Things had gone wrong from the moment he woke up and turned on the television. Almost every local channel had reports of a tropical storm—a rogue storm, an anomaly for this time of year—zigzagging its way through the Gulf. The chances of it hitting Gulf City full force were slim—thirty percent, if he averaged out the conflicting predictions—but it was being discussed by newscasters as a near apocalyptic event. Between stock footage of rain-lashed palm trees, they were broadcasting shots of people pushing around shopping carts full to overflowing with bottled water and toilet paper. One religious channel was presenting it as yet another manifestation of divine retribution for the opening of a gay strip club, the address of which they unfortunately had not revealed.

As they were driving out to Lorna’s house, everyone was strangely quiet, Jane staring out the passenger window, Tim and Chloe pressed against the doors on either side of the back seat. Worried about the storm, Desmond had thought initially, but then he’d asked what he assumed was a perfectly innocuous question about breakfast and there had been a mumbled chorus of disapproving voices: “Don’t ask.” “What breakfast?” “Who knows!” There had been a fight over breakfast, he conjectured, the specifics of which he would undoubtedly rather not know. So why, if they were all at each other’s throats, did he feel like the one being shut out?

Lorna had greeted them at her door with a disingenuous look of surprise, as if he hadn’t confirmed their arrival yesterday afternoon. “I thought you might have turned around and gone north again, once you heard about all this tropical rain they’re predicting.”

“It’s silly, isn’t it?” Jane had said, doing her best to sound knowing and conspiratorial. “We have a similar problem in New England—dire warnings about snowstorms that never materialize. You get exhausted from all the hype.”

Lorna was in her mid-fifties and had been teaching fourth grade for more than twenty years. She had a way of looking at you with disapproving condescension, as if she were about to slap you with a detention or take away your hall pass. “You get a lot more exhausted from cleaning up after the storms that do materialize. I certainly do, anyway.”

Jane obviously felt she was being judged harshly and had backed into a defensive stance, and any hope of rapport between the two women was dashed. Lorna discerned that Chloe and Tim were there for the technical side of things and demoted them to the bottom rung of the hierarchy. “Please don’t put that tripod there,” she said, as if she were talking to two disrespectful ten-year-olds. “Can’t you see what the legs are doing to my carpet? Would you like me to come into your home and do that to your carpets? No, I didn’t think so.”