Selfish, muttered Janine. She was sorry she’d let anyone leave the room. It had been hours since she’d heard from Beth. She would be fine—of course she’d be fine, Janine saw her live on the Weather Channel—but that did not loosen the tight, sickly knot of worry Janine felt in her stomach. She sipped and sipped Lilian’s red wine, which tasted like wet leaves and cherries, and listened to Donald’s fears: the thin roof would cave in, they would suffocate in the heat, they would drown or be crushed. Janine reassured him each time—that seemed to be what he was looking for—but privately she wondered. From the sounds of things—creaking and moaning and crashing, several leaks already dripping from the ceiling—either the storm was especially bad, or their shelter especially flimsy. Humbly—for wasn’t realism a form of humility?—Janine prayed it was one thing or the other, but not both.

Please not both, she prayed. In the beginning of the night, she had been praying for her children’s safety, for Beth in her weather van and Rick and Chrissy at home, but suddenly it occurred to her that where she was—in a converted motel, feet from the shore—was possibly the most dangerous place of all. That she could die, leaving her children motherless and her husband a widower, was not something that she ever thought about. That she could die at a Christian writing school that was not even founded by an actual Christian suddenly seemed very possible. She wished desperately to be back in her old life, writing poems that no one would ever read, making dinner, washing dishes. Doing laundry: in the close, humid room, she wanted nothing more than the orderliness of her laundry room. She’d been vain to apply for school, to waste the money on something that would never help her family, that only made her cross and impatient with them, that made her want to be alone.

“I’m going to look outside,” Janine said. She stood, and told herself the dizziness she felt was from the heat, the claustrophobia. “Selfish!” she said again, this time loud enough for Lilian and Donald to hear.

“She’s in love with him,” Donald said. “That’s all.”

“Who?” said Lilian.

“Marianne. She loves Eric. That’s why she’s gone after him.”

Someone knocked clumsily, and Janine lurched for the door—it would be Marianne, she told herself, back with Eric and Tom, all of them soaked and relieved and back to believing in God again.