“I found your body lying on the ground a few hundred yards away from the station. I don’t know how you got there, but when I discovered you I thought you were dead. You wouldn’t open your eyes, and I couldn’t feel a pulse at first.”

“The veterans—” My brother.

“I don’t know. The camps are gone. Destroyed by the storm. Not everyone evacuated, and the ones who did—”

The expression on his face, the sheer horror there—

“What about the guests who stayed at the Sunrise Inn and didn’t evacuate with us?”

“Most of the structures are gone. I’m not sure if any are still standing. I don’t know what happened to everyone else.”

Tears fill my eyes, running down my cheeks.

“You have a concussion,” Sam tells me. “They want to monitor you for a few days to make sure you’re fine. You were pretty banged up. Maybe your body got tangled up in something that kept you in place. That’d explain the bruises, at least.”

“How were you hurt?” I ask, gesturing in the direction of his face. There’s a nasty laceration near his eye.

“Flying debris, I think. It’s all a blur, pieces of it I don’t remember, but at least I only have some cuts and bruises. Nothing too bad.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“They checked me out when we first came up here. They had far worse injuries to tend to than mine. I’m fine.”

“How long have we been in Miami?”

“A day. Some people came down with boats to get the injured out. There are still rescue efforts to help the rest of the survivors.”

“Is there a list of names somewhere? I need to locate my brother.”

“I’ll talk to some of the officials. See what I can learn. Right now, you worry about getting better. The doctors said the most important thing is for you to relax.” He swallows. “I thought you were dead.”

The emotion in his voice surprises me.

“Things are complicated,” I say. “What you told me at the inn, the papers I found, I don’t know how I feel about it.”

“I know.”

“I’m grateful to you for what you’ve done for me, for coming here with me, but I deserve more answers than what you’ve given me so far.”

“I’ll tell you everything I can, whenever you’re ready.”

I want to believe him, want to think there’s loyalty between us after everything we’ve been through, but something holds me back. I’ve been burned by other people enough times to learn that my trust shouldn’t be so easily won.

My gaze drifts to the table next to my bed, a fat red bouquet of roses perched on top.

“They’re beautiful. But you didn’t have to send me flowers.”

“I didn’t.”

A white card sticks out from the overabundance of red, and Sam plucks it from the bouquet and hands it to me wordlessly.

A chill slides down my spine as I read the words scrawled in black ink.

The card slips from my hand, fluttering to the hospital room floor.

I was very sorry to hear of your accident. Frank.

Twenty-Nine

Helen

The rescue boat takes us to Riverside Hospital in Miami. The doctors examine Lucy and proclaim her healthy, clearing me as well, and tuck us into one of the empty rooms. I try to answer their questions as best I can, fill out the paperwork they put in front of me, but before I realize it, my eyes are drooping, the lack of sleep from the baby and the hurricane catching up to me.

When I wake, a nurse mills around the room, John seated in the corner in a rocking chair, Lucy in his arms. A lump forms in my throat at the sight of them, at the sound of him singing softly to the baby, a hint of a melody I remember from my own childhood, his voice surprisingly pleasant.

John glances over her head, and our gazes meet.

I smile, relief filling me. “You’re back.”

“I got a boat out this morning. I wanted to come check on you. How are you?”

“Tired,” I admit, already reaching for the baby as he settles her in my arms.

Lucy searches for my breast, nuzzling my skin, and I don’t have it in me to be embarrassed by sharing this moment with him, not after all the other intimacies we’ve experienced. Facing death has a way of bonding you with another.

“I read your chart,” he says. “Everything seems good. You’re healing nicely. They said you should be able to go home in a day or so. Lucy is doing well, too.”

Home.

I don’t even know where that is anymore. I’ve given the hospital staff Aunt Alice’s information to see if she’s been admitted, but so far she hasn’t turned up.

“Do you know if the storm hit Key West?” I ask.

“We bore the brunt of it. They’re saying Key West is mostly fine. But power is out, communication lines down, people missing, taken to various locations to get help. They’ve evacuated all injured who wished to leave the Keys. The National Guard has been called in.”

“I can’t help wondering about Tom. Did he head south to Cuba to go fishing? Or did he head north? Was he caught in the storm? Is he even alive? I keep waiting for him to walk through the door. If he is searching for us, the hospital has to be a logical place he’d look.”

“There are police officers here. The nurses will keep an eye on you. He’s not going to hurt you again.”

“I’ll be better when we can leave.” When we can disappear. “Have you heard anything about my aunt?”

“No, I haven’t. I’ll keep asking. If she wasn’t injured too badly in the storm, they probably wouldn’t have evacuated her until later. Hopefully, she’ll show up here soon.”

“And the men in the camps? Did the train get them out safely?”

I’ve been ensconced with Lucy in this hotel room, cut off from the rest of the world. I keep thinking about the people who came to dine at Ruby’s passing on to their next destination, everyone who called this stretch of the Keys home.

John is silent for a few moments, his gaze fixated on some point on the wall behind me.

“They tried to evacuate the men from the camps. Sent a train to get them out, but it ran into problems on the way down and was delayed. It didn’t even make it to the camp where I worked. It hardly mattered. It was too late for most of them by the time the train arrived at the other camps. The tidal surge got them. They say the train cars are littered across the ground, the railroad destroyed. They’re still unearthing the bodies.”