Monday
Sophie went upstairs to give her mother the storm report and found her slumped on the bed looking finished, done for.
“What’s wrong?” Sophie asked, instead of what she’d come to say, that school tomorrow was cancelled because Hurricane Florence had Wilmington in its bullseye. She put her little dog on the bed and he crawled into her mother’s lap. At home Sophie always kept Bruni close. She didn’t like leaving him alone with her little sister, and worried about what would happen to him next year when she left for college.
Her mother, Jane, had an old fashioned clock on the bedside table. Its ticking helped her sleep. Usually at the sight of either of her daughters Jane would lift her brows and rearrange her features into happiness. Now her face scarcely moved at all. Sophie counted the seconds, one tick, two ticks, ten ticks, sixty.
“Here,” Jane finally said, lifting her hand off her phone but otherwise not moving.
Sophie thumbed in her mother’s password. When the lock screen disappeared she found herself looking at an Instagram account with the handle “Old Ugly Jane.” The bio read, “I’m Jane. I’m old, I’m fat, and I’m ugly.”
“She didn’t even make it private,” Jane said.
Most of the pictures were of Jane and all of them were horrifying. Jane double chinned while stirring a pot of soup. Jane, too close up while peering at something beneath her, every line on her face magnified, the hair in her nose visible. Jane topless in her chaotic bedroom, flesh squeezing over the waistband of her pants as she searched in her dresser for a bra. Sitting on the toilet naked, staring at her phone. A video, in only underpants and bra, stomach and upper arms trembling as she brushed her teeth – mirror providing the front view, camera lens the back. Intermittent pictures not of Jane but messes she’d left, piles of laundry in her closet, hair accumulated in an unwashed sink, the mold on the bottom of her shower curtain. “I’m old and fat AND slovenly,” the caption for that one read.
Jane’s window blinds were up, exposing early evening light and calm skies. The leaves in the sweet gum tree shivered ever so slightly. No sign yet of nighttime, or the hurricane on its way. Sophie scrolled again to make sure there were no pictures of herself. The closest was a bathroom trashcan full of used tampons, which could belong to her as easily as Jane. Rachel had created the account. Who else? They didn’t even need to discuss it. Her sister’s footfall was eerily silent, she could come upon you out of nowhere. And that phone, always in her hand, like someone had glued it to her palm.
“Oh my God,” Sophie said, putting the phone face down on the bed.
Jane’s face went white. Apparently sharing had made it worse. Sophie’s exclamation had made it worse.
“How did you find out?” Sophie asked.
“School principal. Someone’s mother told him.”
Bruni nudged his head under Jane’s hand. She patted him as if she didn’t know she were doing it. For so long Sophie had known something like this was coming, from Rachel. She felt almost relieved the something was only this, figurative bloodshed, someone else’s. And that maybe, finally, their mother would listen to her. That something about Rachel was not, had never been, quite right.
Us girls, Jane liked to call the three of them. It’s so nice, she’d say, with forced optimism, just us girls living together.
“Are you going to talk to her?” Sophie asked.
“I can’t even look at her. Not right now.”
“School’s cancelled tomorrow.”
“Already? Why?”
“To give people time to leave town. The hurricane. Remember?” It was predicted to hit Thursday.
Jane pressed her knuckles into her eyes without closing her fists and lay back on the bed.
“Aren’t we going to evacuate?” Sophie asked.
“I don’t know,” Jane said, eyes still covered. “Maybe you and I can evacuate and leave Rachel here.”
Sophie put her hand on her mother’s knee. “You don’t look like that,” she said. “The pictures are wrong.”
Jane didn’t answer. She didn’t move her hands away from her eyes. She just lay there like everything had already come to an end.
Downstairs Sophie found Rachel double screened: Bizaardvark blaring on the TV and her phone inches from her nose, eyes flickering between the two. At the top of the television screen weather alerts ran red with storm warnings and cancellations but still the sky through the windows sat stubborn and blue. At twelve years old Rachel was beautiful in the way of children, with an undeveloped nose, clear white irises, and no self-consciousness or pores. By this age Sophie already had breasts, underarm hair, acne. She stood next to the couch holding her own phone, logging onto Instagram to search for the account.
“You’re blocking my show,” Rachel said.
“Do you want to explain this?” Sophie held her phone just out of Rachel’s reach but close enough for her to see.
Rachel moved her eyes from Sophie’s phone to her face. “Does Mom know?” Her voice and expression remained flat. Rachel’s calm could make her seem frightening but also possessed of a weird kind of magic.
“Mom’s the one who showed me,” Sophie said. “Just now. Upstairs.”
“Is she mad?”
“Mad? She’s broken. You broke her.”
Rachel raised one eyebrow, a gesture Sophie envied. Inscrutable.
“What,” Sophie said. “You think that’s better?”
“I don’t know.” Rachel turned her attention back to the TV.
“Don’t you want to go talk to her? Say something to her? Like, ‘I’m sorry’?”
“Not if she’s mad.”
Sophie reached for Rachel’s phone but she pulled it to close to her chest.
“Give me that,” Sophie said. “Give it to me right now.”
“You can’t take it away,” Rachel said. “You’re not my mother.”
Usually Jane had an uncanny knack for appearing at any rise of conflict between her daughters. Sophie waited for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. When silence persisted she grabbed keys from the bowl on the hall table, put Bruni in the car, and headed to Panera to pick up dinner. Looking at the drive through menu she considered getting food just for her and Jane but ended up ordering a steak and arugula sandwich for Rachel. Evil people had to eat, too.
Tuesday
Sophie woke too early. The dawn sky stood a shade darker than usual – the storm still over the Atlantic, churning to build up strength. She closed her eyes and said to the hurricane: “Change direction, change direction, change direction.” Urging it toward another city, or better yet up through the ocean, only its tentacles ever touching shore.
“I’m Jane” was still up on Instagram. Still public. Sophie lay in bed, the air conditioner’s hum louder than the wind, and scrolled through the feed. She thought of all the flattering pictures she had of her mother. She could make a different account. Beautiful Jane. But her mother would hate that too. She hated every picture of herself, lately.
Sophie put her hand on Bruni, curled beside her. Touching animals quells anxiety, she had read. Her father’s face appeared on the phone, making Instagram disappear with his incoming call. Sophie declined it. She threw her covers off and marched to her sister’s bedroom, which Jane had decorated with a ladybug motif. Rachel slept with a small smile sweetening her lips, her closed eyes moving gently. Sophie grabbed her shoulders and shook them, hard.
Rachel opened her eyes. “What are you doing?” she said. “There’s no school today.”
“You’re going to delete that account,” Sophie said. “You’re going to delete it right this second.”
“I’m not,” Rachel said. “You can’t make me.”
Sophie stepped back. She thought if she had a gun she might hold it to Rachel’s head. She did a quick glance around the room but the phone was nowhere to be seen. She could tear everything apart, find the phone and destroy it. But the account would still be there, those pictures, for everyone to see.
“You’re cyberbullying your own mother,” Sophie whisper-shouted, not wanting to wake Jane.
Rachel pulled the covers over her head. “Just let me sleep,” she said.
Sophie picked up Bruni. When Rachel was little she liked to keep betta fish. She would scoop them out of their tiny bowls and watch them flop across her bureau. Their father bought replacements anyway, one after the other. Last year Sophie had watched a documentary about the Slenderman incident, two tween girls stabbing their friend in a park. For a while afterward she tried to shadow Rachel during the rare time she spent with other children.
Jane came downstairs while Sophie watched early morning TV. The Weather Channel showed a long line of cars leaving town on I-40.
“The storm’s moving slowly,” Sophie told her mother. “But I guess that’s bad. It gives it time to pick up strength. Or cover more ground, or something. They say it’s going to be a category four.”
“That’s what they always say,” Jane said, her tone dismissive and maybe angry. The tickertape of cancellations and mandatory evacuations ran across the top of the TV screen. Jane wore one of her work outfits – long skirt and long sleeved blouse, too much clothing for the hot, muggy day. Sophie waited for Jane to ask if she’d had breakfast but she didn’t. She didn’t smile, or ask if Rachel was up, or don a cheerful countenance – caring and upbeat – the way she had every morning of Sophie’s life.
“When are we going to evacuate?” Sophie asked. In the past they’d left for anything stronger than a tropical storm. Sometimes even for those, when they’d lived at the beach with their father. They would come into town to stay in hotels, just a little bit inland, and safer, with generators and thick walls.
“I don’t know,” Jane said. She left without drinking coffee or saying good bye.
Sophie couldn’t bear to be alone in the house with Rachel, so she drove out to Carolina Beach with Bruni in her lap. At the state park they walked out to Snow’s Cut, where the Intracoastal Waterway met the Atlantic. There was no one else on the trail. The water looked gray and fierce, waves white tipped and ready for battle. Sitting on a log while Bruni flirted with the shallows, Sophie checked Instagram. There was a new picture, Jane’s door shut tight. The caption read, “Found out,” with a series of non-remorseful emojis, including the laugh-till-you-cry face. Each time Sophie scrolled through the pictures she saw something she’d missed. A zoom in on a naked butt, sagging with cellulite. Jane in front of the TV with a bag of potato chips, looking exhausted and older than was fair. “Why I’m fat,” the caption read. It occurred to Sophie she could report the account so she did, three times, first choosing harassment and bullying as the reason, then impersonation, then nudity.
Bruni trotted over and flopped down wet across her feet. The world colored just the barest bit differently, the sky resting lower to the land. Sophie thought about the days before technology, when there wouldn’t be any warning about the storm, just a darkening sky and then, Surprise! Roofs torn off. Storm surge sweeping vehicles off the road. Trees ripped out of the ground. The entire town, drowned.
At home Sophie closed herself in her room away from Rachel, checking Instagram periodically to see if the account was still there. But even if it were taken down couldn’t Rachel just make a new one that would be harder to find? In addition to getting rid of this account Sophie had to get the phone away from Rachel for good.
Downstairs the front door opened. Their mother’s footsteps came up the steps – bypassing Rachel in front of the TV – and straight into her room. When Sophie knocked on her door there was no answer. When she tried to turn the knob it was locked.
“Mom?” she said.
“I’m resting,” Jane called back.
“We’re not staying, are we?” All day friends had been snapchatting pictures, their cars packed or plane tickets bought.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to talk to Rachel?”
When Jane didn’t answer Sophie said, “If we’re not going to leave should we stock up? On food and water and stuff?”
“I don’t know.”
Downstairs the TV droned, not the weather but one of Rachel’s shows Bizzaardvark or Stuck in the Middle. On her phone Sophie had seen the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore reporting from just five miles away on Wrightsville Beach, which had just been issued a mandatory evacuation. She felt the first real twinges of fear, and went back to her room to call her father. He lived in New York with his new wife and baby girl. Sophie hadn’t seen the baby yet – she and Rachel were supposed to go up and visit over fall break. But whenever she spoke to Dad there the new daughter was in the background, crying and wailing.
“What’s your plan?” he said.
“I think maybe we’re staying?”
He didn’t respond. Sophie heard something happening with the baby and words spoken to Amy, his new wife. Usually it was the North Carolina natives who stayed in town during hurricanes, using the language of sea captains, riding out the storm and battening down the hatches. But none of them – not her father or mother or Sophie – were natives. Only Rachel had been born here. One of Sophie’s first memories was Hurricane Ophelia. They’d decamped to a Holiday Inn. She and Jane were swimming in the indoor pool when the lights went out. She remembered the green tinted dome above the pool disappearing, reappearing for only a moment in a last flash of white, and then the sound of the generator roaring forth and bringing everything back to life, all the while her mother’s hands firm beneath her shoulders, keeping her afloat.
She wondered if she should tell her father about the Instagram account. But then he’d look at it. Maybe even show it to Amy.
“Sorry, sweetie,” he said. “Tell me again what your plans are?”
“We’ll probably leave in the morning,” she said.
“Do you and Rachel want to come up here? I can book you a flight.”
“But what would Mom do?”
More background wailing, negotiating with Amy and the baby. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” her father said.
Wednesday
Jane didn’t come out of her room in the morning and neither did Rachel. Sophie took the credit card from Jane’s purse and drove to the Lowe’s Foods near their house. The shelves were picked clean. Nothing left but candy and spices. Even the pet food was gone. Sophie felt glad of Bruni’s ten pound bag of IAMS, then nervous in case Rachel woke up and found him home alone. She hadn’t brought him with her because it was too hot to leave him in the car. In the water and juice aisle, every surface stood empty except for discarded cardboard bottoms and a few twelve packs of orange soda.
“But the roads are clear, right?” Sophie asked the cashier, paying for the orange soda and Twizzlers with cash instead of Jane’s card. “I mean, new shipments will be coming in before the storm?”
The cashier shrugged. She was young and looked vaguely familiar – maybe even in Sophie’s grade, picking up an extra shift while school was out. Sophie made a mental catalogue of the food they had at home. A carton of eggs, a few slices of cheddar. Some peanut butter and a half eaten bag of tortilla chips. Maybe some bread in the freezer.
When she got home Rachel was on her way down the stairs, her hair rumpled. “Mom won’t open her door,” she said, stepping onto the landing. “She won’t talk to me.”
“Have you deleted the account?”
Rachel pressed the palm that held her phone against her heart.
“Have you?” Sophie reached out and grabbed her sister’s wrist, which felt slender and breakable. She pried apart the little fingers as Rachel tried to wrench out of her grasp.
“Stop it,” Rachel said, her voice rising. “You’re hurting me. Mom!”
No answer from upstairs, not a sound. It seemed to Sophie she could hear her mother, refusing to even think about coming to Rachel’s rescue. She felt her fingernails scratch against Rachel’s palm as she grabbed hold of the phone. Rachel screeched, like a vital organ had been yanked out of her body. Sophie pounded up the steps, banged on her mother’s door. Jane opened quickly, letting Sophie in and shutting the door tight behind her.
“I got it,” Sophie said.
Jane stared at her, expression as blank as Rachel’s. Sophie looked at the stolen phone, a picture of Bruni on the lock screen. She realized she’d left him downstairs.
“Here,” she said. She started to thrust Rachel’s phone at her mother then realized she might need it for a trade. She took a few seconds to guess the password – Rachel’s birthday, Bruni’s name. No luck.
Downstairs Rachel sat on the couch, waiting, Bruni a little bundle in her arms. Overhead their mother’s footsteps. Sophie held out the phone with her left hand. Rachel snatched it at the exact same time she let the dog go.
A little while later, driving with Bruni through town in search of a grocery store that was still stocked, the roads were eerily empty of traffic. Small businesses had their windows boarded, the plywood decorated with messages. “Pray for Wilmington,” one of them said. Another listed hurricane shelters. Sophie’s high school was on that list, and she thought about heading there, hunkering down in a corner with Bruni, leaving her mother and Rachel behind.
Thursday
Sophie emptied the recycling bin of containers and ran everything – milk jugs and juice bottles and wine bottles – through the dishwasher. Then she filled them all with water from the tap. No sign of Jane, who until yesterday had always been in motion from morning till night. Jane would wake and dress and fix breakfast. She would pack both their lunches and drive Rachel, who hated the bus, to school. She would go to work and shop and clean and make dinner. It was eerie, seeing her come to this silent, unsmiling rest.
On Instagram the account remained, stubborn, though at least Rachel hadn’t uploaded anything new since Tuesday. “Mom,” Sophie said through her bedroom door. “Report the account to Instagram. I did. Maybe if they get more reports…”
“I don’t want to look at Instagram,” Jane said, the loudest her voice had sounded in days. “I don’t want to hear about it.”
Sophie wasn’t sure when her mother had last eaten or what she was doing in her room all day. There was no noise from the TV, no music from her Bluetooth speaker, no voice involved in phone conversations. Even her ticking clock seemed to have wound down.
On a walk with Bruni, waxy magnolia leaves bowed and rose as the wind gained speed, Florence’s fingertips brushing their neighborhood. The hundred year old oaks, trunks hugged by kudzu and Virginia creeper, transformed from stately to dangerous. Sophie recognized the mood, gray light, the oxygen thick and filled with moisture. Most of the driveways were empty of cars, and some houses had their windows boarded up. Jane and Sophie hadn’t even taken in their deck furniture. Sophie wondered if any of the neighbors knew about the pictures of Jane. She wondered if any of her friends did.
Over the Atlantic, Florence sprawled and lumbered, four hundred miles wide. Landfall and strength predictions changed hourly, but last Sophie checked the winds whipped at 125 miles per hour. The airport had closed. She thought if she started driving today maybe she could make it north, to her father’s. But when she got home she saw on TV, all the gas stations were dry. She hadn’t even thought to check the gauge, last time she was in the car, but knew it wasn’t enough to make it out of this region, where all the gas, food, and water had been slurped up by the ones who’d escaped early.
Rain began, pelting the side of the house. Don’t tell me you’re still in Wilmington, her father texted. Sophie took eggs and butter out of the refrigerator. Might as well cook what perishable food there was before they lost power. The aroma of melting butter brought Rachel into the kitchen.
“What are you making?” Rachel asked.
“Scrambled eggs. For Mom and me.”
“Not for me?”
“Not unless you delete that account.”
“That’s not fair,” Rachel said. “It’s just a joke.”
“Do you know it was your principal who called Mom? If it weren’t for the storm you’d probably be expelled already.”
Rachel stood still and expressionless. She had pale freckles across the bridge of her nose, and even though she hadn’t showered in days her skin looked dry and smooth, her hair without a trace of oil. Sophie cracked all twelve eggs into the pan. Rachel watched as Sophie added cheese, then scraped the eggs onto a plate. Steam curled up between them. A rumble that sounded like thunder but was a great gust of wind hurtled through the backyard. Bruni wagged nervously at Sophie’s feet.
“That’s too much for just you two,” Rachel said. “There’s enough for me to have a plate.”
“Delete the account.”
No response, no movement on her face.
“Can’t you see what this is doing to her? She could kill herself.” The words terrified Sophie as soon as she spoke them.
“Kill herself,” Rachel said, testing the phrase, a scientist examining life on a foreign planet. “She would never.”
Sophie grabbed two forks and carried the plate upstairs. “Mom,” she said, bumping against the door with her elbow. “I have food.”
They sat on the bed, the eggs between them, Bruni at Sophie’s elbow watching them eat with laser focus. Sophie saw Jane’s phone, silenced, light up on the bedside table.
“Your father keeps calling,” Jane said.
“He’s worried about the hurricane.”
“I’m thinking I’ll send Rachel to live with him. Maybe he’ll trade me that baby for her.”
The fork, aimed the wrong way, scraped the roof of Sophie’s mouth. She wasn’t sure why the thought of Rachel sent away made her feel expendable. It should make her feel glad, Rachel shipped off to their father’s. Sophie wouldn’t have to worry about leaving Bruni next year. She wouldn’t have to worry about leaving Jane.
“I wish we’d left,” Sophie said. “I wish we’d left on Tuesday or Wednesday like everyone else.”
“Don’t talk to me about wishing,” Jane said. Outside a gust of wind gathered, moving the branches of the sweet gum tree into a furious eddy, one direction and then another. Bruni sat focused on the barely touched eggs. His stump of a tail wagged back and forth so fast it became invisible.
The door knob jiggled, testing. Sophie had forgotten to lock it behind her. Rachel stepped into the room looking solemn. Jane and Rachel, Sophie realized, had not been face to face in days.
“I’m hungry,” Rachel said.
Jane picked up the plate of eggs. “You,” she said to Rachel. “I’d like to smear these on your little face.” She stood up, balancing the plate on her palm. For a moment Sophie thought she’d throw it at Rachel but instead she grabbed the collar of her T-shirt, pulling her close so she could smash the plate against her face. Rachel tried to pull back but Jane’s grip was furious. Sophie watched her sister's small hands, pushing at their mother’s chest, the plate still held against her face, eggs dripping to the floor. Rachel looked tiny, powerless.
“Mom,” Sophie said. Bruni thumped off the bed to eat the fallen eggs.
Jane let her younger daughter go. Rachel stepped back and ran out, her footsteps for once audible as she headed down the hall to her room. Jane picked up a pillow and threw it through the doorway as if Rachel still stood there.
Sophie knelt to collect the plate. She locked and closed her mother’s door. At Rachel’s door she pressed her ear to hear something, anything, a reaction. But it was her mother who sobbed – loud tetherless wails that filled the upstairs. When Sophie was little, really until she was close to Rachel’s age, her mother had snuggled up with her before bed every night to read. Sometimes Rachel had joined them. Sophie had a memory of her mother’s hand, absently stroking Rachel’s head, eyes fixed on the pages of their book.
“Mom,” Sophie said, at the top of the stairs, outside the locked door.
The crying halted abruptly. As if Jane had control over her emotions.
Friday
Sophie woke long after midnight to the sound of loud bumping. She looked down through her window to see wind assaulting the umbrella in the glass table on the back deck. The gusts would fill the umbrella, making it rise up in the air. Then its plastic stand would slam underneath its surface. She tucked Bruni under her arm and went downstairs. Through the backdoor’s windows she saw rain hurtling down, pelting the deck. A particularly aggressive wind, visible with the rain it carried, blew across the yard. It lifted the umbrella and this time with it the table, up over the rails to crash on the grass below. The sound of shattering joined the wind and rain.
Bruni whimpered and struggled to get free in her arms. On Wednesday, driving, Sophie felt like Wilmington had turned into a ghost town, herself the last resident. She had that same feeling now, in her own house. The spectacle outside was beautiful and terrifying, trees bending, rising, and whirling like they wanted to tear their roots from the ground and run from the storm. She heard a burst and bang from several yards over, like one of them had done exactly that, then fallen. She didn’t know what time it was but suspected if it weren’t for the storm, sunlight might be breaking through. The noise was its own entity, surrounding the house like violent spirits. Clunks here, gusts there, whooshes everywhere, rain battering steadily.
Upstairs in her room Sophie checked her phone. Among the snapchats from friends and texts from her father was an alert from Instagram. She opened the message. “The account you reported was found to be in violation of our rules and has been deleted.”
Sophie went to her sister’s room and flicked the light switch. Almost as soon as the lights came on they began to flicker. Rachel sat up in bed. She should look startled, Sophie thought, but she just looks awake.
“Listen to that,” Rachel said. The whole house rattled. Windows shook in their frames. From somewhere nearby came more crashing, the sound of trees splintering then falling.
“It’s like the end of the world,” Rachel said. Remnants of egg and butter still streaked her face.
“Where’s your phone?”
Rachel raised an eyebrow. Sophie pulled drawers open and emptied them onto the floor, one after the other. “Stop it,” Rachel screamed, then called for her mother.
Sophie went to the bed. She put her hand over Rachel’s mouth. Her sister’s eyes turned rounder.
“Tell me where the phone is or I’ll throw you out in the storm.”
Against her palm she felt a slight spray of spit, like Rachel had laughed. She let go and yanked the covers back. There was the phone, its picture of Bruni lighting up as it spilled out of the comforter. Sophie grabbed it. Rachel stood on the bed and screamed. The roof shook. Shingles flew by the window. So did a long piece of white vinyl siding, wriggling in the wind like a captured snake. A hundred leaves hit the panes along with the rain. Sophie threw the phone on the floor and smashed it under her barefooted heel. Shards ate into her skin, satisfying. While she stomped and stomped on the phone she had this feeling: like if she could destroy it everything would stop, as if the phone were a talisman driving an evil spell. Once it was reckoned with the wind would ebb, the rain would cease, the lights would stop flickering, the trees would come to rest. But when the screen had shattered, and the backing had separated, and blood streaked her foot and the floor, nothing changed. The phone had been killed but the storm still raged, louder than ever, so loud she could believe the winds might lift the entire house and carry them all away.
Rachel stopped screaming and stood still on the bed. “You’re bleeding,” she said.
Sophie scooped up Bruni and ran toward her mother’s room, blood smearing the hall carpet. Rain came through the ceiling, a widening dark spot, dripping and oozing like the house was injured and stirring to life. Jane stood in her doorway, her eyes puffy as if she’d cried all night. She held out her hand and led Sophie downstairs to the half bath. Windowless, interior, it would be the safest place until they had to worry about storm surge.
Jane closed the door and locked it. She took Sophie’s foot into her lap, grabbing a hand towel and pressing it against the flow of blood. Bruni jammed himself behind the toilet. Deck furniture slammed against the side of the house. Sophie could feel the tiny pieces of glass lodged under her skin. They heard a window break. Then a knock on the bathroom door, and a tiny voice.
“Hey,” it said. “Let me in.”
With a great inhalation then a thump, the electricity cut off. The bathroom went completely dark, not even light from under the doorway.
“Let me in,” the voice said again. “Please?”
Outside the trees thrashed and fell, they crossed roads and crushed roofs. In rivers, marshes, and retention ponds the water rose. Rachel pounded at the door, louder now. Sophie pressed a hand against her mother’s face, tapping fingers over her features as if they were Braille, and she could read what would happen next.
Jane moved out from under Sophie’s hands. Sophie couldn’t see but felt her mother reach for the knob. The door opened, and in came Rachel. The walls around them quivered. They huddled close, waiting for the silence that would tell them it was safe to come outside.
Sophie went upstairs to give her mother the storm report and found her slumped on the bed looking finished, done for.
“What’s wrong?” Sophie asked, instead of what she’d come to say, that school tomorrow was cancelled because Hurricane Florence had Wilmington in its bullseye. She put her little dog on the bed and he crawled into her mother’s lap. At home Sophie always kept Bruni close. She didn’t like leaving him alone with her little sister, and worried about what would happen to him next year when she left for college.
Her mother, Jane, had an old fashioned clock on the bedside table. Its ticking helped her sleep. Usually at the sight of either of her daughters Jane would lift her brows and rearrange her features into happiness. Now her face scarcely moved at all. Sophie counted the seconds, one tick, two ticks, ten ticks, sixty.
“Here,” Jane finally said, lifting her hand off her phone but otherwise not moving.
Sophie thumbed in her mother’s password. When the lock screen disappeared she found herself looking at an Instagram account with the handle “Old Ugly Jane.” The bio read, “I’m Jane. I’m old, I’m fat, and I’m ugly.”
“She didn’t even make it private,” Jane said.
Most of the pictures were of Jane and all of them were horrifying. Jane double chinned while stirring a pot of soup. Jane, too close up while peering at something beneath her, every line on her face magnified, the hair in her nose visible. Jane topless in her chaotic bedroom, flesh squeezing over the waistband of her pants as she searched in her dresser for a bra. Sitting on the toilet naked, staring at her phone. A video, in only underpants and bra, stomach and upper arms trembling as she brushed her teeth – mirror providing the front view, camera lens the back. Intermittent pictures not of Jane but messes she’d left, piles of laundry in her closet, hair accumulated in an unwashed sink, the mold on the bottom of her shower curtain. “I’m old and fat AND slovenly,” the caption for that one read.
Jane’s window blinds were up, exposing early evening light and calm skies. The leaves in the sweet gum tree shivered ever so slightly. No sign yet of nighttime, or the hurricane on its way. Sophie scrolled again to make sure there were no pictures of herself. The closest was a bathroom trashcan full of used tampons, which could belong to her as easily as Jane. Rachel had created the account. Who else? They didn’t even need to discuss it. Her sister’s footfall was eerily silent, she could come upon you out of nowhere. And that phone, always in her hand, like someone had glued it to her palm.
“Oh my God,” Sophie said, putting the phone face down on the bed.
Jane’s face went white. Apparently sharing had made it worse. Sophie’s exclamation had made it worse.
“How did you find out?” Sophie asked.
“School principal. Someone’s mother told him.”
Bruni nudged his head under Jane’s hand. She patted him as if she didn’t know she were doing it. For so long Sophie had known something like this was coming, from Rachel. She felt almost relieved the something was only this, figurative bloodshed, someone else’s. And that maybe, finally, their mother would listen to her. That something about Rachel was not, had never been, quite right.
Us girls, Jane liked to call the three of them. It’s so nice, she’d say, with forced optimism, just us girls living together.
“Are you going to talk to her?” Sophie asked.
“I can’t even look at her. Not right now.”
“School’s cancelled tomorrow.”
“Already? Why?”
“To give people time to leave town. The hurricane. Remember?” It was predicted to hit Thursday.
Jane pressed her knuckles into her eyes without closing her fists and lay back on the bed.
“Aren’t we going to evacuate?” Sophie asked.
“I don’t know,” Jane said, eyes still covered. “Maybe you and I can evacuate and leave Rachel here.”
Sophie put her hand on her mother’s knee. “You don’t look like that,” she said. “The pictures are wrong.”
Jane didn’t answer. She didn’t move her hands away from her eyes. She just lay there like everything had already come to an end.
Downstairs Sophie found Rachel double screened: Bizaardvark blaring on the TV and her phone inches from her nose, eyes flickering between the two. At the top of the television screen weather alerts ran red with storm warnings and cancellations but still the sky through the windows sat stubborn and blue. At twelve years old Rachel was beautiful in the way of children, with an undeveloped nose, clear white irises, and no self-consciousness or pores. By this age Sophie already had breasts, underarm hair, acne. She stood next to the couch holding her own phone, logging onto Instagram to search for the account.
“You’re blocking my show,” Rachel said.
“Do you want to explain this?” Sophie held her phone just out of Rachel’s reach but close enough for her to see.
Rachel moved her eyes from Sophie’s phone to her face. “Does Mom know?” Her voice and expression remained flat. Rachel’s calm could make her seem frightening but also possessed of a weird kind of magic.
“Mom’s the one who showed me,” Sophie said. “Just now. Upstairs.”
“Is she mad?”
“Mad? She’s broken. You broke her.”
Rachel raised one eyebrow, a gesture Sophie envied. Inscrutable.
“What,” Sophie said. “You think that’s better?”
“I don’t know.” Rachel turned her attention back to the TV.
“Don’t you want to go talk to her? Say something to her? Like, ‘I’m sorry’?”
“Not if she’s mad.”
Sophie reached for Rachel’s phone but she pulled it to close to her chest.
“Give me that,” Sophie said. “Give it to me right now.”
“You can’t take it away,” Rachel said. “You’re not my mother.”
Usually Jane had an uncanny knack for appearing at any rise of conflict between her daughters. Sophie waited for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. When silence persisted she grabbed keys from the bowl on the hall table, put Bruni in the car, and headed to Panera to pick up dinner. Looking at the drive through menu she considered getting food just for her and Jane but ended up ordering a steak and arugula sandwich for Rachel. Evil people had to eat, too.
Tuesday
Sophie woke too early. The dawn sky stood a shade darker than usual – the storm still over the Atlantic, churning to build up strength. She closed her eyes and said to the hurricane: “Change direction, change direction, change direction.” Urging it toward another city, or better yet up through the ocean, only its tentacles ever touching shore.
“I’m Jane” was still up on Instagram. Still public. Sophie lay in bed, the air conditioner’s hum louder than the wind, and scrolled through the feed. She thought of all the flattering pictures she had of her mother. She could make a different account. Beautiful Jane. But her mother would hate that too. She hated every picture of herself, lately.
Sophie put her hand on Bruni, curled beside her. Touching animals quells anxiety, she had read. Her father’s face appeared on the phone, making Instagram disappear with his incoming call. Sophie declined it. She threw her covers off and marched to her sister’s bedroom, which Jane had decorated with a ladybug motif. Rachel slept with a small smile sweetening her lips, her closed eyes moving gently. Sophie grabbed her shoulders and shook them, hard.
Rachel opened her eyes. “What are you doing?” she said. “There’s no school today.”
“You’re going to delete that account,” Sophie said. “You’re going to delete it right this second.”
“I’m not,” Rachel said. “You can’t make me.”
Sophie stepped back. She thought if she had a gun she might hold it to Rachel’s head. She did a quick glance around the room but the phone was nowhere to be seen. She could tear everything apart, find the phone and destroy it. But the account would still be there, those pictures, for everyone to see.
“You’re cyberbullying your own mother,” Sophie whisper-shouted, not wanting to wake Jane.
Rachel pulled the covers over her head. “Just let me sleep,” she said.
Sophie picked up Bruni. When Rachel was little she liked to keep betta fish. She would scoop them out of their tiny bowls and watch them flop across her bureau. Their father bought replacements anyway, one after the other. Last year Sophie had watched a documentary about the Slenderman incident, two tween girls stabbing their friend in a park. For a while afterward she tried to shadow Rachel during the rare time she spent with other children.
Jane came downstairs while Sophie watched early morning TV. The Weather Channel showed a long line of cars leaving town on I-40.
“The storm’s moving slowly,” Sophie told her mother. “But I guess that’s bad. It gives it time to pick up strength. Or cover more ground, or something. They say it’s going to be a category four.”
“That’s what they always say,” Jane said, her tone dismissive and maybe angry. The tickertape of cancellations and mandatory evacuations ran across the top of the TV screen. Jane wore one of her work outfits – long skirt and long sleeved blouse, too much clothing for the hot, muggy day. Sophie waited for Jane to ask if she’d had breakfast but she didn’t. She didn’t smile, or ask if Rachel was up, or don a cheerful countenance – caring and upbeat – the way she had every morning of Sophie’s life.
“When are we going to evacuate?” Sophie asked. In the past they’d left for anything stronger than a tropical storm. Sometimes even for those, when they’d lived at the beach with their father. They would come into town to stay in hotels, just a little bit inland, and safer, with generators and thick walls.
“I don’t know,” Jane said. She left without drinking coffee or saying good bye.
Sophie couldn’t bear to be alone in the house with Rachel, so she drove out to Carolina Beach with Bruni in her lap. At the state park they walked out to Snow’s Cut, where the Intracoastal Waterway met the Atlantic. There was no one else on the trail. The water looked gray and fierce, waves white tipped and ready for battle. Sitting on a log while Bruni flirted with the shallows, Sophie checked Instagram. There was a new picture, Jane’s door shut tight. The caption read, “Found out,” with a series of non-remorseful emojis, including the laugh-till-you-cry face. Each time Sophie scrolled through the pictures she saw something she’d missed. A zoom in on a naked butt, sagging with cellulite. Jane in front of the TV with a bag of potato chips, looking exhausted and older than was fair. “Why I’m fat,” the caption read. It occurred to Sophie she could report the account so she did, three times, first choosing harassment and bullying as the reason, then impersonation, then nudity.
Bruni trotted over and flopped down wet across her feet. The world colored just the barest bit differently, the sky resting lower to the land. Sophie thought about the days before technology, when there wouldn’t be any warning about the storm, just a darkening sky and then, Surprise! Roofs torn off. Storm surge sweeping vehicles off the road. Trees ripped out of the ground. The entire town, drowned.
At home Sophie closed herself in her room away from Rachel, checking Instagram periodically to see if the account was still there. But even if it were taken down couldn’t Rachel just make a new one that would be harder to find? In addition to getting rid of this account Sophie had to get the phone away from Rachel for good.
Downstairs the front door opened. Their mother’s footsteps came up the steps – bypassing Rachel in front of the TV – and straight into her room. When Sophie knocked on her door there was no answer. When she tried to turn the knob it was locked.
“Mom?” she said.
“I’m resting,” Jane called back.
“We’re not staying, are we?” All day friends had been snapchatting pictures, their cars packed or plane tickets bought.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to talk to Rachel?”
When Jane didn’t answer Sophie said, “If we’re not going to leave should we stock up? On food and water and stuff?”
“I don’t know.”
Downstairs the TV droned, not the weather but one of Rachel’s shows Bizzaardvark or Stuck in the Middle. On her phone Sophie had seen the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore reporting from just five miles away on Wrightsville Beach, which had just been issued a mandatory evacuation. She felt the first real twinges of fear, and went back to her room to call her father. He lived in New York with his new wife and baby girl. Sophie hadn’t seen the baby yet – she and Rachel were supposed to go up and visit over fall break. But whenever she spoke to Dad there the new daughter was in the background, crying and wailing.
“What’s your plan?” he said.
“I think maybe we’re staying?”
He didn’t respond. Sophie heard something happening with the baby and words spoken to Amy, his new wife. Usually it was the North Carolina natives who stayed in town during hurricanes, using the language of sea captains, riding out the storm and battening down the hatches. But none of them – not her father or mother or Sophie – were natives. Only Rachel had been born here. One of Sophie’s first memories was Hurricane Ophelia. They’d decamped to a Holiday Inn. She and Jane were swimming in the indoor pool when the lights went out. She remembered the green tinted dome above the pool disappearing, reappearing for only a moment in a last flash of white, and then the sound of the generator roaring forth and bringing everything back to life, all the while her mother’s hands firm beneath her shoulders, keeping her afloat.
She wondered if she should tell her father about the Instagram account. But then he’d look at it. Maybe even show it to Amy.
“Sorry, sweetie,” he said. “Tell me again what your plans are?”
“We’ll probably leave in the morning,” she said.
“Do you and Rachel want to come up here? I can book you a flight.”
“But what would Mom do?”
More background wailing, negotiating with Amy and the baby. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” her father said.
Wednesday
Jane didn’t come out of her room in the morning and neither did Rachel. Sophie took the credit card from Jane’s purse and drove to the Lowe’s Foods near their house. The shelves were picked clean. Nothing left but candy and spices. Even the pet food was gone. Sophie felt glad of Bruni’s ten pound bag of IAMS, then nervous in case Rachel woke up and found him home alone. She hadn’t brought him with her because it was too hot to leave him in the car. In the water and juice aisle, every surface stood empty except for discarded cardboard bottoms and a few twelve packs of orange soda.
“But the roads are clear, right?” Sophie asked the cashier, paying for the orange soda and Twizzlers with cash instead of Jane’s card. “I mean, new shipments will be coming in before the storm?”
The cashier shrugged. She was young and looked vaguely familiar – maybe even in Sophie’s grade, picking up an extra shift while school was out. Sophie made a mental catalogue of the food they had at home. A carton of eggs, a few slices of cheddar. Some peanut butter and a half eaten bag of tortilla chips. Maybe some bread in the freezer.
When she got home Rachel was on her way down the stairs, her hair rumpled. “Mom won’t open her door,” she said, stepping onto the landing. “She won’t talk to me.”
“Have you deleted the account?”
Rachel pressed the palm that held her phone against her heart.
“Have you?” Sophie reached out and grabbed her sister’s wrist, which felt slender and breakable. She pried apart the little fingers as Rachel tried to wrench out of her grasp.
“Stop it,” Rachel said, her voice rising. “You’re hurting me. Mom!”
No answer from upstairs, not a sound. It seemed to Sophie she could hear her mother, refusing to even think about coming to Rachel’s rescue. She felt her fingernails scratch against Rachel’s palm as she grabbed hold of the phone. Rachel screeched, like a vital organ had been yanked out of her body. Sophie pounded up the steps, banged on her mother’s door. Jane opened quickly, letting Sophie in and shutting the door tight behind her.
“I got it,” Sophie said.
Jane stared at her, expression as blank as Rachel’s. Sophie looked at the stolen phone, a picture of Bruni on the lock screen. She realized she’d left him downstairs.
“Here,” she said. She started to thrust Rachel’s phone at her mother then realized she might need it for a trade. She took a few seconds to guess the password – Rachel’s birthday, Bruni’s name. No luck.
Downstairs Rachel sat on the couch, waiting, Bruni a little bundle in her arms. Overhead their mother’s footsteps. Sophie held out the phone with her left hand. Rachel snatched it at the exact same time she let the dog go.
A little while later, driving with Bruni through town in search of a grocery store that was still stocked, the roads were eerily empty of traffic. Small businesses had their windows boarded, the plywood decorated with messages. “Pray for Wilmington,” one of them said. Another listed hurricane shelters. Sophie’s high school was on that list, and she thought about heading there, hunkering down in a corner with Bruni, leaving her mother and Rachel behind.
Thursday
Sophie emptied the recycling bin of containers and ran everything – milk jugs and juice bottles and wine bottles – through the dishwasher. Then she filled them all with water from the tap. No sign of Jane, who until yesterday had always been in motion from morning till night. Jane would wake and dress and fix breakfast. She would pack both their lunches and drive Rachel, who hated the bus, to school. She would go to work and shop and clean and make dinner. It was eerie, seeing her come to this silent, unsmiling rest.
On Instagram the account remained, stubborn, though at least Rachel hadn’t uploaded anything new since Tuesday. “Mom,” Sophie said through her bedroom door. “Report the account to Instagram. I did. Maybe if they get more reports…”
“I don’t want to look at Instagram,” Jane said, the loudest her voice had sounded in days. “I don’t want to hear about it.”
Sophie wasn’t sure when her mother had last eaten or what she was doing in her room all day. There was no noise from the TV, no music from her Bluetooth speaker, no voice involved in phone conversations. Even her ticking clock seemed to have wound down.
On a walk with Bruni, waxy magnolia leaves bowed and rose as the wind gained speed, Florence’s fingertips brushing their neighborhood. The hundred year old oaks, trunks hugged by kudzu and Virginia creeper, transformed from stately to dangerous. Sophie recognized the mood, gray light, the oxygen thick and filled with moisture. Most of the driveways were empty of cars, and some houses had their windows boarded up. Jane and Sophie hadn’t even taken in their deck furniture. Sophie wondered if any of the neighbors knew about the pictures of Jane. She wondered if any of her friends did.
Over the Atlantic, Florence sprawled and lumbered, four hundred miles wide. Landfall and strength predictions changed hourly, but last Sophie checked the winds whipped at 125 miles per hour. The airport had closed. She thought if she started driving today maybe she could make it north, to her father’s. But when she got home she saw on TV, all the gas stations were dry. She hadn’t even thought to check the gauge, last time she was in the car, but knew it wasn’t enough to make it out of this region, where all the gas, food, and water had been slurped up by the ones who’d escaped early.
Rain began, pelting the side of the house. Don’t tell me you’re still in Wilmington, her father texted. Sophie took eggs and butter out of the refrigerator. Might as well cook what perishable food there was before they lost power. The aroma of melting butter brought Rachel into the kitchen.
“What are you making?” Rachel asked.
“Scrambled eggs. For Mom and me.”
“Not for me?”
“Not unless you delete that account.”
“That’s not fair,” Rachel said. “It’s just a joke.”
“Do you know it was your principal who called Mom? If it weren’t for the storm you’d probably be expelled already.”
Rachel stood still and expressionless. She had pale freckles across the bridge of her nose, and even though she hadn’t showered in days her skin looked dry and smooth, her hair without a trace of oil. Sophie cracked all twelve eggs into the pan. Rachel watched as Sophie added cheese, then scraped the eggs onto a plate. Steam curled up between them. A rumble that sounded like thunder but was a great gust of wind hurtled through the backyard. Bruni wagged nervously at Sophie’s feet.
“That’s too much for just you two,” Rachel said. “There’s enough for me to have a plate.”
“Delete the account.”
No response, no movement on her face.
“Can’t you see what this is doing to her? She could kill herself.” The words terrified Sophie as soon as she spoke them.
“Kill herself,” Rachel said, testing the phrase, a scientist examining life on a foreign planet. “She would never.”
Sophie grabbed two forks and carried the plate upstairs. “Mom,” she said, bumping against the door with her elbow. “I have food.”
They sat on the bed, the eggs between them, Bruni at Sophie’s elbow watching them eat with laser focus. Sophie saw Jane’s phone, silenced, light up on the bedside table.
“Your father keeps calling,” Jane said.
“He’s worried about the hurricane.”
“I’m thinking I’ll send Rachel to live with him. Maybe he’ll trade me that baby for her.”
The fork, aimed the wrong way, scraped the roof of Sophie’s mouth. She wasn’t sure why the thought of Rachel sent away made her feel expendable. It should make her feel glad, Rachel shipped off to their father’s. Sophie wouldn’t have to worry about leaving Bruni next year. She wouldn’t have to worry about leaving Jane.
“I wish we’d left,” Sophie said. “I wish we’d left on Tuesday or Wednesday like everyone else.”
“Don’t talk to me about wishing,” Jane said. Outside a gust of wind gathered, moving the branches of the sweet gum tree into a furious eddy, one direction and then another. Bruni sat focused on the barely touched eggs. His stump of a tail wagged back and forth so fast it became invisible.
The door knob jiggled, testing. Sophie had forgotten to lock it behind her. Rachel stepped into the room looking solemn. Jane and Rachel, Sophie realized, had not been face to face in days.
“I’m hungry,” Rachel said.
Jane picked up the plate of eggs. “You,” she said to Rachel. “I’d like to smear these on your little face.” She stood up, balancing the plate on her palm. For a moment Sophie thought she’d throw it at Rachel but instead she grabbed the collar of her T-shirt, pulling her close so she could smash the plate against her face. Rachel tried to pull back but Jane’s grip was furious. Sophie watched her sister's small hands, pushing at their mother’s chest, the plate still held against her face, eggs dripping to the floor. Rachel looked tiny, powerless.
“Mom,” Sophie said. Bruni thumped off the bed to eat the fallen eggs.
Jane let her younger daughter go. Rachel stepped back and ran out, her footsteps for once audible as she headed down the hall to her room. Jane picked up a pillow and threw it through the doorway as if Rachel still stood there.
Sophie knelt to collect the plate. She locked and closed her mother’s door. At Rachel’s door she pressed her ear to hear something, anything, a reaction. But it was her mother who sobbed – loud tetherless wails that filled the upstairs. When Sophie was little, really until she was close to Rachel’s age, her mother had snuggled up with her before bed every night to read. Sometimes Rachel had joined them. Sophie had a memory of her mother’s hand, absently stroking Rachel’s head, eyes fixed on the pages of their book.
“Mom,” Sophie said, at the top of the stairs, outside the locked door.
The crying halted abruptly. As if Jane had control over her emotions.
Friday
Sophie woke long after midnight to the sound of loud bumping. She looked down through her window to see wind assaulting the umbrella in the glass table on the back deck. The gusts would fill the umbrella, making it rise up in the air. Then its plastic stand would slam underneath its surface. She tucked Bruni under her arm and went downstairs. Through the backdoor’s windows she saw rain hurtling down, pelting the deck. A particularly aggressive wind, visible with the rain it carried, blew across the yard. It lifted the umbrella and this time with it the table, up over the rails to crash on the grass below. The sound of shattering joined the wind and rain.
Bruni whimpered and struggled to get free in her arms. On Wednesday, driving, Sophie felt like Wilmington had turned into a ghost town, herself the last resident. She had that same feeling now, in her own house. The spectacle outside was beautiful and terrifying, trees bending, rising, and whirling like they wanted to tear their roots from the ground and run from the storm. She heard a burst and bang from several yards over, like one of them had done exactly that, then fallen. She didn’t know what time it was but suspected if it weren’t for the storm, sunlight might be breaking through. The noise was its own entity, surrounding the house like violent spirits. Clunks here, gusts there, whooshes everywhere, rain battering steadily.
Upstairs in her room Sophie checked her phone. Among the snapchats from friends and texts from her father was an alert from Instagram. She opened the message. “The account you reported was found to be in violation of our rules and has been deleted.”
Sophie went to her sister’s room and flicked the light switch. Almost as soon as the lights came on they began to flicker. Rachel sat up in bed. She should look startled, Sophie thought, but she just looks awake.
“Listen to that,” Rachel said. The whole house rattled. Windows shook in their frames. From somewhere nearby came more crashing, the sound of trees splintering then falling.
“It’s like the end of the world,” Rachel said. Remnants of egg and butter still streaked her face.
“Where’s your phone?”
Rachel raised an eyebrow. Sophie pulled drawers open and emptied them onto the floor, one after the other. “Stop it,” Rachel screamed, then called for her mother.
Sophie went to the bed. She put her hand over Rachel’s mouth. Her sister’s eyes turned rounder.
“Tell me where the phone is or I’ll throw you out in the storm.”
Against her palm she felt a slight spray of spit, like Rachel had laughed. She let go and yanked the covers back. There was the phone, its picture of Bruni lighting up as it spilled out of the comforter. Sophie grabbed it. Rachel stood on the bed and screamed. The roof shook. Shingles flew by the window. So did a long piece of white vinyl siding, wriggling in the wind like a captured snake. A hundred leaves hit the panes along with the rain. Sophie threw the phone on the floor and smashed it under her barefooted heel. Shards ate into her skin, satisfying. While she stomped and stomped on the phone she had this feeling: like if she could destroy it everything would stop, as if the phone were a talisman driving an evil spell. Once it was reckoned with the wind would ebb, the rain would cease, the lights would stop flickering, the trees would come to rest. But when the screen had shattered, and the backing had separated, and blood streaked her foot and the floor, nothing changed. The phone had been killed but the storm still raged, louder than ever, so loud she could believe the winds might lift the entire house and carry them all away.
Rachel stopped screaming and stood still on the bed. “You’re bleeding,” she said.
Sophie scooped up Bruni and ran toward her mother’s room, blood smearing the hall carpet. Rain came through the ceiling, a widening dark spot, dripping and oozing like the house was injured and stirring to life. Jane stood in her doorway, her eyes puffy as if she’d cried all night. She held out her hand and led Sophie downstairs to the half bath. Windowless, interior, it would be the safest place until they had to worry about storm surge.
Jane closed the door and locked it. She took Sophie’s foot into her lap, grabbing a hand towel and pressing it against the flow of blood. Bruni jammed himself behind the toilet. Deck furniture slammed against the side of the house. Sophie could feel the tiny pieces of glass lodged under her skin. They heard a window break. Then a knock on the bathroom door, and a tiny voice.
“Hey,” it said. “Let me in.”
With a great inhalation then a thump, the electricity cut off. The bathroom went completely dark, not even light from under the doorway.
“Let me in,” the voice said again. “Please?”
Outside the trees thrashed and fell, they crossed roads and crushed roofs. In rivers, marshes, and retention ponds the water rose. Rachel pounded at the door, louder now. Sophie pressed a hand against her mother’s face, tapping fingers over her features as if they were Braille, and she could read what would happen next.
Jane moved out from under Sophie’s hands. Sophie couldn’t see but felt her mother reach for the knob. The door opened, and in came Rachel. The walls around them quivered. They huddled close, waiting for the silence that would tell them it was safe to come outside.