Whirlwind. Rick Mofina

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СКАЧАТЬ like to call my husband...I can’t find my cell phone. Can you help me call him?”

      “We can. After we’re done here we have buses taking people to the community hall near here—that’s our closest emergency shelter.” Again, Belle took Jenna’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “They’ll have working phones there for you to use, and there will be counselors there if you feel like talking to someone, okay?”

      “Yes, thank you.”

      “Let’s get started,” Belle said.

      They took down vital information, names, dates of birth, addresses.

      “It’s usually a good idea to give us contact information for relatives in case we can’t reach you. We’ll put it into the system—it’s all confidential,” Belle said.

      Jenna gave her the cell number for Blake and her sister, Holly, in Atlanta. Then Belle asked for more details on Caleb, everything she could think of that would identify him.

      “He was, is, sorry—” Jenna wiped her tears. “He is wearing a blue-and-white-striped romper with a little elephant crest on it that’s lifting a bit on the right. The bottom snap is loose. He’s got a rocket-shaped birthmark on the back of his left calf. He’s in a folding umbrella stroller, navy with green, red-and-blue polka dots on a white seat. The left front wheel had some white paint on it that I’d spilled when I put a paint can away.”

      As Belle entered the information quickly into her laptop the concern on her face deepened.

      “You live in Lancaster.”

      “Yes.”

      “From our information it looks like it was hit hard. I’m sorry.”

      Jenna closed her eyes tight.

      “I’ll deal with that after I find my son.”

      Denton Reeves then gave Jenna a photocopy of a floor plan of the Saddle Up Center.

      “Please mark the area you were in when the storm hit.” He gave her a pencil. “As best as you can.”

      Jenna marked the spot, recounting how the red-haired woman and her friend helped her, leading up to the time the tornado hit.

      “The woman is in her mid-twenties, with short, spiky red hair. I know she had nice teeth, a nice smile,” Jenna said. “I don’t remember much about the man. Same age, wearing a T-shirt with a dog on it, I think. My bag with the clothes I’d bought for the kids was in the stroller’s basket.”

      After Belle submitted the details, Denton said to Jenna: “Would you recognize the woman who helped you if you saw her again?”

      Belle threw Denton a look of concern.

      “I think so, why?” Jenna said.

      Belle drew up close to Jenna and dropped her voice so Cassie wouldn’t hear. “We can show you video of the deceased recovered so far from the Saddle Up Center and the area nearby.”

      Jenna stared at Belle, who continued in a near whisper.

      “You’ve already been through so much and this won’t be easy. Would you be willing to look?”

      “What is this? Is this your way of telling me my son’s among the dead?”

      “No.”

      “You tell me right now if he is because I want to see him. I have a right to see him!”

      “No, we’re sorry...we don’t know,” Denton said. “Police made the video. They’re updating it as they recover more fatalities, and they’re requesting we show it to people who’re reporting missing persons. It’s a first step before allowing people into the area where the deceased are before they’re moved. It’s nearby.”

      Belle placed her hand on Jenna’s.

      Jenna took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I’ll look at it.”

      Jenna glanced protectively at Cassie. She couldn’t see Denton’s screen. He made a few keystrokes and a video played. The camera showed bodies arranged on the ground in a neat line, maybe twenty corpses. They were not covered and had varying degrees of damage.

      Jenna held her breath and covered her mouth with her hand as her focus went to the smallest victims, seven little children. None looked any younger than two or three. No babies.

      Oh God, it’s real! Those dead children! Their poor parents! Please, please don’t take Caleb from me! Please!

      As the camera tightened and panned over each one, Jenna looked for any women with red hair, gasping when the camera found one. Instantly she thought of the spiky-haired stranger who’d complimented her on Caleb and Cassie at the clothing table; her smile and how she’d led them to safety in the center, holding Caleb’s stroller.

      A kind woman who tried to help me.

      But the dead red-haired woman, whose bruised face filled the screen, appeared larger and older. She couldn’t be the woman who’d helped her.

      The camera continued its grisly display, evocative of documentary and news footage Jenna had seen of concentration camp and earthquake victims. In this one, many of the bodies looked as if they’d been broken and awkwardly reassembled. Her eyes blurred with tears. Not long ago, these people were living their lives, shopping, just shopping like me, but now—now...

      “Oh, no!”

      Jenna saw one dead older woman, her neck and face bloodied, still wearing a Dallas Cowboys ball cap and a T-shirt with the words: Verna’s Clothes for Kids.

      “That’s the woman I bought my children’s clothes from just before the storm hit.”

      “She’s been identified by a relative,” Belle said. “She’s a vendor.”

      Jenna was overcome.

      As the video played out to the end, the image flowed into Denton’s screen saver: a mountain vista with snowcapped peaks. Jenna stared at it then at the devastation around them, aching for her baby.

      I should’ve been holding him. I’m his mother.

      Jenna needed Blake, needed his arms around her, to hold her together because she was coming apart. It started with a small cry in a far corner of her mind and grew to a keening as the blood rush hammered in her ears—“Jenna, are you all right?” Bella asked—creating a deafening roar, and the beginning of a colossal scream rose from deep in her stomach when—

      Cassie suddenly got up from her chair and stepped away from the table. Her eyes sharpened on heaps of debris in the distance. Clutching her teddy bear with one hand, she raised the other, extending a little finger to point.

      “Mommy, I can see Caleb’s stroller!”

      8

      Wildhorse Heights, Texas

      Kate painstakingly picked her way through the debris to the СКАЧАТЬ