Shared Joy

Chapter 2: The Road Out

I was twelve when the flood took the bridge.

My mother and I had been driving inland from the small rental house where we lived, following a line of cars crawling through the rain. The radio kept changing its instructions. Turn west. Avoid the river road. Find higher ground. Every few miles, another station went silent.

"We should've left earlier," I said.

My mother kept both hands on the steering wheel. Water slapped the tires. "We left when the county told us to leave."

"We could've gone yesterday."

"Yesterday, they said it would miss us."

That was the thing about weather warnings. They sounded like guesses until the water was at your door.

The road ahead dipped between two fields. My mother slowed down. I saw a flash of silver beyond the guardrail, then the red tail light of a car half submerged in the ditch.

"Mom."

"I see it."

She pulled over on the shoulder. The rain hit the windshield so hard the world beyond it looked erased. I unbuckled before she could tell me not to.

"June, wait."

I looked back at her. "Someone's in there."

She didn't argue. She grabbed the orange emergency blanket from the trunk, then took the length of tow rope she kept for her old sedan. I followed her down the slope.

The car had gone nose-first into the ditch. The water was already over the lower windows. I could see a girl in the back seat, one hand pressed against the glass.

My mother tied the rope around her waist and the other end around my middle. "Stay behind me."

The car door wouldn't open. My mother slammed her shoulder against it once, twice, then tried the handle again. The water pushed against her knees. I held the rope with both hands and tried not to look at the water moving past us.

The girl inside was crying. I could see her mouth moving, but I couldn't hear her through the rain.

"Tell me when," my mother called.

I understood. The water was rising fast enough that the back window was our only chance.

I picked up a heavy stone from the roadside and hit the glass. It bounced off. My arms hurt. I hit it again. A white c***k spread across the window.

"Again!" my mother shouted.

I struck the same spot until the glass broke. The girl screamed when the rain came in. My mother reached through the opening and unfastened the seat belt. I caught the girl's wrist, then her sleeve, and pulled as hard as I could.

She came out coughing and shivering, with a thin silver bracelet digging into her wrist. She was about my age, maybe a year younger. Her wet blond hair was stuck to her face.

"I can't find my dad," she gasped.

"We'll find him," my mother said.

We dragged her up the slope. My mother wrapped the emergency blanket around her. I stayed close enough to keep hold of her hand.

A county rescue truck was waiting on higher ground. The driver took us to a church shelter farther inland, where cots had been lined up across the gym floor. My mother found dry clothes for the girl. I found a plastic cup of water and kept it in my hands, too afraid to let go.

The girl introduced herself as Willa Ashford. She was wearing a school sweatshirt with a blue crest over the heart. Her father owned the land around the inlet and half the buildings in the town closest to it. I'd heard his name in my mother's careful voice when we passed the iron gates of Ashford House.

I didn't know what to say to her, so I asked if she was hurt.

"No." She looked at my scraped knuckles. "You are."

"It's nothing."

She glanced toward my mother, who was speaking to a volunteer. "Is she your mom?"

"Yeah."

"Where's your dad?"

The question made my throat close. My father had been gone since I was a baby. I knew a few facts about him from my mother: his name, the job he'd had, the way he'd played guitar badly. I kept my mouth shut.

Willa pressed her lips together. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

"It isn't."

"Do you want to talk about your dad?" I asked.

She shook her head. A volunteer had brought her a phone. Willa kept checking it, though there was no signal. Her hands shook so much she had to hold the phone in both palms.

Hours passed. My mother and I slept beside the gym wall. Willa sat between us with the emergency blanket around her shoulders.

Just before dawn, a man in a rain-soaked suit rushed through the shelter doors. I knew he was her father before Willa stood up. His face had gone gray from worry. When he reached her, he gathered her so tightly she let out a startled breath.

"I'm here," he said into her hair. "I'm here, honey."

He held her while she cried. I watched my mother turn her face away to give them privacy.

When Willa finally pulled back, she looked at me. "This is my dad, Peter."

He reached out to shake my hand. I gave him my cold, scraped fingers.

"Thank you," he said. "I don't know how to repay you."

"You don't have to."

He looked from me to my mother, then back again. "I'd like to make sure you're all right. Our house is on high ground. There's room there until the roads reopen."

My mother's shoulders went rigid. "We'll manage."

"I'm not asking for anything," he said. "Just a warm place, a hot meal, and a chance to say thank you properly."

Before my mother could answer, Willa leaned close to me. Her voice was nearly lost in the noise of the shelter.

"Do you want a dad?"

I blinked. "What?"

"You can have mine," she said. "He's good at being a dad. He can be yours too."

I glanced toward Peter. He was helping a volunteer move a stack of blankets. He didn't hear her.

"I don't know," I said.

Willa slipped her hand into mine. "I think you do."

My mother heard us. She came over and knelt in front of Willa. "That's a very big thing to offer."

"I know." Willa looked at her. "Do you want a mom?"

My mother's face changed. I saw grief there, the kind she usually kept behind her smile. Willa's mother had died when Willa was a toddler. I knew that much from the newspaper profiles of the Ashfords, which my mother used to turn facedown when I wandered into the room.

"I don't know," my mother said.

Willa looked at her, then at me. "We could try."

My mother put one hand over Willa's. Her other hand found mine.

The rain had finally eased. Outside the shelter doors, dawn spread across a flooded parking lot. I sat between my mother and the girl I had pulled out of the water, and for the first time I could imagine a future that didn't look like the last one.