He drove with purpose, stopping only when necessary. It was well past midnight when he finally arrived in Tallahassee. He found a motel on the outskirts that looked clean and safe enough and fell into bed without changing his clothes.

He woke up to find a text from Marilyn with a brief message.

No record of Jane Carter at that address. It must have been a rental.

Disappointed, he washed up and was gone by 7:00 a.m., this time heading north toward Georgia on I-95. He had Blessings entered into his GPS, and if nothing went wrong, he should pull into town around midmorning.

* * *

It was a little past noon when Sully passed the city limit sign and drove into Blessings. The highway he was on had turned into Main Street, and he began checking out all the businesses as he drove through town. The police station was on Main, as were a hair salon, a pharmacy, a florist, and some kind of exercise place.

He’d read a few months earlier that a few of the Piggly Wiggly supermarkets were closing, and there was evidence of that right here on Main.

The Piggly Wiggly sign had been taken down from the top of the building housing a supermarket, but the little pig logo was still evident. Obviously, someone was running it. Being the only supermarket in a town this size, it should do a good business.

There was an eating establishment called Granny’s Country Kitchen a bit farther up the street, and from the number of vehicles in the large parking lot, the food they served must be good.

Sully knew Janie was no longer at 104 Brigade Street, but he was curious to see what was there and entered the address into his GPS.

He found Brigade Street and drove slowly past the houses, looking for that number. There was a huge gathering a few houses down on one side of the block, and people were going in and out of what looked like a new build. Maybe it was a housewarming party, he thought, and kept on driving without any luck, which told him this was going to require checking in at City Hall for land records and deeds.

He wondered if Jane had remarried again, and would be checking to see if another marriage license had been registered. He also had the library and old newspapers as more places to search.

The more he drove, the more he noticed what looked like high-water marks on the sides of commercial buildings. He knew Hurricane Fanny had just hit this part of the East Coast and it appeared the town was still in various states of recovery.

He made a random choice of streets and left Main to drive through another part of the residential area. Again, he saw more houses in different stages of storm repair. He thought about the windstorms and the floods and tornadoes he’d grown up with in Kansas that brought their own level of devastation and destruction. But wind was wind, and water was water, and no matter how it was delivered, he empathized with what the people had endured.