

“Y’all have to wait your turn,” said a large, wide woman as she blocked my progress.

“I need to find out how my son is.” I kept pushing.

“We all need to know how our children are,” said the woman.

A man in the waiting area let out sudden gut-wrenching sobs. I didn’t turn to look. I wanted to plug my ears with my fingers. Maggie leaned against me a little.

“Maybe it was the electrical,” she said.

“What?”

“You know, how the electricity was out in the youth building? Maybe that’s connected to the fire somehow.”

The woman ahead of us left the window and it was finally our turn. “They told me my son was brought here,” I said. “Andrew Lockwood.”

“All right, ma’am. Have a seat.”

“No!” I wailed, the sound escaping my mouth like a surprise. “Please!” I started to cry, as though I’d been holding the tears in by force until that moment. “Tell me how he is! Let me go to him. He’s…he has special needs.”

“Mom…” Maggie tried to pull me away from the window.

The receptionist softened. “I know, honey,” she said. “Your boy’s okay. You take a seat and someone will come get you right quick.”

I nodded, trying to pull myself together, but I felt like fabric frayed too much to be mended. Maggie led me to one of the seats in the waiting area and when I looked at her I realized that she, too, had dissolved in tears once more. I hugged her, unable to tell whether it was her shoulders quaking or my own.

“Laurel?”

I saw a woman heading toward us from the other side of the room. Her face and T-shirt were smeared with soot, her hair coated with so much ash I couldn’t have said what color it was. Beneath her eyes, two long, clean trails ran down her cheeks. She’d had a good cry herself. She smiled now, though, as she took both my hands in hers. I recognized the slightly lopsided curve of the lips before I did the woman. Robin Carmichael. Emily’s mother.

“Robin!” I said. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she said. “And Andy’s fine, too,” she added quickly, knowing those were the words I needed to hear before anything else.

“They won’t let me see—”

“What about Emily?” Maggie interrupted.

Robin nodded toward the other side of the waiting area, where I spotted Emily curled up on a chair, hugging her knees and holding a bloodstained cloth to her forehead.

“She’s gonna be okay,” Robin said, “but we’re waiting to get her seen. She cracked her glasses right in two and got a little cut over her eyebrow.” Robin still held my hands and now she looked hard into my eyes. “Andy saved Emily’s life.” Her voice broke and I felt her grip tighten on my fingers. “He saved a load of people tonight, Laurel.”

“Andy?” Maggie and I said at the same time.

“Yeah, I know.” Robin clearly shared our amazement. “But I swear, it’s the truth.”

“Mrs. Lockwood?” A woman in blue scrubs stood at the entrance to the waiting area.

“Yes!” I stood up quickly.

“Come with me.”

We were ushered into one of the treatment areas I remembered from three years earlier when Andy broke his arm at the skating rink. The room had several beds separated by curtains. Someone was screaming behind one of the curtains; someone else cried. But the curtain was not drawn around Andy’s bed. He was bare chested and barefooted, but wearing his now-filthy pants. A woman in blue scrubs was bandaging his left forearm, and he wore an oxygen cannula below his nose. Andy spotted us and leaped off the bed, the gauzy dressing dangling from his arm, the cannula snapping off his face.

“Mom!” he shouted. “There was a big fire and I’m a hero!”

“Andy!” the nurse called sharply. “I need to finish your arm.”

Maggie and I pulled Andy into a three-way hug, and I breathed in that horrible acrid scent from the fire in great gulps. “Are you okay, sweetie?” I asked, still holding him tight. He fidgeted beneath my arms, and I knew they’d given him something for the asthma. I could tell by the spring-loaded tension in the muscles of his back, that’s how well I knew my son. Still, I wouldn’t let go of him.

Maggie came to her senses first, pulling away from us. “The nurse still needs you, Panda Bear,” she said. She lifted his arm and I saw the angry red swath that ran from his wrist to the bend of his elbow. First degree, I thought with relief. I led him back into the cubicle and looked at the nurse as Andy climbed onto the bed.

“Is that the worst of it?” I asked, pointing to his arm.

She nodded as she fit the cannula to his nostrils again. “Check it tomorrow for blisters. We’ll give you a prescription for pain. He’ll be okay, though. He’s a lucky fella.”

“I made a new friend,” Andy said. “Layla. I saved her.”

“I’m glad, sweetie.” I dusted ashes from his hair until its nutmeg color showed through.

The nurse carefully taped the gauze to his arm again. “He doesn’t seem to feel pain,” she said, looking at me.

“Not when he’s wired like this.” Maggie boosted herself onto the end of the bed.

“He’ll feel it later.” I remembered the swim meet last year when he hit his head on the side of the pool. He swam lap after lap, blood trailing behind him, not even aware he was hurt until the adrenaline had worn off.

“Did you hear me, Mom?” Andy said. “I saved Layla.”

“Emily’s mother told us you saved several people.” I smoothed the elastic strap of the cannula flat behind his ear. My need to touch him, to feel the life in him, was overpowering. “What happened?”

“Not several,” he corrected me. “Everybody.”

“You need to talk to him?” The nurse was looking over our heads, and I turned to see a man in a police uniform standing a few feet behind us. He looked at Andy.

“You Andy Lockwood?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered for him.

The man took a few steps closer. “You’re his mother?”

I nodded. “Laurel Lockwood. And this is my daughter, Maggie.”

The nurse patted Andy’s bare shoulder. “Give a holler, you need anything,” she said, pulling the curtain closed around us as she left.

“I’m ATF Agent Frank Foley,” the man said. “How about you tell me what happened tonight, Andy?”

“I was the hero.” Andy grinned.

The agent looked uncertain for a moment, then smiled. “Glad to hear it,” he said. “We can always use more heroes. Where were you when the fire began?” He flipped open a small notebook.

“With Emily.”

“That’s his friend,” I said. “Emily Carmichael.”

“Inside the church?” Agent Foley asked, writing.

“Yes, but she’s my friend everywhere.”

Maggie laughed. I knew she couldn’t help herself.

“He’s asking if you and Emily were inside the church when the fire broke out,” I translated.

“Yes.”

“Where in the church were you? Were you standing or sitting or…”

“One question at a time.” I held up a hand to stop him. “Trust me,” I said. “It’ll be easier that way.” I looked at Andy. “Where were you in the church when the fire broke out?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Try to think,” I prodded. “Were you by the front door or closer to the altar?”

“By the baptism pool thing.”

“Ah, good.” The agent wrote something on his notepad. “Sitting or standing?”

“I stood next to Emily. Her shirt was inside out.” He looked at me. “She used to do that all the time, remember?”

I nodded. “So you were standing with Emily near the baptism pool thing,” I said, trying to keep him focused. “And then what happened?”

“People yelled fire fire fire!” Andy’s dark eyes grew big, his face animated with the memory. “Then they started running past us. Then some boys grabbed a…the long thing and said one two three and broke the window with the bald man.”

It was my turn to laugh as the words tumbled out of his mouth. An hour ago, I’d been afraid I’d never hear my precious son speak again.

Agent Foley, though, eyed him with suspicion. “Were there drugs there, Andy?” he asked. “Did you drink or take any substances tonight?”

“No, sir,” Andy said. “I’m not allowed.”

The agent stopped writing and gnawed his lip. “Do you get it?” he asked me. “The long thing? The bald man?”

I shook my head.

“Are you still talking about being inside the church, Panda?” Maggie asked.

“Yes and the boys caught on fire, but there were no ladders, so I told them to Stop! Drop! Roll! and some of them did. Keith was there.” He looked at me. “He was mean to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Sara was my best friend and I was worried sick about her son, but Keith could be a little shit sometimes. “You mean there were no ladders to escape the fire, like the ladder we have in your room at home?”

“Right. There weren’t any,” Andy said.

“Okay,” Agent Foley said. “So while this was happening, where were you?”

“I told you, at the baptism thing.” Andy furrowed his forehead at the man’s denseness.

The agent flipped a few pages of his notepad. “People told me you got out of the church and—”

“Right,” Andy said. “Me and Emily went out the boys’ room window, and there was a big metal box on the ground, and we climbed onto it.”

“And then what happened?”

“We were outside.”

“And what did you see outside? Did you see any person out—”

“One question at a time,” I reminded him.

“What did you see outside, Andy?” Agent Foley asked.

“Fire. Everywhere except by the metal box. And Emily was screaming that nobody could get out the front door because fire was there. I saw somebody did get out the door and they were on fire. I don’t know who it was, though.”