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

Hector was already running to her. “A tree fell, amor. But not on the house, gracias a Dios.”

“Are you okay with leaving?” Shiloh asked me. His forehead was beaded with perspiration.

“No,” I said. “But I’m not okay with staying, either. We should go see what Milagros thinks.”

He nodded. “I think we should. It’ll be tight, but the six of us can squeeze into the Jeep—that seems safer than trying to take Hector’s sedan. We should get out of here as fast as we can.”

Milagros, however, wasn’t nearly as eager to leave. After we’d told her our plans, she gazed at the front door sadly. “I don’t want to leave mis perros,” she said, referring to her gaggle of strays. “They were already abandoned during Maria. I can’t do that to them again.”

When I took her hand, her skin was paper soft beneath my fingers. “Milagros,” I began, but then I had to compose myself, because I’d just started to think about how her dogs weren’t the only ones who’d lived through this before. What if she wasn’t strong enough to survive it a second time? But the thought was as galvanizing as it was terrible. Shiloh was right—we had to get out of there while we still could. “The waves are only getting higher, and the next tree that falls might not miss your house,” I continued. “I know it will be terrible to leave the dogs, and I promise I’ll personally come back and feed them myself the minute it’s safe. But for now, we have to go.”

“I believe you, mija. And so we go.” Her grip was weak as she squeezed my fingers. “Hector, I need your help putting together a bag.”

Hector wrapped his arms around her, and she instantly seemed calmer. “I’ll get everything, Milly. Don’t worry.”

“Libby, I’ll get a change of clothes for us and start putting together some food,” said Shiloh. “Can you make sure Charlotte’s kit is packed?”

“On it,” I told him.

I found a cooler in Milagros’ cupboard, but when I went to get ice packs, I realized they, like the rest of the contents of the freezer, were no longer frozen. Equally alarming, the fridge’s temperature was rising fast. As much as I wanted to believe that the cooler would serve its eponymous duty, all signs pointed to it morphing into an Easy-Bake oven before the day was over.

I stashed the kit with Charlotte’s insulin, test strips, and meter inside, then said a prayer as I zipped it closed. Through the kitchen door I watched Charlotte, who was sitting beside Milagros at the dining room table, smiling softly about something Milagros had just said to her. At any other time I would have celebrated their burgeoning relationship. Now, however, my heart was pounding and adrenaline zipped through my veins.

Stay calm so everyone else can, too, I commanded myself. Soon you’ll be at the shelter, and surely it will have a generator and refrigerator.

It had to.

TWENTY

Shortly after we nearly crashed into the ocean, Shiloh remarked to me that life is a near-death experience. While I’d had plenty of opportunities to test his theory over the years, it felt particularly apt as the six of us piled into the Jeep. The rain was coming down so hard that the wipers couldn’t keep up, and the roads were flooded and strewn with debris and fallen trees, causing us to reroute again and again. I’d begun to wonder if we’d ever make it when we finally pulled up in front of the elementary school that was doubling as a storm shelter. All around us people were clambering out of cars and running through the rain with duffel bags or stuffed trash bags in hand.

“I’m going to drop you guys off under the awning, then go park,” said Shiloh.

“Are you sure?” I said, eyeing a car that had been abandoned next to the school’s entrance.

He nodded. “The parking lot’s all of two hundred feet away.”

“I know, but the lot looks completely full,” I said.

“Libby,” said Shiloh, swiveling toward the backseat, where I was squeezed between Hector and the girls. “I don’t want all of you out in the storm, and I don’t want to leave the car somewhere where it’s going to block other people from getting into the building. I’ll be fine.”

I nodded numbly, watching Hector help Milagros out of the Jeep. I knew she was just as tired as the rest of us, but it still pained me to see that she looked so much older than she had when we’d arrived.

“Hey,” said Shiloh, reaching for me just before I was about to climb out after Isa and Charlotte. He barely managed to smile. “Where’s my Libby? It’s going to be okay.”

Did he really not know that his Libby had been missing for weeks? Maybe even months, though I couldn’t put my finger on the point at which I’d lost my way. Now this fatalistic imposter was trying, and failing, not to imagine her husband flattened beneath a tree or fried by lightning.

“I’m here,” I said weakly, waving for the girls to follow Milagros and Hector into the school. “And I’m sorry about our fight. I didn’t mean to give you a hard time.”

“There was no fight, Libby,” he said, looking at me quizzically. “That was kind of the problem, wasn’t it?”

When he said it like that, I was forced to admit most of the fighting had happened in my head. “Still, it was a bad way to end the night. I don’t want . . .” I didn’t want that to be how we left things if he didn’t make it back. “I want to make sure we’re okay.”

“Of course we are. You’re right that we should discuss that. But you don’t need to apologize, all right? Go take care of the girls. I’ll be in as soon as I can.”

“Okay,” I conceded. “Please be super careful.”

“I wouldn’t be allowed to fly millionaires three thousand miles above the earth if I weren’t