Alex stood still, each heavy thump of his heart marking the seconds ticking by. To hell with it. Dean and Gloria were on the other side. He stepped carefully over each curve of the tangled line until he reached the opposite side of the road.
To his surprise, Tammy followed, her boots taking the same path as his. He waited for her to reach him safely, then they ran the rest of the way to Dean’s house.
“Dear God...” His voice left him, and his frantic steps slowed.
There was no longer a two-story house. Just a foundation filled with fragmented brick walls, massive piles of wood, shredded insulation and broken glass. There were no movements and no voices. Only the distant rumble of thunder and random plop of raindrops striking the wreckage filled the silence.
“Dean?” Alex winced. His shaky voice barely rose above the rasp of the wind. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Dean!”
No answer. He took a hesitant step forward, then another until he reached the highest pile of rubble, visually sifting through splintered doors, broken window frames and loose bricks. Dread seeped into his veins and weakened his limbs. He began walking the perimeter, struggling to stay upright and fighting the urge to collapse on the wet ground.
Maybe they weren’t home. He nodded and kept moving. They might have driven the twenty miles to town to get groceries and could still be there. He rounded what used to be the back of the house and scanned the heaps.
That was what it was—they weren’t home. Thank God.
“They weren’t here,” he called out, turning and starting back toward Tammy. “They—”
He froze. The toe of a purple shoe stuck out beneath a toppled, broken brick wall.
Those dang shoes of yours are gonna blind me one day, Gloria.
Alex began to shake. How many times had he heard Dean tease his wife about her purple shoes? The bright ones she liked to run in every morning after they’d fed and turned out the horses?
It’s not my shoes that are blinding you, baby, she would chide Dean. It’s my beauty.
“Gloria?” Alex hit his knees and touched the laces with trembling fingers. He could still hear her laugh in his head. Joyful and energetic. “Gloria.”
There was no answer. He gripped the edge of the bricks and heaved, barely registering Tammy dropping to his side and lifting with him. They wrestled with the weight of the brick wall, and he counted off, directing Tammy to shove with him in tandem until they managed to shift it. Huge chunks crumbled away, and the largest section broke off to the side, revealing Dean and Gloria underneath.
Lifeless.
“No.” Alex shook his head, tuning out Tammy’s soft sobs. “This is the wrong one. This is the wrong damned house.” He shot to his feet, choked back the bile rising in his throat, then threw his head back to shout up at the dark sky. “You got the wrong one, you son of a bitch!”
The storm should’ve taken his house. It was an empty shell. A pathetic structure that would never shelter children or a married couple—his infertility had seen to the former and his ex-wife had ensured the latter. He wasn’t a father or a husband. Hell, he wasn’t even a man in the real sense of the word. And there was no bright future to look forward to in his life.
“It should’ve been me, you bastard,” he yelled, his voice hoarse and his throat raw.
Not Gloria. Not Dean. And not...Brody. His stomach heaved. Not that beautiful boy who’d just learned to walk. The son Dean had been so proud of and whom Gloria had smothered with affection.
“Alex?”
He doubled over, clamping a hand over his mouth and trying not to gag.
Tammy moved closer to his side. “I hear something, Alex.”
He glanced up. Tears marred her smooth cheeks, mingling with the dirt and rain on her face. “They’re gone,” he choked. “There’s no one.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Listen.”
Alex heard it then. A faint cry, no louder than a weak whisper, swept by his ear on a surge of wind. He couldn’t tell if it was an animal or a human. If it was a final cry of death or a declaration of life. All he knew as he scanned the wreckage in front of him was that he was terrified of what he might find.
Tammy tilted her head and strained to pinpoint the soft cries escaping the demolished house in front of her. They were muffled and seemed to emanate from a stack of rubble next to...
She stifled a sob, tore her eyes from the couple lying in front of her and pointed at a high pile of debris. “There,” she said.
For a moment, she didn’t think Alex would move. He remained doubled over beside her, silent and still. But when a fresh round of cries rang out from the rubble, he shot upright, scrambled toward the towering mass in the center of the demolished home and began heaving jagged two-by-fours out of the way.
The broad muscles of his back strained the thin, wet material of his T-shirt as he flung the debris away. He jerked to a stop when he reached a ragged portion of a wall—the only one left standing. A battered door dangled from its hinges and barely covered an opening.
Tammy stepped to his side, hope welling within her chest. Other than a hole having been punched through the upper corner, the door looked relatively untouched. Just like the plastic hanger sitting on the ground in front of it. And the healthy cry of a child reverberated within.
Alex reached out and gripped the doorknob, the shine of the brass dulled by mud and bits of leaves. The door squeaked as he pulled it out slowly, then propped it open. The dim light from the cloudy sky overhead barely lit the interior.
A young child huddled on the ground against the back corner. He stopped crying and looked up, his red cheeks wet with tears. The denim overalls and striped shirt he wore were damp, too.
His big brown eyes moved from Tammy to Alex, then his face crumpled. A renewed round of cries escaped him and echoed over the ravaged landscape surrounding them. Chubby hands reached up toward Alex, the small fingers grasping empty air.
Tammy gasped, her chest burning, and glanced at Alex.
He didn’t move. He stood motionless amid thick planks of wood and pink insulation. The increasing gusts of wind ruffled his hair and a stoic expression blanketed his pale face.
“Alex?”
Throat aching, Tammy hesitated briefly, then knelt and scooped up the boy. His thin arms wrapped tight around her neck, and his hot face pressed against her skin, his sobs ringing in her ears.
“Alex.” She spoke firmly and dipped her head toward the boy at her chest. “What’s his name?”
Alex blinked, eyes refocusing on her, and whispered, “Brody.”
Tammy smoothed a palm gently over the boy’s soft brown hair. “We’re here, Brody.” Her chin trembled, and she bit her lip hard before saying, “We’re here now.”
She stepped carefully over a large portion of the roof, the tattered shingles flapping in the wind and clacking against the rafters.
“Don’t let him see,” Alex rasped.
He moved swiftly to block the couple behind them, then cleared a safe path to the grass.
Tammy walked slowly behind him, swallowing hard and concentrating on his confident movements. His brawny frame seemed massive above the razed house, and under normal circumstances his towering presence would have set her nerves on edge. But she didn’t feel the usual waves of apprehension. Only a deep sense of gratitude. And she found herself huddling closer to his back with each step, the boy in her arms growing