Authors Note: Get buckled in for a big chapter, and just a word of caution, this chapter deals with personal injury. Also if you're interested in reading more of my writing you can check out this essay I just posted on my substack. Thanks again for reading along and I adore the feedback!

Chapter 19 October 20th 2026

Sirens went off. The sound of windchimes frantically cascading turned louder and darker. A blast of wind that rattled the windows then a flash lightning instantaneously followed by the crack of thunder. The power went out. Whit and Lucy looked at each other on the couch.

“Should we go to the basement?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” Whit said. He grabbed his phone from the coffee table and turned on the flash light. Lucy did the same and glanced out the window, rain was now part of the mix and slamming the glass pane. “It’s coming down like cats and dogs out there.”

They made their way down the stairs to the basement. Lucy in her soft nightgown and Whit wearing soft Winnie the Pooh pajamas that he’d just bought. Whit looked around and found a little emergency box they kept and lit a candle. Strange shadows danced around the dusty basement.

Lucy sat down on the old couch and pulled her feet under her body.

“Do you realize if there’s a tornado you might have to run outside in your new Pooh Bear pajamas. Did you think of that?” she asked.

Whit grinned, “I think my pajamas will be the last thing on my mind if there is a tornado.

Lucy snorted softly, but it didn’t quite land. Another gust hit the house, harder this time. The floor joists above them creaked, a long wooden groan that made Lucy instinctively pull her knees tighter to her chest.

The candle flame bent sideways.

They sat in silence, listening. Wind roared past the foundation like something alive, a sustained howl that rose and fell in waves. Somewhere outside, metal clanged loose and kept clanging, rhythmic and hollow.

“God,” Lucy muttered. “That’s bad.”

Whit nodded, eyes fixed on the stairs. “This isn’t normal bad.”

The sirens wailed again, closer now, overlapping each other in an uneven chorus. Lucy texted her parents.

“Mom and Dad are OK,” Lucy said.

Whit nodded and received a message on his phone from his parents and replied before answering. “Yeah, so are mine.”

Rain began to drum against the house in a way that sounded almost solid, as if it were being thrown, not falling.

Whit glanced down at his phone. “Radar’s showing it’s about passed. It was just a really dark red spot.”

“Okay,” she said quickly. “Okay. We’re fine. We’re fine.”

She didn’t sound convinced.

They waited. Time stretched. Lucy tried counting the seconds between thunder and lightning, but the flashes came too close together, the cracks immediate and concussive.

Whit shifted, rubbing his hands on his pajama pants. He hated the waiting. The helplessness of it. His mind kept skipping ahead, inventing images he didn’t want.

Then, without quite knowing why, a thought landed and wouldn’t leave.

“Grace,” he said.

Lucy looked at him. “What?”

“Grace,” he repeated. “She’s out there. In that trailer.”

Lucy’s brow furrowed. “Mom and Dad are in a trailer and they are OK.”

“Your Mom and Dad’s trailer is on a foundation, hers is just on wheels I think. Plus it’s tiny,” he said quietly. “By fields, out in the open.”

Lucy hesitated. She didn’t want to validate the fear. She also couldn’t dismiss it. She’d grown up in trailers and the fear of storms..

“Maybe she’s fine,” Lucy said, even as her stomach tightened.

Whit was already unlocking his phone again, thumb hovering. “I’m just going to check.”

He called. Straight to voicemail.

Lucy leaned forward. “Try again.”

He did. Same result.

The wind slammed the house so hard the candle flickered wildly, wax spilling over the edge of the glass jar.

Lucy stood. “That didn’t sound good.”

Whit tried texting. No delivery check. No nothing.

“She might not have service,” Lucy said, but now she was pacing, barefoot on the cold concrete. “Or her phone’s dead.”

Whit stared at the stairs. “Or…”

***

Grace was sitting on her bed, her legs drawn up under her. She was wearing a big oversized soft pink “Hello Kitty” sweatshirt with a very wide neck opening showing off her bra straps. Her legs were covered in thigh highs with pink bows and a very short pink skirt. A pair of ring lights bathed the entire scene in an angelic glow eradicating all shadows. Her laptop was opened, facing her and she held a large microphone in her lap.

Grace’s bedroom was a homage to cute, anime posters on the walls, a display of Sanrio characters behind her, and the glow of LED lighting. “This color is so cute, thank you so much Rob,” Grace says as she slowly and carefully applied the polish to her fingers. “So guys it’s maybe going to storm tonight, so if I get cut off it’s probably just rain.”

She glanced up to read the chat and replied, “I’m not sure, just a thunderstorm, I didn’t see anything about Tornados. So chat, I found this new anime, it’s called ‘Laid-Back Camp’ it’s literally just about these girls who go camp together. I’m going to watch an episode tonight.”

Grace looked up again, “No, not feeling like gaming tonight,” she said.

The lights flickered and Grace saw she’d lost her internet connection, her stream was dead. She suddenly got more interested in the weather. She picked her phone up from the nightstand where it was plugged in and charging at 12%. No wi-fi and her mobile signal in the trailer was dead.

“Shit,” Grace said. The wind seemed to pick up, she could hear the old trailer creak and groan under the pressure. In the living room she pushed her way past the front door and stepped out on her porch. She was buffeted by cold winds. The tall grass by the road was bent flat.

Grace loved storms, she always had, lighting streaked across the sky illuminating a wall of black coming from Mud Creek. She realized the warm glow of the town’s lights was gone. Curiosity got the best of her and she walked barefoot down the steps and walked past the trailer so she could see the pine covered hills behind her. They were saying back and forth madly, reminding her of the dancing wind sock guys the used car lot had.

A brilliant flash of lighting was followed by a thunderclap causing Grace to jump. The lights in her trailer went out.

She could hear the sound of a freight train approaching, even though it was dark she could see a wall of rain and wind from the West. Grace dashed up the steps, through the blanket and into darkness. Light came down from the hall and she remembered that her ring lights were powered by batteries. So she grabbed one to use as a flashlight.

She sat on the couch and put on her shoes. She suddenly wanted to call her Dad. She hadn’t talked to him in weeks, but he would tell her if the trailer is safe. Maybe she should get in her truck. She remembered in school she was once told that a ditch would be the safest place in a tornado.

The trailer started shaking and she got off the couch. It was so loud, then she felt the floor lurch. She started towards the hallway to get her phone. The room moved. She lost her footing and went to her knees. She looked up and saw the tall book case coming at her face and tried to get a hand up.

Her vision was filled with white, then black.

***

Sirens wailed, blue and red lights passed Whit and Lucy on the highway out of town. It was still raining but the storm was over, leaving behind limbs and debris. Whit slowed down and had to drive around a tree that had fallen and blocked the right lane. Lucy tried to call again and Grace didn’t answer.

The county blacktop through the unharvested corn fields glowed beneath their lights as the Palestine hills slowly grew larger. They crossed the small bridge and Lucy’s hand came up over her mouth. Grace’s small trailer had been pushed off its blocks. Twisted metal siding stuck out at weird angles.

“Oh shit,” Whit said as he pulled into the driveway beside the beat up truck. He jumped out and run up to the porch where a two foot gap had formed between the porch and the trailer. The door had blown open and was hanging twisted on its bottom hinge. The heavy blanket was still up. Whit pushed it aside and took a big step into the room.

It was a disaster, broken glass everywhere, toppled furniture, the night light still on and laying in the floor. Grace was propped up against the couch with blood running down her face from her scalp. She had a fleece throw, red with blood, over the top of her head. Whit did a double take at her clothes. She looked like a little girl who’d wandered into a slasher movie.

Whit froze for half a second too long.

Lucy didn’t.

“Oh my God Grace.” Lucy was already stepping over glass, phone light snapping on, voice steady in a way that surprised even her. “Hey. Hey, look at me.”

Grace’s eyes flickered. Her mouth opened, closed. “Mom?,” she said. “I’m sorry,” the words slurred just enough to be wrong.

Lucy crouched in front of her, hands gentle but firm as she took the blood-soaked fleece away and replaced it with her own sweatshirt, pressing it against Grace’s head. “It’s Lucy, No apologies. You’re okay. You’re okay right now.”

Whit stood uselessly near the door, heart hammering. The smell hit him then, wet insulation, metal, rain, and blood. The trailer felt smaller than he remembered, tilted, wrong, like it was still moving even though the storm had passed.

“I couldn’t” Grace tried again, then winced hard, her hand flying to her ankle. “My phone’s in the bedroom. I got hurt.”

Lucy nodded, already clocking the details. The way Grace’s pupils lagged. The way she leaned into the couch like she couldn’t hold herself upright. “Okay. You don’t need to try anymore. We’ve got you.”

Whit swallowed. “Grace? It’s Whit. We’re here.”

Her eyes shifted toward him, unfocused but searching. “Hi,” she said faintly, and noticed the way she was dressed. She frowned as if embarrassed by the whole thing. “Sorry. I was… I was doing something.”

“I know,” Lucy said softly, even though she didn’t. “That’s okay.”

Another drip of blood slid down Grace’s temple and into her eyebrow. Lucy wiped it away with the edge of the sweatshirt and pressed harder. “I’m going to keep pressure here. I need you to stay awake for me, okay. We’re going to get you to the hospital?”

Grace nodded, then shook her head, then stilled. “I don’t have insurance,” she said suddenly, panic creeping in under the fog. “I can’t go to the hospital.”

Lucy met her eyes. “That’s not your problem tonight.”

“It is,” Grace insisted weakly. “I don’t,”

Lucy’s voice sharpened, not angry, just absolute. “Grace. You’re bleeding, you have a head wound, and you’re concussed. You don’t get to decide that right now.”

Whit found his feet. On the floor near the kitchen counter he saw her purse where it had fell. He grabbed it. “Where’s your phone Grace?”

Grace made a small noise and pointed down the hall.

He moved carefully through the wreckage toward the back of the trailer. The hallway floor sloped sharply then ripped in two, jagged floor joists stuck up. He could see through the open bedroom door into the night sky, one wall crumpled over. It was a mess of pastel debris and stuffed animals.

When he came back, Lucy was already helping Grace shift her weight, one arm around her shoulders, careful of the ankle.

“It hurts,” Grace whispered.

“I know,” Lucy said. “I know it does. We’re going to get you out of here.”

“I’m sorry Grace, I can’t even get into your room,” he said. She nodded.

Outside, the rain had slowed to a cold drizzle. Sirens wailed again in the distance, farther away this time.

Whit opened the Jeep door wide. Lucy guided Grace forward, step by painful step, murmuring constant instructions, grounding her in the moment. Grace clutched Lucy’s sleeve with shaking fingers, leaving faint red smears on the fabric.

As they settled her into the back seat, Grace sagged against the door, exhausted. Her eyes fluttered.

Lucy snapped her fingers softly. “Hey. Stay with me. Tell me your name.”

Grace swallowed. “Grace,” she said. After a beat, quieter: “My name’s Grace.”

Lucy smiled, tight. “Good. That’s perfect.”

Whit closed the door and stood there for a second, rain soaking into his hair, looking back at the broken trailer in the dark.

Then he got into the driver’s seat and pulled away, fast but careful, headlights cutting a narrow, trembling path back toward town.