A sharp sound startled Natalie, then. Startled all of them.
Someone had knocked on the front door.
“Everyone please be very quiet,” Thomas said. “This is exactly what I’ve been worried about.”
And then to Natalie specifically, he said: “Maybe you could take the boys into your bedroom? Just in case?”
“I’ll do that,” said Seth, who came padding down the stairs.
When the boys were gone, Thomas approached the door. The entryway was around a corner from the kitchen and Natalie couldn’t see it.
“Hey there,” Thomas said. “How’s it going?”
“Been better,” said a man’s voice. “I’m going around the neighborhood to see how everyone is getting along. You remember me? I’m Matt.”
“Sure,” said Thomas like he didn’t know the guy at all. “I’m doing all right so far.”
“Have plenty of food?” asked Matt.
“I wouldn’t say plenty. If all this doesn’t get fixed soon, I’ll need to work on my fishing skills.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Well, no, I mean—”
“I got some kids who are pretty hungry,” said Matt, “so none of this seems very funny to me.”
Natalie heard a rumble of thunder. She looked out the window and wondered if it might rain.
“Sorry,” Thomas said. “It’s a tough situation.”
“I’ve been thinking, if everyone in Lakewood Village combines our food supplies, maybe all of us will have a better chance to survive.”
“I don’t have a lot of supplies,” Thomas lied. “I just hope the power comes back on soon.”
“I figured you’d be like that,” Matt said. “You don’t come to the HOA meetings. You don’t come to the monthly barbecue. I guess you like your privacy.”
“I pay my yearly dues,” Thomas said. “And I travel a lot, so.”
“A real jet-setter you are.”
Thomas stood there with the door open, saying nothing. Natalie wondered what was happening, why the two men were staring at each other for so long.
“Well,” Matt finally said. “I better run before I get rained on. Guess I’ll see you around.”
“Sure thing,” said Thomas.
As he closed the door, Natalie tossed her magazine across the table and reached for another one. A moment later, white light flashed through the windows, followed by a house-shaking clap of thunder.
“Holy moly!” yelled Ben, who was already approaching from the hallway. “That was loud!”
“Boys!” whispered Seth. “Keep quiet!”
But the twins had reached the window, fascinated by a curtain of rain crossing the lake.
“Look at that!” said Brandon. “Here it comes!”
A moment later rain was upon them, falling so heavily the nearby lake receded from view. The roar of the storm made Natalie think of her honeymoon in Niagara, where she and Seth had taken a boat tour to the falls. As they kissed theatrically under the spray, Natalie felt like a movie star, almost lovely, the way she felt before fat and gravity conspired to make her look like a middle-aged woman.
In the early part of their marriage, Seth had somehow been able to look past her declining beauty, and she basked in the glow of his attention. But as years went by, and especially after she gave birth to the twins, Natalie could no longer ignore what she saw in the mirror. The less attractive she felt, the more difficult it was to believe Seth could desire her. Or that she could desire him. Instead of waiting every night for the boys to go to bed, instead of anticipating a kiss or the delicate touch of his hand on her thigh, Natalie nodded off in front of the television earlier and earlier, as if someone had drugged her. It was obvious now she had slept through much of Seth’s descent into gambling addiction. That her waning sexual desire had inadvertently enabled him.
“Mom,” said Brandon. “Can you believe this storm?”
Natalie didn’t trust herself not to slur, so instead of answering she simply nodded.
“Mom, are you okay?”
All at once the world was spinning around her. The roar of the storm distorted the sound in her ears until it was a high-pitched whistle. She wasn’t in love with Seth. She had drifted away from him long before the gambling addiction took hold. Even while he apologized for his actions, while he came clean to her, Natalie had hidden her own failures.
“I’m fine, honey. Just tired.”
A figure approached from the hallway and she saw it was Seth.
“Look at that rain,” he said from the living room. “Can you imagine if there was a tornado? With no radar, we’d never see it coming.”
Thomas and Skylar joined her boys at the windows. Natalie’s heart beat in her brain. She had never felt so left out, so alone. She stood up suddenly and her chair screeched across the floor.
“Nat, are you okay?”
Seth looked at her carefully, waiting for an answer, but if she opened her mouth nonsense would tumble out. And what was there to say? She didn’t belong here. The whole scene was too much to bear.
She staggered out of the kitchen. Grazed the wall on her way to the bathroom and a picture frame exploded on the floor. Voices called after her. Footsteps followed her. She locked the bathroom door and vomited into the toilet.
As Seth pounded on the door, asking what was wrong, Natalie hated herself. How pathetic was it that the end of the world wasn’t the worst part of her life?
Then she heard someone else talking. Someone who turned out to be Skylar.
“Seth,” she said in the tender and husky voice that was her trademark. “Why don’t you give her a little space? She could probably use it.”
“She could probably use my help.”
“Honey,” Skylar said, “you should let Natalie process this in her own way. Believe me, I know how she feels.”
Natalie wanted to open the door and scream How could you possibly know how I feel? Look at your life and look at mine! You have no idea how I feel!
Instead, she kneeled forward and vomited into the toilet again, her ears whistling like a kettle. Something was wrong with her. Like really wrong.
Like she was losing her mind.
TWENTY-TWO
It was three days now since they’d come here, or the third day… Seth had never understood the proper way to increment time like this. Since they arrived early Saturday, and now it was Monday morning, did that mean it had been two days? One? Three?
The heat was unbearable and Seth was losing his patience. He had finally convinced Thomas to open the windows, and at first enjoyed the feeble breeze that followed. But now the house was flooded with humidity so dense and oppressive that Seth imagined he could see it gathering in corners and pooling against the ceiling.
If the heat wasn’t bad enough, Natalie’s silence was driving him nuts. After her meltdown yesterday morning, after sleeping away most of the afternoon, Seth was sure she would have come to him with an apology. But no. She wouldn’t leave the bedroom and wouldn’t speak when he stopped by to see her. She acted as if the pulse was his fault, something Seth had inflicted upon her personally. Worst of all, she wouldn’t even interact with the boys.
After dinner last night, after he downed two glasses of bourbon, Seth found Skylar standing at the back windows and summoned the nerve to approach her. By then the boys were in bed and Thomas was upstairs. Moonlight gleamed on the rippled surface of the lake and she didn’t seem to notice him.
“I’m sorry about Natalie,” he finally said. “Thanks for helping with the boys.”
“I can’t imagine how hard this must be on them,” Skylar answered. “When the world is turned upside down and even adults don’t know what to do, where does that leave a child?”