“I’ve been better, but yes, I’m fine.” He put his arm around her waist and shifted the two of them so that they faced each other. He kissed her on the mouth, then kissed her again. “You were the one who had to ride this out alone.”

“It wasn’t bad. I never even lost power.”

“No tornadoes?”

Her arms lay across his shoulders and she smiled at him and shook her head no.

“None at all?”

“Well, I wasn’t staring out the window the whole time, but I don’t think so. Did you see any?”

“A couple of them, in the distance, when we were leaving the island. That’s why I was so worried about you. You’ve got batteries in that radio, right?”

“Yeah. That would have been a real lifesaver,” she said. He’d given it to her the previous week. It sat on the coffee table now, turned off, its antenna collapsed. “Do you want coffee?”

“Desperately.”

Leona walked into the kitchen, and from the pass-through in the living room wall he watched her take a pair of mugs down from the cabinet and pour from the coffeepot. She had another new hairstyle, one that left her thick, auburn hair cut short and curled outward, revealing her shoulders and most of her neck. He sat down at one end of the beige sectional she’d bought from a neighbor who had moved out—part of her mismatched troupe of furniture. “I’m going to check on my folks,” he said. “Do you mind?”

“I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”

He took the phone off the end table and dialed his parents in Satellite Beach. “It’s Roy.”

“I told you this storm was nothing,” his father replied.

“You all are okay?”

“Of course we’re okay. They’ve got the police going up and down the street with a bullhorn, asking the same question. You’d think it was the end of the world.”

“It was pretty rough, Dad. They said on the news it was a ‘class A’ storm.”

“They play these things up because they don’t have anything else to talk about. One branch off the weeping willow, that’s our damage.”

“Well, I just wanted to check on you.”

“How’s the island?”

“It’s okay. I mean, I guess it’s okay. We relocated to a motel in Cocoa, just to be safe.”

“You did what?”

Roy closed his eyes. “We thought it would be better to play it safe.”

“So you bought into the whole thing,” his father said—not so much a question as an observation.

“Yeah,” Roy said. “The whole kit and caboodle. Listen, I should go. I just wanted to check on you.”

“Your mother wants to talk to Teresa.”

“She stepped out. Listen, I’ve got to go. Tell Mom we’ll call later on, all right?”

His father asked how much they’d paid for the motel room.