“They’ve got to send one!”

“Right now,” Daria said to the man, “put your energy and your anger and your fear into lifting this boat. Come on. Shelly. You can help, too.”

She had seen it before, even in herself, that superhuman strength that coursed through otherwise normal men and women in the moment of crisis, so she wasn’t surprised when the three men and Shelly were able to lift the boat by a few inches. Daria dived beneath it, grabbing the little boy and pulling him clear of the boat. “Can you hold it up another minute?” she asked as she scrambled toward the stem for the woman.

“It’s coming down!” Andy yelled.

“Get out, Daria. Get out!”

Daria quickly retreated from beneath the boat just as it rocked back onto the pier. It caught her right index finger, and she stifled a scream. Her finger would be badly swollen and bruised within minutes, but that injury was nothing compared to what this boy and his mother were enduring.

She felt torn between attending to the boy and trying to extricate the mother, but the light of her flashlight on the boy’s pale face told her how desperately he needed her attention. The pressure of the boat must have been serving as a tourniquet of sorts, and now the blood gushed freely from his leg.

“Shelly!” She tore off her windbreaker.

“Come here and press this against his leg.”

Shelly knelt next to the boy, her hands over the windbreaker.

“Press hard,” Daria said.

“Really hard. It’s the only way to stop the bleeding.” She turned back to the boat and positioned herself near the stem.

Rory grabbed her shoulder.

“You can’t go under there again,” he said.

“It’s too hard for us to hold the boat up. You nearly got crushed last time.”

“You just have to hold it up longer.” She dropped to her knees and realized she was kneeling in several inches of water. Panic coursed through her. The sound was rising far too quickly for comfort.

“On the count of three!” Rory shouted.

“One … two… three.” Daria saw the hull of the boat rise up in front of her. She dived beneath it, grasping the woman’s clothing with her hands and tugging backward, but suddenly the water poured over the woman’s face, trapping her.

Drowning her. Daria found herself in the middle of one of her nightmares. She could not truly see the woman’s face, could not see brown eyes or a widow’s peak, but in her mind the woman became the young, dying pilot. Thrashing with her arms beneath the boat, she reached for the woman’s clothing once more. Water splashed into her own face just as she was taking a breath, and she had to let go, choking and coughing. Someone’s hands were on her, pulling her out from beneath the boat, and she gagged as she struggled to catch her breath. In an instant, a wall of water swept onto the pier, lifting the boat, and Daria saw Rory plow beneath the stem, pulling the unconscious woman to safety before she was dragged into the sound.

“Get them off the pier!” Andy said, and Daria saw that Shelly was already doing that, carrying the little boy in her arms, through the rising water on the pier, to the driveway and away from the sound.

Daria struggled to get to her feet, and could only do so with Andy’s help. Rory or the husband, she wasn’t sure who, carried the woman to the driveway. Daria ran after them, moving as quickly as she could through the water on tremulous legs. She knelt down next to the woman, feeling again for a pulse.

“There’s blood everywhere, Daria,” Shelly called to her from the side of the little boy.

“I’m pressing hard, but it’s not stopping.”

The woman had no pulse, nor was she breathing.

“I know CPR,” Rory said. He was suddenly kneeling on the other side of the woman.

“You take care of the boy.”

Daria called to Andy.

“Do the compressions, Andy,” she said. Andy had never been put to the test, but she knew he could do it; she’d taught his CPR class.

“Rory can do the breathing.”

She ran over to the boy, who was unconscious, but breathing. Shelly’s hands were covered with his blood, and Daria said a quick prayer that the boy had no blood-borne diseases.

“We need to get them to the trauma center,” she said. She was wondering exactly how they were going to do that when she heard the sweet call of a siren somewhere on the other side of the wind.

“Thank God,” she said out loud.

“I hear a siren!” Andy’s neighbor said. He was sitting near the boy, looking dazed and helpless.

Within a minute, the ambulance pulled into the driveway. It was staffed by only one paramedic—Mike—and an EMT, who was driving. But it didn’t take long before they had the woman intubated and the boy bandaged, and both of them, placed in the ambulance.

“Rory and I will go with them in the rig,” Daria said to Andy.

“You take Shelly back to the Sea Shanty, please.”

“No,” Shelly said.

“I’m staying with Andy.”

Daria turned to Andy.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“There’s no time to talk about it now,” Andy said. He was pushing her toward the ambulance, but Daria held her ground.

“Tell me,” she said. “Shelly and I have been together for a couple of years,” Andy said.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. She was afraid you’d try to break us up if you knew. Okay? Now get in the ambulance.”

Daria backed away from Andy, stunned.

“Daria?” Mike called from inside the rig.

“Let’s go!”

With one more glance at her sister, she turned and ran toward the ambulance.

JUaria walked out of the treatment room in the nearly empty trauma center. Rory, who had been waiting on one of the chairs in the hallway, stood when he saw her.

“They’re going to be all right,” Daria said, walking toward him.

“Both of them?” Rory asked.

Daria nodded. The woman had not looked good in the ambulance, but after two hours in the treatment room she was breathing on her own and alert enough to ask about her son.

“Thank God,” Rory said, and he drew her into a hug. Daria closed her eyes, resting her cheek against his shoulder for a moment before pulling away.

“You’re soaking wet.” She brushed her hand over the damp front of his shirt.

“How can you tell?” he asked.

“So are you.”

Her wet clothes clung to her body, but she had not given them a thought until this moment. Suddenly, she felt cold.

“There’s nothing more we can do here,” she said.

“Woody—the EMT—said he can give us a ride home.”

She sat in the passenger seat of Woody’s car, barely noticing how the wind pushed them around on the deserted roads. Shingles and twigs flew against the car’s windows, and she didn’t even blink when they hit the glass in front of her face. Woody and Rory were talking, about the storm or the trauma center; Daria didn’t know or care. She felt shaky and strange. She still hadn’t absorbed all that Chloe had told them earlier that evening—that conversation seemed like a bad dream from weeks ago. And then there was the revelation about Shelly and Andy. She did not truly know either of her sisters.

Woody let them out in front of the Sea Shanty. At least two of the porch screens were torn, flapping wildly in the wind like a trapped bird.

Rory leaned close to her ear.

“I should check on Poll-Rory while I’m out here,” he said.

Daria stared at the front door of the dark Sea Shanty, not wanting to go inside, not ready to explain the past few hours to Chloe, if she happened to be up.

“I’ll go with you,” she said, shouting above the wind.

Rory nodded. He put his arm around her and they plowed their way across the cul-de-sac.

Inside Poll-Rory, the darkness was disorienting, and the wind groaned and whistled. Daria stood in the living room, feeling lost and cold.

The storm had brought frigid air with it, and she shivered in her wet clothes. Her sore finger throbbed. Rory tried the switch for the overhead light, but the power was, of course, still out.

He shined his flashlight toward a cupboard at the rear of the room.

“I

have a lantern in that closet,” he said.

“And matches in the drawer in the kitchen. Why don’t you take care of that, and I’ll find us some dry clothes to change into.”

He disappeared into one of the bedrooms, and, by the weak, yellow beam of her own flashlight, Daria found the lantern, checked the oil and lit the wick. In a moment, Rory reappeared. He handed her a bundle of soft fabric and pointed toward another bedroom.

“Why don’t you change in there. There are towels in the bathroom.”

The wet clothes stuck to her body like a thin layer of cold plaster.

She peeled them off, underwear and all, and hung them over the shower rod in the bathroom. Rory had given her one of his sweatshirts, either navy blue or black, she couldn’t tell which in the fading glow from her flashlight, along with gray sweatpants that were way too large for her. She put the clothes on over her bare skin, tried unsuccessfully to run her fingers through her wet hair and walked into the living room.

Rory, too, was in sweatpants and sweatshirt, standing in the middle of the room, holding the lantern. He smiled at her.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“Physically,” she said, sitting down on the sofa.

“But I’m… still pretty shaken up by everything that happened tonight.”

“How about something to drink?” he asked.

“Power’s out, so I can’t make anything hot. There’s iced tea. Wine. Beer.”

“Wine.” She rested her head against the back of the sofa and closed her eyes while he carried the lantern into the kitchen. A moment later, he handed her a glass of wine, and she took several sips from it before placing it on the coffee table.