All That Remains

Alec laughed. “With water halfway to the ceiling downstairs, I think the house is history. One broken window doesn’t make any difference.”

“You mean, it won’t be rebuilt—” She groaned, her grip on his hand tightened, and they were off again.

After a quick glance at his watch, he counted with her. He hadn’t checked the time with the last one, but he thought contractions were still spaced about five minutes apart. Probably no surprise, not if it had taken her nearly two days to get to this point. Still, he’d feel better if they were getting closer together, even though he wasn’t looking forward to the denouement.

“Are you hungry? Or thirsty?” he asked, when she was resting again.

Wren shook her head. “No. I’m okay.”

“Warm enough?”

She seemed to do an internal check, then answered with faint surprise, “Yes.”

“Let me get the window completely closed.” He left her to pry the grappling iron out of the wood. The sodden white sheet dropped into the water below and was whipped away. He stood looking out for a minute, having one of those moments of disbelief, then shook his head and shoved the swollen casement window down.

The attic was not noticeably warmer.

“I really am sorry. I mean, that you got stuck here with me.”

He turned to face her. “I didn’t get stuck. I made a decision. You couldn’t climb out the window and get down to the boat while you were in labor. If the outboard motor had failed on the way back, we’d have been up a creek, if you’ll pardon the pun. It’s better to hunker down here with you. It would be nice if we had a working woodstove, maybe a kettle and some cocoa—”

“Marshmallows.”

He laughed. “Yeah, why not? But this isn’t so bad, is it? You gathered enough bedding and clothes to keep us from freezing. The water has risen as high as it’s going to get. We’re safe. You’ve got me to help Cupcake be born. Somebody will come looking for me eventually, or we’ll wait until the water goes down.” He shrugged. “We’re fine, Wren. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

She thought that over, then said, “But now you can’t rescue anyone else.”

He shook his head. “We were winding down. This was one of the last places I was going to check.”

Forehead still crinkled, she asked, “But don’t you have family? People you’re worried about?”

“A sister and her kids, but she has a husband.” Useless, in Alec’s opinion, but his sister hadn’t asked for it. “I’m hoping their house is high enough to be dry, but they may have gone to a shelter. I wasn’t working that part of the county.”

“And you couldn’t call them.”

“I tried my sister’s cell, but it was off. She tends to let the battery die down.”

“Are you worried?” She scrutinized him carefully.

With a stir of amusement, he thought, She’s persistent. A bird after a worm.

“If I’d been really worried, I would have taken a break to go look for them. I wasn’t.”

After a minute, she said, “Okay.”

“You?” he asked. “Anyone you wish you could call?”

Her eyes widened. “You mean…him?”

“No.” His voice was rough. “I didn’t mean him.”

“Oh. Um…no. Except Molly. I mentioned her, didn’t I? She’s my best friend. We were college roommates.”

“No family?”

“Nobody who’ll worry about me.”

What did that mean? He didn’t ask, because she was having another contraction.

The world outside ceased to exist in any meaningful way. She had contractions. They talked. Alec suggested she walk around a few times. He poked in boxes to see if he could find anything useful to add to their meager stash, but found mostly the kind of useless crap people shoved in their attics: picture frames with the glass long broken, plastic food containers and lids, none of which seemed to fit with each other, Christmas ornaments and carefully folded bits of wrapping paper, saved from long-ago holidays, canning supplies… He paused at that one, and removed a couple of jars. He could piss out the window, but Wren might not feel comfortable doing that.

Mostly they didn’t talk about anything important, but it occurred to him as every hour melted into another hour, then another, that he couldn’t remember ever sharing quite so much with another woman—or anyone at all, come to that—as he was with her. She told him her favorite books, but in sharing that much offered memories, too. He heard a wistful story about her dreams of being a ballerina. Her mother had eventually put her into lessons, but then the shy girl Wren was had learned she would have to perform in front of an audience at the recitals and had refused.

“I kept dancing,” she said, “but only for myself. Dreaming, yet knowing I’d never go anywhere with it.”

Bothered by his impression of a lonely childhood, he talked, too.

He told her about fishing with his dad, of triumphs on the football field, of the first Thanksgiving after his father died, and then of how responsible he’d felt for his younger sister, Sally. Trying to disguise how much he’d admitted to, he ended on a light note. Smiling, he said, “My favorite part was scaring the crap out of any boy who looked at her twice.”

Too bad he hadn’t been around when Sally met Randy. Ancient regrets played on a spool that should have been long since worn-out. What if he’d moved to rural Arkansas from St. Louis ten years ago, when his mother and sister came here to live with Aunt Pearl, instead of waiting until a year and a half ago when Mom was already dying of cancer? If Alec had been around from the beginning, would Sally have made better decisions? Would Mom still be alive?

Great timing to ask himself unanswerable questions.

Unsettled, he realized if Wren was really listening, he’d given away too much. He grunted. If? He knew damn well she’d heard everything he said, and everything he didn’t. Just as he’d heard her.

Contractions were four and a half minutes apart, then four. She walked some more, grumbled, “Cupcake isn’t in any hurry, is she?” and groaned through yet more pain.

“I hope you weren’t looking forward to that epidural too much,” Alec commented.

She rolled her eyes and sang, off-key, from the Rolling Stones’ song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

As expected, he laughed. It occurred to him, as morning became afternoon, that he’d laughed more today than he had in a couple of years.

She did finally confess that she needed the canning jar, and he turned his back when she used it. He pretended he couldn’t hear the tinkling sound that ensued. Finally, a small voice said, “Do I dump it out the window?”

He turned around. “I can do it.”

Expression defiant, she held the jar behind her. “Not a chance.”

Alec grinned. “We’re going to get to know each other even better, you know.”

Wren scrunched up her face. “I don’t want to think about that. And I don’t want you carrying a jar of my pee around, either.”

“All right. I’ll open the window for you.”

He muscled it up, then, smiling, looked away while she did the deed. Only when she gave her permission did he turn back and tug the window down again. Cheeks flushed, she set the wet jar—which he guessed she’d rinsed out with rain—some distance away and then retired to her pallet.

Three and a half minutes.