Sarah massaged her forehead. “I don’t know. I feel like I should—”
“Trust me — you can’t do anything more. Only so much preparation is possible, and you’ve done it. Now it’s in God’s hands. The storm’s going to do what the storm’s going to do. If you can find a way to control the weather, let me know. Otherwise, just being ready will have to suffice.”
Another sigh. “I guess.”
The cordless phone rang. “Hang on, please,” she told him before answering. The call was from an AT&T repair crew, letting her know service had gone out on one of the southwest grids and that they were working to fix it as soon as possible.
“Ugh,” she said when she returned to Phillips. “We lost phone service in region six.”
“It always goes out there first.”
“Yep.”
“Speaking of which, why are you answering the phones there? Don’t tell me no one else came in.”
“No,” Sarah said, “Barbara and Lorraine are both here. They’re working.”
“So why—”
“In a crisis like this, I just feel like I should be the one who picks up as often as possible. The answers should come from me. Or from the mayor, anyway.”
“You are the mayor at the moment. It’s all there on the paper I signed. Until I get back, you’re the boss.”
“I hope you don’t live to regret that decision.”
“No chance. You’re going to be elected after I leave office anyway, so what’s the difference?”
A rush of emotions came to the surface when she heard this — that peculiar combination of incertitude and excitement. She had dreamed of the job since she was a child, watching her father carry those obligations with grace and dignity. He believed that serving the public through an elected position was a noble undertaking. She remembered him muttering obscenities under his breath when he came across yet another news report about some corrupt selectman or assemblyman. If he caught so much as a whiff of impropriety among his subordinates, he wouldn’t hesitate to make changes. His reputation for integrity became widely known, and he was adored for it. His genuine love of Silver Lake was part of Sarah’s life from infancy, and it was no surprise that she, feeling similarly about the town, wanted to follow in his gigantic footsteps.
“Think of it as on-the-job training,” Phillips said, his smile audible.
“Half the homes in Atlantis are going to flood.”
“You can’t stop nature.”
“Still, I wish we could at least shore up the bank over there—”
“Sarah.”
“Hmm?”
“You… can’t… do… everything.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“You are handling this as well as anyone could. Better, in fact, than most. Believe me on this, I’ve seen enough small-town governance to know what I’m talking about.”
“But if something goes wrong…”
“Here’s a news flash for you — something will go wrong. Something always goes wrong.”
“And everyone will judge me on how I reacted. I can feel their eyes on me today.”
Phillips laughed. “Your dad had a saying about that, y’know.”
“He did?”
“Yes, and I haven’t gone a day without thinking about it. It’s a quote from Maya Angelou. ‘People will forget what you said and forget what you did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.’”
Sarah grinned. “That sounds like him.”
“It was, it absolutely was him. And it’s absolutely you, too. You care about the town every bit as much as he did, and our residents know that. No one expects you to be a miracle worker. If they believe you’re trying your best, that’s gold. And no one — believe me, no one — thinks otherwise. That right there is how you make them feel.”
She took a deep breath, tilted her head up, and exhaled. “Just as long as it’s enough to carry the day.”
“It will be, you’ll see.”
“Okay, let me get back to work here.”
“Sure. And if there’s anything I can do to help you, remember I’m here with my cellphone and my iPad.”
“What? Who gave you—”
“Bye…”
7
The ambulance bounced into the driveway at 337 Birdsall Road with its lights flashing, stopping just short of the aging Nissan sedan parked in front of the garage. The house was a modest structure in a modest residential district, with a finely trimmed lawn and weedless flower beds. A tidy awning, from which potted plants hung, sheltered the side door. Some of the yard’s luster had been tainted as the ongoing storm littered the landscape with wet leaves and sickly branches. The ambulance had fared no better; its lower half was splattered with mud.
Two uniformed EMTs jumped out and raced for the door. Danny Lewis, the youngest member of Emilio’s crew, reached the steps first, then stopped and waited for his boss. Emilio went past him and tried the doorknob, which was locked. Frowning, he reached for the scraggly hydrangea hanging nearby.
“What are you doing?” Lewis asked.
“Mrs. Hart always leaves a key somewhere in the — ah, here it is.” It had been half-buried in the soil. Emilio stretched his arm out beyond the awning to let the rain wash it — as well as his fingers — clean. After he dried the key on the side of his navy trousers, it slid easily into the lock.
The odors waiting behind the door were depressingly familiar to Emilio, whose passport into the land of geriatrics had been stamped many times since he’d taken up his profession. Old World cooking, various gels and liniments, the trapped-in-time dustiness of a home left unimproved for decades, and the unspeakable mordancy of a gradually decaying human body. Searching for the house’s sole resident, he and Lewis passed through the kitchen, with its linoleum floor and colonial-style cabinetry, and into the living room, where the carpet’s threadbare nap had been worn to a muted shine. It was a perfect complement to the faded tweed couch and framed crocheted renderings of ducks and deer.
A huge Samsung flat-screen seemed startlingly out of place, but Emilio knew that Mrs. Hart’s estranged daughter had sent it as a guilt offering, in lieu of an actual visit. The sound of a garbled moan sent him hustling down a short hallway, his Bluetooth earpiece blinking in the darkness and his partner close behind.
Emilio reached the open door at the end and went in. He found Ellen Hart lying unconscious on the bedroom floor. Blood from a wound on her forehead had soaked into the carpet and dried to a hardened crust in her ivory hair. The first-alert device she had used was around her neck on a silver chain, one hand loosely wrapped around the panic-button pendant. Her nightgown was hitched up to her stomach, revealing soft, wrinkly legs and a pair of sky blue panties stretched taut over an adult diaper.
Emilio got to one knee and carefully pulled Mrs. Hart’s nightgown down to her ankles. Then he went through the vitals — breathing, pulse, temperature, pupils, blood pressure.
He massaged her gently on the cheek. “Mrs. Hart? Mrs. Hart?”
Her head rolled back and forth, and she opened her eyes. “Yes? What?” When she saw him, the recognition was immediate. “Emilio? What are you — ooo. Oww…” She touched the wound gingerly. “What happened?”
“It looks like you hit your head. Do you remember that?”
She took a deep breath and thought back. “Yes, yes. The joints in my knees have been killing me all day. This… this storm.”
Emilio nodded. “The barometric pressure is what makes the tissues in some people’s joints swell up.”
“I remember, um… I came in here. I was going to take a bath. Then I… I couldn’t stand up any more, it was just too painful. And down I went. I reached for my, uh…”—she felt around for the first-alert pendant and took it in hand—“this thing, and I pressed it.”