To Catch a Storm by Mindy Mejia

Author:Mindy Mejia [Mindy Mejia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802162007
Amazon: 0802162002
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Published: 2023-08-01T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

We didn’t speak on the way back to the house. It was all I could do to creep along the iron-smashed path and not slide down into the orchard, where the curl of ice-covered branches beckoned, promising a slow, numbing end.

Eve was right. Celina had been gone for four months and I was no closer to finding her now than I had been a week ago. All I’d done was open myself to the dream again, and now I was drowning in it. The sound of Celina’s hitched breathing filled my ears. Her battered and aching body made my own weak as I staggered across the ice. My skull wasn’t broken. I knew that, but my head didn’t. I hadn’t stopped shaking since I got up.

Inside, Eve searched the house a second time. I didn’t have the energy to join her. I dry swallowed a chunk of Xanax and went to the kitchen, leaning against the fridge with my eyes closed, trying to shut out everything I’d felt and heard in the barn. Celina wasn’t here. It was an echo, a ghost cry, and I had to force the ghosts back into the growing darkness of the orchard outside the farmhouse windows. Danica Chase. Angela Garcia. I sucked in as much air as I could and let it out on a slow exhale. Kit Freeman. George Marcus Morrow.

I didn’t know how much time passed or if I fell asleep like that, staring at the long swallow of twilight, until the energy of the room shifted with a brightness I was starting to know too well.

“Did you find anything?” I couldn’t find the will to move, not yet.

“No.”

“I’m sorry.” She didn’t reply. “Is Earl all right?”

“Are you all right?”

I pushed myself off the appliance and opened the refrigerator door. “He should probably eat something. Food with his medication.”

There were a few mason jars filled with brown and red substances—jelly?—and a bag of coffee beans. The freezer had a half-eaten loaf of bread, and I found an unexpired tub of peanut butter and a bottle of pinot noir in the pantry.

Over PB&Js and wine in the living room, we agreed not to drive back to Iowa City tonight. The only local station we could get with the antenna reported hundreds of accidents across the state, with conditions expected to deteriorate. Earl wrote that there were tire chains in one of the sheds behind the garage and, combined with my snow tires and a heavy runway of sand, we could get the Evolution out of the orchard and leave Lovers Ridge tomorrow morning.

This place would be fine for one night, but I wasn’t excited about the idea. I lived alone. I had no pets. There was no one to hear or care when I woke up screaming or jumping out of bed.

What would Earl or Eve say if I asked to sleep in the bathtub? If I explained how being that uncomfortable helped me skim the surface of unconsciousness without diving into the nightmares of REM.

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