Chapter 4
Grant found me at the high school shelter three hours later.
"Claire."
He hurried across the gym and reached for me.
I stepped back.
His arms closed around empty air.
Behind him stood the woman my husband had left me to save. Natalie still wore his yellow fire jacket. She held our red emergency binder against her chest, one hand covering the words THE MORGANS.
Grant stared at the dried blood on my sleeve and the gray mud hardened over my clothes.
"Oh my God." His face tightened. "I knew you'd find a way out."
Not I'm sorry.
Not I came back for you.
He had looked at the state of me and congratulated himself for being right.
"Don't touch me."
People on nearby cots turned toward us. Grant noticed. Grief settled over his face so quickly it looked rehearsed.
"You're in shock,"
he said softly.
"I watched the mudflow take the street."
"I know. I tried to get back, but the bridge had already closed."
"Did you call anyone?"
His eyes moved away from mine.
That was my answer.
Grant rubbed the back of his neck.
"You told me to take Natalie. You said you would wait for the bus."
Natalie looked at him sharply.
The broken skin across my palm reopened as I curled my fingers.
"You're lying."
"Everything happened fast." He lowered his voice. "You were upset. Maybe you don't remember exactly what you said."
"I remember you locking the door."
His jaw tightened.
"I remember your hand on my wrist. I remember you pulling my fingers off the truck."
The color left his face.
A radio called Grant's identification number from the intake desk. He set his county tablet on the cot beside me.
"I have to answer that. Stay here."
Even now, he thought he could tell me where to stay.
The tablet lit up before he had taken five steps.
A message notification appeared across the screen.
NATALIE SHAW: If you come for me, this time you have to truly choose me.
I went cold.
I unlocked it with Grant's usual code.
Natalie's message had arrived forty-seven minutes before Grant reached my clinic.
His answer—I'm coming—was followed by two dispatch alerts he had acknowledged:
BUS 2 CANCELED. NO FURTHER PICKUP AVAILABLE.
Then came the message he had sent me:
Stay there. Bus is almost there. Don't do anything reckless.
Before Grant drove into the clinic parking lot, he already knew two things: he was going there to collect Natalie, and there would be no bus for me.
He had arrived to carry out a choice already made.
Grant returned. A pulse jumped in his neck.
"Claire, I can explain."
"You knew there was no bus."
"I believed you had other options."
"You canceled my seat."
His mouth opened, but I looked past him.
At Natalie.
At his jacket around her shoulders.
At my red binder in her arms.
"Give me that."
Natalie hugged it closer.
The movement was small and instinctive. It hurt more than if she had shouted at me.
"That belongs to my family,"
I said.
Natalie looked at Grant before answering.
"He told me it was mine now."
Grant stepped toward her.
"Nat, not here."
Her fingers loosened around the binder's edge.
"You said Claire knew."
Grant went completely still.
Rain struck the gym windows. Around us, families murmured beneath emergency blankets, but all I could hear was the plastic cover creaking in Natalie's hands.
"Knew what?"
Natalie looked down at THE MORGANS printed across the front.
Then she met my eyes.
"That you changed the emergency file months ago."
The tablet had answered the question that nearly killed me.
Grant had chosen Natalie before he came for me.
Now the binder opened a worse one.
Months before the volcano erupted, what had my husband already taken away from me?