Tarla wondered where Cab was. She told herself that soon enough, he would be here. Everything would be fine. He would stroll in, wet, smiling, hair spiky, and he would make a joke. There was nothing to worry about.

‘Damn the phones,’ she said when she tried to call him. No signal. She wanted to hear her son’s reassuring voice.

Blown sand rapped on the glass, as if it were knocking, asking to come in. Tap tap tap, like a Morse code. Leaves slapped on the doors and stuck there. Water squeezed its way onto the tile floor in tiny puddles. Wind got inside the walls and wailed like a ghost pining for a lost love. Tarla experienced a strange sensation, and she didn’t know what it was. It had been such a long time she’d felt anything like it, but something nameless wrapped itself around her body like a damp fog. And then she understood. It was fear. She was scared to death.

Tap tap tap, said the sand.

Slap slap slap, said the leaves.

My love, my love, my love, said the ghost in the attic.

Bang bang bang.

Tarla stood up immediately, her body tense. ‘What was that? Did you hear that?’

Diane stared at her. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘That wasn’t the storm,’ Tarla said.

Caprice eyed the invisible garden. She went and got a candle from the table and held it near the glass, its light like a beacon. The storm assaulted the window, inches from her face. ‘I don’t see anything,’ she said.

She turned around to face them. She still held the candle.

Tarla looked over Caprice’s shoulder, past the dancing light, which reflected in the glass. One moment, nothing was there, and the next moment, something took shape outside the doors.

A man. A man in a hood.

Tarla screamed.

52

Peach drove.

She didn’t care about the storm. She didn’t care that everyone else had closeted themselves inside their homes to steer clear of the worst, furious hours. The wind threw her heavy car like a toy around the highway, but she drove and drove, past the beaches, across the bridge, into the desolate heart of Tampa. She wasn’t aware of time passing or of debris pounding her windows or of her engine coughing out warnings as the water threatened to flood it. The bay could have swallowed her whole, and she wouldn’t have flinched; she would have stared sightlessly ahead as she vanished under the waves.

She drove.

Her mind was a child again. Chayla was in the future. Her past rose out of the bay like a sea monster, winding its fingers around her throat. She remembered.

She remembered everything she’d buried for ten years.

The accident threw her body forward.