“Hallelujah!” Janine said to Marianne after they made it up the hill. She kissed Marianne’s forehead, whispered that it didn’t matter, the things Marianne said and did; she was alive and God loved her. Marianne said nothing, but allowed herself to be half carried into the passenger van that Lilian had waiting for them on the street. In the backseat Janine covered her with a raincoat and let Marianne rest her head on her lap like a child. The rain pounded the ceiling and splashed the windows. Marianne shut her eyes tight; it felt so good to be covered, prone, silent. She was hoping she might have a bad concussion, brain damage, something to free her from dealing with everything that had to be done. Why had she held on? Why hadn’t she let go? It would have been easy to drown, but she could feel the soreness in her arms and legs, bruised and scratched with the effort of clinging.

They made it to Ocala, found a seedy motel with a single vacancy. Tom thought this was funny and began calling them—Tom, Davonte, Eric, Marianne, Janine, and Lilian—the Motel 6. “Hey,” he said, “at least it has hot water and electricity.”

They took turns in the shower. Marianne went last, standing under a jet of lukewarm water. She ran a sliver of soap over the dirt-encrusted scrapes on her shins and inside her arms, pulled leaves and twigs from her hair. When the water ran mostly clear she turned it off, stepped onto the soggy bath mat, pulled her torn dress back on, wrung and knotted her hair at the nape of her neck.

The room glowed with charging devices, the only valuables they had had time to grab. No one talked much, not to each other. Everyone was texting and making phone calls—Janine to her husband and her daughter (Beth was fine, triumphant actually), Eric to Regina and Mark, Lilian and Davonte to their families. Tom acted like the whole thing was no big deal—no cell phones in Panama or Nicaragua, et cetera—but Marianne suspected he didn’t have anyone wondering where he was. She called her father, who wasn’t aware of the storm’s severity, and Ruth, whose phone went to voicemail. She texted with Sophie, who had made it to a friend’s house.

“Hey,” Eric said, touching her shoulder after they turned off the lights. “Let’s take a walk.” Marianne’s heart pounded as she followed him down the dingy carpeted hallway and through the heavy exit doors. It was barely raining in Ocala; it was hard to believe the sky could be calm again. It was late, past one o’clock, but the parking lot lights burned bright as day.

“You should have told me,” Marianne said. “You brought me here on false pretenses. Frances told me—she told me everything.”

“I thought you knew,” he said. “I was going to tell you.”