Hello, It's Me Page 27

  “Why do you want Thom to come back?” Annie asks her son now, pulling him closer against her side as the wind howls around the house.

  “Because he’s going to be our new dad.”

  Annie’s heart sinks. “Who told you that? Trixie?”

  “No. Daddy did.”

  Speechless, Annie stares at her son.

  “He told me that, too,” Trixie tells her brother matter-of-factly. “When did he tell you, Milo?”

  “One night. In my room. I thought I dreamed him, but he came back again.”

  “Mommy thought I dreamed him, too. See, Mommy? I told you he was really there,” Trixie tells Annie.

  Her brain a maelstrom of questions, she settles at last on the least provocative one. “Milo, is that why you’ve been leaving your light on? Because you’re afraid . . . of ghosts?”

  “No! There aren’t any ghosts. Just Daddy. I’m not afraid of him. I leave the light on so he can find his way down here from heaven. You know . . . like the airport lights up the runway at night so the planes can see where to land.”

  “Oh, Milo . . .” Annie holds him close. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I didn’t think you’d believe me. You didn’t believe Trixie.”

  Bewildered, Annie looks from her son to her daughter, and again at the lifeless telephone across the room.

  If only there were a way to reach Andre herself, right now . . .

  If only she had another phone, she thinks, remembering that cell phones worked during the blackout a few summers ago, when cordless phones failed. A cell phone, or some other way to—

  Annie gasps.

  “What, Mommy? What happened?” Trixie squirms as Annie sets her abruptly on her feet and rises from the couch.

  “Come with me.” She hurriedly grabs a flashlight off the coffee table. “Both of you.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the basement,” Annie says, herding them toward the kitchen.

  “Because of the storm?” Trixie asks. “Like in The Wizard of Oz?”

  “This isn’t a cyclone,” Milo scoffs. “It’s a hurricane.”

  “Then how come Mommy’s making us go to the basement?”

  Annie opens the door and shines the flashlight’s beam into the inky depths below.

  “Because,” she tells her children. “I just remembered something that’s down there, and we have to get it right away.”

  “A boat, so we can paddle away?” Milo asks hopefully.

  Annie doesn’t answer, just helps her children down the creaky stairs, desperately hoping she’ll find what she’s looking for.

  Why, Thom wonders, staring into the flickering candelabra on the dining room table, didn’t he cast aside his foolish pride and drive all the way out to Montauk last night, instead of ending his journey here in Southampton?

  It certainly wouldn’t have taken him very long. For the first time ever on the Friday before Labor Day, his was practically the lone car on the road leading east from Manhattan. Meanwhile, the westbound Long Island Expressway was clogged from the Hamptons to Queens with islanders fleeing the coming storm.

  Thom isn’t sure what compelled him to come back out east on a weekend he planned all along to spend in the city. It wasn’t as though he had any intention of trying to win Annie back. It’s pretty obvious now that his chances of doing that are more dismal than the weekend weather forecast.

  Maybe he just wanted to be near her. Just in case the storm was as fierce as they were predicting. Just in case she needed to be rescued.

  He shakes his head, knowing that he’s the last person Annie would turn to for help after the scene in her bedroom yesterday morning. If there’s anything Annie Harlowe doesn’t want, it’s to be rescued.

  But what about the children? What if they’re frightened? What if one of them is sick, or injured?

  The coastal roads must be flooded by now. Surely there’s no way he can make it out there in this deluge, even if he could think of a good enough reason to try it.

  Thom paces back through the shadows to the lone unboarded window facing the water. Looking out over the debris-strewn lawn to the sea, he wonders if the waves can possibly be less ferocious than they were earlier.

  That doesn’t make sense. The last report he heard before he lost power was that the hurricane’s peak intensity is supposed to last at least through tonight.

  Still . . .

  Is it his imagination, or is the storm subsiding a bit?

  Checking his watch, Thom sees that it’s barely four o’clock. It can’t be over.

  No, he thinks, suddenly remembering something, it isn’t over.

  But this is the eye of the storm . . .

  And maybe it’s an opportunity to start the journey eastward before the going gets rough all over again.

  That is, if he’s actually going to go.

  Annie. The children. Alone.

  What are you, a glutton for punishment? he asks himself, but he doesn’t answer his own question, already striding to the door.

  “Are you going to call for help if it works, Mommy?” Trixie asks, as Annie drags the cord of the old green wall phone toward the outlet she knows is somewhere on the baseboard beneath the kitchen table.

  “I bet you’re going to call the Coast Guard,” Milo says, holding the flashlight beam steadily above her, just as she instructed.

  “Or Thom,” Trixie suggests. “You’re going to call Thom, right, Mommy?”

  Annie stops fumbling for the outlet to ask, “Why would I call him?”

  “Because he can come out here in his sailboat and save us.”

  “That’s dumb,” Milo says, before Annie can respond. “Sailboats can’t go through a hurricane. He’ll bring a speedboat.”

  “He won’t bring any boat,” Annie tells them tersely, “because he isn’t coming.”

  “Why not, Mommy?”

  “Because we don’t need to be saved. We’re perfectly fine.”

  She flinches as another tree goes down somewhere outside, reverberating like a gunshot.

  “I’m scared,” Trixie whimpers. “I need to be saved.”

  “Don’t worry. Mommy will save us,” Milo tells her in a reassuring tone that chokes Annie’s throat with emotion.

  At last, her fingers find the telephone outlet and she pushes the plastic end of the cord into the socket, feeling it click into place.

  Then she crawls out from under the table and reaches for the receiver.

  “That’s a funny looking phone.” Trixie twirls the curly green coil around her finger.

  Holding her breath, Annie lifts the receiver . . .

  And hears a dial tone.

  “Sorry to say, but you won’t get much farther than a quarter of a mile farther east if you keep going,” a slicker-clad, white-mustached local informs Thom, leaning out the window of his westbound pickup truck as he pulls up adjacent to Thom’s driver’s side window.

  “Is the road under water?”

  “More than likely, in some low spots. But there’s a big tree down across the road right down there, and no way around it.”

  “I’ll get out and walk, then, when I get to it.”

  “Can’t do that. There are live wires all over the place. You’ll get yourself electrocuted. You’d better turn around, mister, unless you have a death wish.”

  “Thanks for the advice, but I think I’ll take my chances.”

  Thom rolls up the window on the yokel’s comment about foolhardy city people.

  He drives on down the wet road, keeping an eye out for the tree the guy mentioned.

  Half a mile has gone by, and then a whole mile, then two, and he still hasn’t seen it.

  There are branches and trees down all over the place along the sides of the road, and twice he has to maneuver onto the shoulder to avoid hydroplaning through a low spot.

  But so far, so good.

  Maybe the old guy was lying about the tree, Thom thinks. Or maybe he just imagined it.
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br />   Yes, just as Thom is surely imagining that the closer he gets to Montauk, the stronger the scent of honeysuckle seems to permeate the car’s interior.

  Annie clenches the heavy, old-fashioned telephone receiver tightly against her ear as it rings once . . . twice . . . three times.

  Then there’s a click, and a high-pitched, three-chord tone, and a voice comes on the line.

  A recorded voice.

  One that isn’t Andre’s.

  “I’m sorry, the number you have reached has been disconnected. Please check the number and try again.”

  “What’s wrong, Mommy?”

  “I dialed it wrong,” she tells Trixie, who’s lapping ice cream straight from the container on the table between her and Milo.

  “Who? The Coast Guard?” Milo asks hopefully, digging his spoon into the carton.

  “No, the friend I was trying to reach,” Annie says briefly, painstakingly starting to dial again, thinking that it’s no wonder she made a mistake. She’s used to punching numbers on a touchtone pad, not dragging a plodding rotary dial around.

  “Thom?” Trixie asks.

  “Hmm?”

  “Is Thom the friend you’re trying to reach, Mommy?”

  “No.” Annie sighs, wishing she could snap her fingers and banish the memory of him from all their lives.

  “Erika?” Trixie asks.

  “No.” Annie stretches the cord as far as it will go, dragging the receiver around the corner into the dining room as the line begins to ring again.

  “I’m sorry, the number you have reached has been disconnected. Please check the number and try again.”

  What the—?

  Annie dials again, more slowly this time.

  The same thing happens.

  She dials again.

  It happens again.

  And then it hits her.

  With a cry of dismay, she shifts her gaze back to the kitchen, and the stack of unpaid bills on the counter . . . among them, the long overdue one for Andre’s cell phone.

  “Nobody’s allowed to drive any farther east because of the storm surge,” an orange-coated, hooded police officer informs Thom at a roadblock on Sunrise Highway in Montauk. “The tide is coming in and the eye is almost past us.”

  “But I have to get out there,” Thom protests, oblivious to the rain blowing through his open driver’s side window.

  “Sorry, you’ll have to wait until after the storm.”

  “But I have to get out there,” he repeats stoically.

  “You live out that way?”

  “No.”

  “Then what? You have a death wish or something?”

  “No, I—”

  “Look, you go out there, you’re taking your life in your hands.”

  “That’s my business, right?”

  “Not on my watch, it isn’t.”

  “Look, I was told farther back that I wouldn’t get this far because there was a tree down across the road, and there wasn’t.”

  “There are trees down all over the place.”

  “But there wasn’t one across the road.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe somebody moved it out of the way. All I know is that you’re not going any farther from here on out.”

  “But—”

  “Listen, buddy, you need to go back,” the cop says tersely. His face is obscured by the shroud of orange hood, but his tone conveys that there’s no room for further debate. “Get home before the storm kicks up again.”

  Thom sighs. There’s nothing for him to do but roll up his window and make a U-turn.

  He drives west again, watching until the cop turns away. Then he pulls into a deserted parking lot adjacent to the local supermarket and turns off the car.

  He can’t leave Annie and the kids all alone out there in the storm. There’s nothing to do but go the rest of the way on foot, staying away from the main road so the cop won’t spot him.

  He steps out, locks the car, and turns toward the dunes, wincing as the wind-driven sand and rain pelt him painfully.

  It’ll be rough going, no doubt about that.

  For all he knows, he’ll reach Annie only to have her take one look at him and send him right back out into the gale.

  But maybe she’ll tell you that you can stay, just as she did the other night . . .

  Oh, who are you kidding? She told you to get out. She thinks you betrayed her.

  Dammit. He gave it everything he had; he took the risk of a lifetime telling her that he loves her and he failed.

  Yet here he is, a pathetic, rain-drenched, mud-caked fool.

  Look at you. What the hell are you doing?

  He’s being a superhero, that’s what he’s doing. Trying to save Annie and the children from the big, bad storm.

  Yeah, well, maybe they don’t need to be saved.

  Maybe they’re not even there. Maybe Annie evacuated the children before the storm hit, the way anyone with common sense would do.

  “Hey!”

  It’s the orange-coated cop. He seems to have materialized out of nowhere.

  “What the hell are you still doing out here?”

  I was wondering the same thing, Thom thinks ruefully. So much for being a hero.

  He slowly makes his way toward the policeman, shoulders stooped against the wind.

  “Listen, I was just trying to get out there to check on a friend,” he tells the officer above the howling storm. “Her name is Harlowe, and she lives alone with two small kids.”

  “Harlowe? Annie?” Only the policeman’s eyes are visible in the gap of his orange hood. They flash with recognition.

  “You know her?” Thom asks incredulously, even as he wonders where he’s seen this guy before. His eyes look familiar. Or maybe it’s just the expression in them.

  “Yeah, I know Annie.”

  Thom detects a fond note in the guy’s voice. Well, what does he expect? To know Annie is to love her. Still, he can’t help feeling a spark of jealousy as he asks, “Are you a friend of hers?”

  “You could say that. I, uh, knew her husband really well.”

  “Oh.” Thom squints into the stinging rain, deciding he’s never seen the guy before, after all. It’s just that all cops look alike. Must be the authority thing.

  “Listen,” he says impatiently, “if you won’t let me go out to check on Annie, can you at least have somebody go make sure she’s okay?”

  “She’s okay,” the officer says with odd certainty.

  “How do you know?”

  “One of our guys was out that way just now, and she’s fine.”

  “So she didn’t evacuate?”

  “Listen, don’t worry. That old house of hers is solid. It’s on relatively high ground, and it’s been standing on the coast for over a century. It’s outlasted countless hurricanes and nor’easters.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “All right, look, I’ll check back in with Annie just to be sure.”

  “You will?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I promise. Now go. It isn’t safe for you to be out roaming around in this weather.”

  Head bowed against the driving gale, Thom retraces his steps toward the car, trying to remember where he might have seen the man before. He seemed familiar.

  Maybe he does security for Hamptons parties. A lot of the island cops do.

  But he doesn’t think that’s it. No, it’s something else . . .

  The nagging curiosity vanishes the moment he’s safely inside the car, the door closed to shut out the storm.

  He inhales deeply . . . and once again smells the familiar scent of honeysuckle.

  Why has the scent of honeysuckle followed him everywhere lately . . . even all the way out here in a storm?

  And why, after the old timer’s dire warning, did he fail to see a single tree or live wire down across the road?

  Thom turns back in the direction toward Annie’s house, tempted, torn.

  Wha
t if those miraculous little events—the smell of honeysuckle, the accessible road—were signs? Signs that he and Annie are meant to be together?

  Or maybe, he tells himself glumly, bending his head into the wind, they were mere figments of your imagination. The old man, the scent of flowers . . . Maybe you want Annie so badly your mind has been playing tricks on you, trying to convince you that it’s meant to be.

  And if that’s the case—if it’s meant to be—then it’s going to take another miracle to bring her back to him, because Thom is through taking risks.

  The children have fallen asleep at last, despite the hurricane’s incessant roar. Seated on the couch with their heads in her lap, Annie strokes their hair and wonders if they’re dreaming about their daddy.

  Of course those nocturnal visits they both described were merely dreams, Annie tells herself firmly. Milo and Trixie adored their father, yet grew attached to Thom in the short time he was in their lives. It would only be natural that they would fantasize about him becoming their new daddy . . . and that they would feel as though they’d need Andre’s approval.

  Annie sighs, so filled with longing that she physically aches.

  Not for Andre . . .

  But for Thom.

  Yes, she still misses her husband. She’ll always miss him. She’ll always wonder what he might have said if he could speak to her again.

  But that won’t happen now. It can’t.

  According to the cellular service provider she managed to contact, the account has irrevocably been closed, her connection to Andre’s voice permanently severed.

  If only . . .

  No.

  Even if she had been able to reach her husband one last time, she would never have asked him to release her from her vow.

  A promise is a promise.

  Yet she’s filled with regret.

  Regret that she’ll never know what Andre was so desperately trying to tell her . . .

  And that she’ll never be free to love Thom Brannock.

  Chapter 22

  Annie awakens early Monday to sunlight streaming over her bed and the sound of birds chirping merrily outside her closed bedroom window.