He’s close enough now for her to see him clearly—the silvering hair, the brown eyes. He has a suntan. He’s had a constant tan since he started working for Todd Croft at Ascension, thirteen years ago. Their friends used to tease Russ about it, but Irene barely noticed, much less questioned it. He was on business in Florida and Texas; the tan seemed logical. She had chalked it up to lunch meetings at outdoor restaurants, endless rounds of golf. How many times had Russ told her he would be unreachable because he’d be playing golf with clients?

Now, of course, Irene knows better.

“Irene,” he says. His voice frightens her; she digs her heels into the sand. Russ’s white tuxedo shirt is so soaked that she can see the flesh tone of his skin beneath. His khaki pants are split up one leg. He looks like he’s survived a shipwreck.

No, Irene thinks. Not a shipwreck. A plane crash. A helicopter crash, that’s it.

“Russ?” she says. He’s getting pummeled by rain, and Irene flashes back twenty years to a Little League game of Baker’s that was suspended due to a violent midwestern thunderstorm. All the parents huddled in the dugout with the kids, but Russ, in a show of gallantry, ran out onto the field to collect the equipment. Another father, Steve Sonnet (Irene had always rather disliked Steve Sonnet), said, Reckless of him, picking up those metal bats. He’s going to get himself killed.

There was another time she remembers Russ soaking wet, a wedding in Atlanta. The Dunns’ daughter Maisy was marrying an executive at Delta Airlines. This was five or six years ago, back when Irene and Russ found themselves attending more weddings than they had even when they were young. The reception was held at Rhodes Hall, and when she and Russ emerged from the strobe-lit dance floor and martini bar, it was to a downpour. Again, Russ insisted on playing the hero by tenting his tuxedo jacket over his head and dashing across the parking lot to their rental car. When he’d pulled up to the entrance a few moments later, his shirt had been soaked through, just like this one is now.

“The storm,” Russ says, “is coming.”

Well, yes, Irene thinks. That much is obvious. It’s a proper deluge now, and the darkest clouds are still moving toward them. “I thought you were dead,” she says. “They told me…” She stops. She’s speaking, but she can’t hear herself. It’s frustrating. “They told me you were dead.”

“It will be a bad storm,” Russ says. “Destructive.”

“Where should we go?” Irene asks. She turns to face the trees. Where do the chickens hide from the rain? she wonders. Because she would like to hide there too.

At eight o’clock on the dot, Irene wakes Cash. He has started calling her Mother Alarm Clock.