Hurricane Kiss (18 page)

River and I run together three times a week. I can now go between three or four miles without getting winded, but he goes ten. We also do laps in our pool. He has weights and he's put me on a weight-lifting program.

“So you'll be able to outrun the next category five hurricane,” he says, his smirky smile on his face more days than not.

When I look at him now, I can't help thinking of a quote I read: “Sometimes you put up walls not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”

That's the first entry in my new diary, the one I bought for my post-Danielle life. This one doesn't include the “suckworthy dad” section. He's not mentioned at all. I'm working on letting go of the anger because I won't be a victim to it anymore. That's a decision that's mine to make, I realize now.

I read a quote about forgiveness being an evolution of the heart. It makes me stop and think of how living through Danielle and surviving it changed me inside. The death and destruction from the storm was everywhere, but at some point you need to focus more on rebuilding and moving forward than on looking back. It's your choice to be a victim of the past. Or not to be.

And that gives me a new direction.

I want to be the person who breaks down walls and gets to the truth. If I can find a newspaper to hire me after I finish college, that's what I want to do.

River's moving on too. He's seeing a new therapist now, someone he says he can really talk to.

“The guy spends his nights playing in a band,” River says, smirking. “I saw them on YouTube; they're not bad.”

And for the first time, River's thinking about what he wants to do with his life too, looking forward more than back. My mom is convinced we can get his record expunged, clearing the way for him to finish his last year and a half of high school and then go to college.

Because of all the water damage around the house, we have cartons and cartons of books and files to sort through. One night River and I are looking through a stack of books from a bookcase in the den in my house. Some of them were damaged by dampness, but most of them are OK. There's an art book with a section on Japanese art and a tradition called kintsugi, a way of repairing broken pottery, usually with gold.

“I love this,” I say. “You fix the damage, you refine it, but you don't hide it.”

“Never heard of it,” he says.

I look at a before-and-after picture of a cup with a deep crack in it. In the after picture, the crack is outlined in gold. It looks like a design element, not an attempt at repairing it.

“You use lacquer dusted with gold, silver, or platinum to repair the cracks,” I read. “The damage isn't hidden, it's enhanced, giving the piece more character.”

I look at River and think of all he's gone through, and what he's still going through. None of that will ever disappear or be forgotten. But maybe he'll grow better for it in some way—using it to reach out and help others. Or creating art by drawing on the damage inside him, not pretending it doesn't exist anymore.

I don't say any of that, but he looks at me. He gets it.

“Cool,” he says.

Eventually we go outside to the pool, dangling our feet in the water. The air is still, perfumed by jasmine. There's a full moon and a sprinkling of stars in the sky.

The fence between our houses was torn up, most of the bushes uprooted. Eventually we'll get around to replacing the boxwoods and putting in a new fence, but in the meantime, there's no divide between River's backyard and mine anymore.

“No fences between us,” he says, slipping his arm around my waist. “I like it this way.”

I stare back at him, his blond-brown curls nearly reaching his tanned shoulders, his eyes glinting again with laughter. My heart beats harder, the love at category five now.

“So do I,” I answer.

Author's Note

Hurricane Kiss
was inspired by a real-life encounter with a terrifying storm that threatened coastal Texas in September 2005. As Hurricane Rita barreled in, I was living in Houston with my husband, Ralph, and fifteen-year-old daughter, Sophie. Ralph, a reporter, was staying behind to cover the storm for the
New York Times
, while I was rushing to evacuate with
Sophie, our dog and cat, and several hundred thousand other Houstonians.

We had reason to panic—less than a month before, Katrina had flooded New Orleans, killing close to 2,000 people. My husband had been one of the first reporters on the scene to witness the devastation. 

Would Rita be another Katrina? Would it hit us dead on? We weren't waiting to find out. We hastily boarded up our windows with plywood. I packed the car with essentials and joined the exodus, heading for an inland town near Austin where we thought we'd be safe. 

But like River and Jillian, we didn't get far—poor planning had gridlocked the escape routes. It took us close to seven hours to crawl less than twenty miles, and the traffic jam we were trapped in extended for a hundred miles. If the hurricane hit at that moment, I thought, we'd all be killed in our cars. I made a risky call: the highway back to Houston was empty. Surely we could find safety somewhere. I spun the car around and headed back. 

We spent the night with hundreds of other evacuees and their dogs and cats in the ballroom of a downtown Houston hotel that welcomed pets. Then overnight, a miracle! Rita had veered off. The city had gotten a slap of wind and rain but escaped a knockout punch. A day later we headed home. Our house had been spared. 

But I was haunted by what could have been. Fate spared us, unlike the victims of Katrina. That's why this book is dedicated to them.

About the Author

Deborah Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and nutritionist, and the author of seventeen books for children and adults. She has been a regular contributor to the
New York Times
(including four years as the
New York Times Magazine
beauty columnist), and a home design columnist for
Long Island Newsday
. She lives in New York City.

Special thanks to Tom Krause for his guidance on protecting student-athletes from time demands of overzealous coaches.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 by Deborah Blumenthal

Cover photos © isitsharp/iStock, John Finny/Getty Images

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