Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around by Pagán, Camille (top novels of all time txt) 📗

wasn’t as though my father would have been able to airlift us off the island. But if I’d been able to talk to him, I might actually believe this was all going to work out—which was pretty much the exact opposite of how I was currently feeling. “You guys have already heard all my good stories,” I said.

“What about one about Grandma?” said Isa.

A story about my mother: this was a tall order. Little details remained, like the way her smile felt like the sun on my skin. But many of my memories were tinged with sadness from the years she spent in treatment, and worse, the ones that followed.

I was about to admit the well was dry when something came rushing back to me. “Actually . . . I do remember something I haven’t told you before,” I said.

“Is it sad?” asked Charlotte.

“I don’t mind,” said Isa. “Some of my favorite stories are a little bit sad.”

All stories were a little bit sad if you stayed with them long enough. But eventually my girls would learn that for themselves. “Depends on how you look at it,” I said. “You know your Grandma Charlotte had cancer, right?”

They nodded.

“Not the same kind as me. And unlike me, she never went into remission,” I said, making a mental note to finally tell them about my test results if we ever got through this storm. “Anyway, Grandma’s treatment made her hair fall out.”

“Was it scary?” whispered Charlotte.

I could still remember opening the bathroom door and finding her in front of the mirror, examining a bald patch. I startled at the sight of her scalp, but her smile in the reflection calmed me just as fast.

“Kind of, because I wasn’t used to seeing her like that,” I admitted. “But she wanted to make it less scary for me, so she put on a hat and asked Grandpa to watch me and Uncle Paul while she went to the store. Grandpa took us to the park, and when we got home our car was in the driveway, so we knew Grandma was back. But when we went into the kitchen, there was a woman with a bright red clown wig standing over the sink. Your Uncle Paul took one look at her and began to scream bloody murder. Which scared the pee out of me—so I ran and got a big umbrella and ran back to the kitchen. I was ready to attack when I saw that Grandpa and the clown were both bent over laughing so hard they could barely breathe. It wasn’t long before Uncle Paul and I were cracking up, too.”

“But why did Grandma do that?” asked Charlotte.

I smiled, thinking of what Paul had said about using humor to digest hard things. “She didn’t want us to be afraid of what was happening to her, and she knew that making everyone laugh was a good way to change the way we felt about it. Now,” I said, reaching out to run a hand over their heads, “close your eyes and try to sleep, okay? We’ll need to get up soon enough.” In just a few hours, Charlotte would have to test her blood sugar and take the long-acting insulin she injected each morning and eat some of our quickly dwindling food supply. After that . . . well, I had no idea what came after that. But whatever it was, I would need to channel my mother and find a way to keep my children from being as petrified as I secretly was.

I waited until their lids had grown heavy and their breathing had slowed to check my phone. The cellular network was down, so the text I’d tried to send Paul still had an exclamation mark next to it, indicating that it was unsent. I squeezed my eyes shut and sent him another kind of message.

Help.

The sun was still shrouded by clouds a few hours later, but daybreak was just bright enough that we could get around the house without flashlights. After we’d thrown together a simple breakfast of bread, cheese, and instant coffee, Shiloh pulled me into the hallway. “I think we should move inland,” he said. His calm tone belied the fear in his eyes.

“I know we need to find a fridge, or at least some way to cool Charlotte’s supplies—but it doesn’t look safe outside,” I said. We’d cracked the shutters a few times to see how the yards were faring. Debris was strewn across the front lawn, and Milagros’ patio was a pond.

“I don’t think it’s safe here, either,” he said, gesturing toward the ceiling. Water had started to seep through a few weak spots in the roof, and the buckets we’d placed beneath the leaks were filling fast. “If this place floods—and I think it might—then it may be too late for us to get out of here safely.”

Sure, but evacuating was so . . . terrifyingly real. I must have been secretly hoping I’d click my heels three times and discover this entire thing was nothing but a very bad dream.

“Where do we go, though?” I said, glancing over my shoulder. We’d done our best to reassure the girls, but there was only so much we could do; now they were pacing like a couple of caged panthers.

“There’s a school a mile from here that operates as a shelter during natural disasters,” said Hector, who’d just come out of the bathroom. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “I hope you don’t mind, but I overheard you just now and I have to agree. I don’t think it’s safe for us to stay here.”

“You think this qualifies as a natural disaster?” I said, but no sooner had I said this than the house shook violently.

Isa squealed, while Charlotte threw an afghan over her head. Shiloh glanced in the direction of the yard, then looked back at me with alarm. “I’m thinking the tree that just toppled says yes.”

“Dios mío!” cried Milagros from the dining room. “What’s happening