Hurricane House by Sandy Semerad Page B

I’m looking at now.”
    “Please be careful.”
    I stopped in front of Victor Curry’s dome house. It seemed okay, but not the mansion next door. The storm had flattened it. “Remember that pink place, the only pink mansion on Paradise Isle? It belongs to Roxanne Trawler and that lawyer she married.”
    “Yeah, I think so.”
    “Looks like a giant stepped on it.” “Hurry up. Get to our places. I’m turning blue, waiting.”
    “Remember the Dolphin Mansion on Turtle Cove, “the haunted castle,” you used to call it? Built by the artist who painted the dolphins.”
    Kari Ann sighed. “I don’t want to talk about that now.”
    “I’m surprised that house is still standing.”
    “Don’t say another word until you get to our places.”
    “Front steps are gone.”
    “Are you talking about us now?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Bad?”
    “We did okay.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “The street is flooded. I can’t drive thru, but it doesn’t look too bad from here.”
    “Are you planning to walk in that flood? If so, be careful.
    Don’t do it if it’s dangerous.”
    I parked the Silverado on an incline close to Blue Heron Way. It’s the road leading to our townhouses, five and seven, sandwiched between other townhouses on the right side. The even-numbered units sit on the left side of the road. Each building has nine connected town homes or “row houses,” as Dad used to say.
    I placed the cell phone between my right ear and shoulder and tugged on my rain boots. I hate walking in floodwaters.
    It’s knee-deep sludge, too dirty to see what’s beneath the surface. “Part of our siding has blown off,” I said, my heart hammering as I stepped though the nasty water. “Other than that, our outer structures did well.”
    “Thank God.”
    “Whew, made it,” I said, hopping up on the concrete porch to unit five. I opened the door. “Stinks, backed up sewage all over the Mexican tile in the foyer.”
    “Wish I were there to help you.”
    “Fly down, we’ll have a cleaning party.”
    “I can’t. Jason’s away at a medical convention and the twins are sick.”
    I felt a tug in my heart. I adore my five-year-old niece and nephew. “What’s wrong with Miss Lou and J Junior?” “The flu from hell.”
    “I thought they got shots.”
    “There was a shortage again.”
    “I thought being married to a doctor had its privileges.” I turned on the kitchen faucet. The pipes groaned. No water. “I hope you don’t get sick.”
    “I’m too mean.”
    “That’s what Mom used to say.”
    Kari Ann sighed.
    Our mom’s death was bizarre and unexpected. She was jumping rope during a field day at the high school where she’d taught P.E. for twenty-six years. A student threw a baseball, hitting Mom’s Achilles heel. Two days later she died from a blood clot that traveled to her lungs and suffocated her. Kari Ann and I still can’t believe she’s gone.
    I walked upstairs. Something wet popped me on the head. “I think we have a leak. I’ll need to tarp the roof.”
    “If you go up there, please remember you can’t fly.”
    I laughed, thinking my sister sounded exactly like Mom. “Ye of little faith.” A sheet of boarding lumber had blown loose from the sliding doors to the balcony. The glass bore scratches in the shape of a cross.
    I walked out on the balcony and saw the largest expanse of white sand on Florida’s Panhandle. It looked like snow, cluttered with battered lumber and other junk. A blue Mustang stood straight up, as if getting ready to drive toward heaven. A washing machine sat on top of a neighbor’s roof.
    “When we were kids, the sand on Paradise Isle was so white visiting Yankees thought it was snow,” I said. “Remember?”
    “Yeah, but listen. Did you hear that? CNN said about fifty people in Dolphin are missing.” I thought of Victor. His house survived, but did he? “Remember the lake in the center of Dolphin Point.”
    “Lake? You mean that marshy shit?”
    “That ‘marshy shit’