“What happened?”

I glance up as John crosses the threshold into my hospital room, concern on his face.

“Your aunt?”

I nod.

He sits beside me on the bed, wrapping his arms around me, and holds me while I cry, my tears wetting his shirtfront.

I pull back and meet his gaze, struggling to get my breathing under control.

“The man who worked at the front desk at the inn came to tell me what happened,” I say. “There were only two survivors. Everyone else perished. They want to bury her there.”

He holds me tightly while I cry some more, the sobs racking my body, until I fall asleep.

When I wake in the middle of the night after another nightmare, the tears wrung from my body, John is asleep beside me in the hospital bed, half his body hanging off the edge, his feet dangling over.

In the darkness, while he sleeps, I allow myself to watch him. He spoke of how the loud noises unsettled him after the war, but I wonder if he’s plagued with nightmares as I am, if the horrors of the war haunt him in sleep.

I lay my head against his shoulder, listening to the sound of his breathing, and when I fall back asleep the nightmares are gone.

* * *

—

When they print the names of the missing and the dead in the newspaper the next day, there is one notable addition to the list of the missing:

Thomas Berner

Thirty-Two

Elizabeth

I wake in the dark with a jolt, the sight of Sam sleeping in a chair near my hospital bed, the soft sound of his rhythmic snores, doing little to calm my racing heart.

In the dark, in sleep, I’m back in the train car, in a coffin filled with water. I relive those final moments, the hope that was snatched so swiftly away from us. It’s the ones who suffered through all of it, who died slowly, that haunt me most. For me, it was an instantaneous sense of darkness that overtook me, but what about the others? Those who came so close, who saw escape within their grasp, only to have it snatched away from them as they descended into despair, as they likely realized their death was unavoidable, as they watched their loved ones pass away in front of them.

Why do some suffer, and why are others spared?

The stories trickling out of the Keys are truly horrific. Bodies are showing up far from the storm’s path, blown miles and miles away, some dead from their injuries, others too weak to be expected to survive. It seems that it’s not enough to have lived through the storm itself; others have survived the immediate aftermath only to languish and ultimately succumb to their injuries.

I’m not sure I’ll ever sleep through the night again.

I have no news of my brother.

Now that the government offices are open, Sam was able to confirm that my brother was indeed working at the camps—the one by the ferry landing that we never made it to.

What happened after that is anyone’s guess. So many are missing, unaccounted for.

Dead.

My physical injuries are mending, the bump on my head lessening, the pain subsiding, the mottled bruising transforming to an ugly color the nurses assure me is a sign I am “healing.” I wish I could say the same about the rest of me, wish it was easy to put the awful things out of my mind.

I take Sam’s hand, his arm resting near my blanket-covered leg in the hospital bed. I roll onto my side, lacing our fingers together.

The flowers are gone, removed by one of the nurses when I asked her if she could get rid of them. If only I could erase the memory of Frank’s words with such ease.

There’s so much Sam and I have yet to speak of, his lies I have not begun to fully unravel, but right now it doesn’t matter. The things I worried over before pale in comparison to the losses so many have suffered, and at the moment, all I care about is that I am alive and I am safe.

I close my eyes and drift back to sleep, Sam’s hand in mine.

* * *

—

By Friday, the doctors are ready to release me, and Sam helps me secure a room in Miami at a hotel where he’s been staying when he’s not by my side at the hospital. I wait in the hospital sitting area while Sam goes to make a phone call for work.

A woman sits down next to me, a baby curled in her arms.

“She’s beautiful,” I say.

She beams. “Thank you. Her name is Lucy.”

“That’s a lovely name.”

Something about the woman—

“We met before, didn’t we?” I ask, recognition dawning. “When you were still pregnant. In Key West at Ruby’s Café. You’re Helen. You gave me the pie.”

Her eyes widen. “We did. Elizabeth, right? You were searching for your boyfriend. Did you locate him?”

“Not my boyfriend. My brother, actually. And no, I haven’t. We found out he was working at one of the camps, but no one knows what happened to him. So many of the men are missing.”

“You were caught in the storm?” Helen asks.

“Yes. We tried to take the evacuation train in Islamorada. The storm surge swept it off the tracks.”

Helen’s eyes widen. “That must have been terrifying.”

“It was. I hit my head, and they kept me here for observation. I’m finally leaving today, though. I’ve had enough of hospitals to last a lifetime.” And then I remember why she recommended the Sunrise Inn, and what Sam told me about the rest of the people who stayed behind. “I heard about your aunt. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Her eyes well with tears. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t spend much time with her while I was at the inn, but from what I saw, she seemed like a wonderful woman. It was a welcoming place.”

“She was.”

“Were you caught in the storm? Is that how you ended up here?” I ask.

“Yes. I left Key West right before the storm hit. Bad timing, I suppose.”

I gesture toward the babe in her arms. “Was she born before the storm?”

“During.”

My jaw drops. After everything we experienced, I can’t fathom giving birth in such conditions. “How did you survive?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Helen answers. “We were fortunate.” She smiles. “And we had a guardian angel of sorts who helped us.”

“What will you do now?” Helen asks me.

“I haven’t decided. I’d like to know what happened to my brother. I came down here hoping he could help me, but now I want to know he’s all right.”