Whirlwind

11

Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas

The next morning, across the city, in Room 16 of the Dreamaway Motor Inn, the TV glowed in the predawn darkness.

The window shades were drawn, blocking the neon sign flashing Vacancy out front. The room’s air reeked of cigarettes and stale beer as Remy Toxton sat at the edge of the bed teasing her spiky red hair while watching coverage of the disaster.

Dallas stations showed the storm’s aftermath and interviews with shell-shocked survivors in neighborhoods that had been hit hard. When the report went to the flea market, Remy, still a little shaky, concentrated on it until she was satisfied that no threat had surfaced from what she’d done.

“This is going to work out for us, babe,” she said.

Mason Varno, Remy’s boyfriend, was standing shirtless in his sweatpants at the window. He’d gently moved the shade to watch the parking lot while rubbing his lips and constantly checking his cell phone for messages. They had service here. Remy threw him a look over her shoulder, loving how his muscles rippled under his prison tattoos, loving that he was her man, flaws and all.

No one was perfect. Mason didn’t talk much. He had a lot on his mind.

So did Remy.

They’d been through hell lately, but now their dreams were within their grasp. They were going to get enough money to get a place along the Oregon coast and start their new life, the real life they both deserved. It was going to happen. They were beating the odds, and now Remy believed that they could overcome anything.

Even a dead baby?

Yes. No. I don’t know.

An alarm bell went off in her skull, her brain convulsed. She held her head to keep it from splitting open and took deep breaths.

Stop thinking about that! It’s in the past! Leave it there!

Her jaw tensed as she counted backward from one hundred until she recovered.

Okay, okay.

She was all right.

Just one of her little spells.

She turned back to the TV.

We were so lucky to get out with nothing but a few scrapes.

It’s all meant to be.

The newswoman was talking about the number of dead, missing, injured, homeless, and where tornado victims could get help. The screen showed a graphic with information and websites on locations across the Metroplex for emergency shelters providing medical services, food, water, clothing, trauma support and other aid.

This was important. Remy took notes, got her laptop and resumed checking the locations for shelters and medical help. Then she searched online news sites focusing on reports about the flea market, scanning them for one thing.

Nothing surfaced in the stream of stories until a certain picture blurred past. Remy went back to a photograph of a woman holding an empty, beat-up stroller and a child standing with her before the devastation. The cutline read: “Jenna Cooper holds her daughter, Cassie, and the empty stroller of her five-month-old son, Caleb, who is missing after a tornado destroyed the Saddle Up Center where scores of people were killed.”

The article with the picture was by Newslead, the wire service. The section on Jenna Cooper was only a few short paragraphs. Remy scrutinized every word.

Among the tragic stories emerging from the Saddle Up Center is that of Jenna Cooper, who lost her five-month-old baby, Caleb, when the tornado hit.

“I had him, but I couldn’t hold on.”

Cooper’s baby vanished in the fury along with a man and a woman, the two strangers who’d helped Cooper, her son, and daughter, Cassie, to what they believed was a safe corner of the center.

Officials have listed Caleb as missing, acknowledging that the baby could’ve been located and taken to a hospital. There is also fear that Caleb, along with the people who’d helped his mother, could be among the injured or dead still buried under debris.

“I’ll keep searching for him until I find him,” Cooper said.

Remy glared at Jenna Cooper’s picture.

That’s right, keep searching, like the fool you are. I went to that market looking for someone like you. You weren’t fit to be his mother. I’m sending him to a better place.

“Hey, are you going to do something about that?” Mason asked.

Remy had been so absorbed by her work she’d been oblivious to the crying from the far side of the room. She closed her eyes and sighed. Then she looked at her laptop.

“Mason, read this article while I take care of him.”

Massaging her temples Remy went to the area where she’d taken extra blankets, towels and sheets to fashion a crib on the floor where Caleb Cooper was stirring. He was a beautiful baby, she thought, still wearing his blue-and-white-striped romper with the tiny elephant. She blinked at the small bloodstains near the neck of the fabric. Now he was turning his little bandaged head, opening his mouth, bringing his tiny fist to it and making sucking motions.

“Hungry again?”

Remy went to the kitchenette and prepared a fresh bottle of formula. As it warmed, she thought of how things had gone at the market. It was her determination that had led her to the right baby. They’d hunted the previous nights in vain at a mall and the bus depot before Remy had considered a flea market, where right off she’d found a suitable candidate. She’d stalked the mother, talked with her, winning her trust so she could do what she had to do.

And the tornado?

It was scary. But it was a godsend.

As the winds waned after it had destroyed the Saddle Up Center, Remy saw that the mother and daughter weren’t moving. Remy was stiff and pinned under some wood, but she was okay. She took the stroller with the baby. It was hanging upside down but the baby was strapped in. Mason had a cut on his arm and a bruised left leg. She screamed at him to dig them out. The baby was bleeding. She soon tossed the stroller because it was useless in the mess. With Remy carrying the baby in her arms and Mason limping, they hurried through the wreckage, seeing bodies everywhere.

It was gruesome.

Mason stopped to check on a few. “To help,” he said, but he was taking cash and credit cards from dead people. “They ain’t going to need it,” he said. They continued on to the far end of the market and their pickup truck, hoping it was still there and still working. They found it with a broken side window, a spiderweb fracture on the upper right corner of the windshield, and the rear left quarter was crumpled, but otherwise it had survived undamaged.

Now, in the motel room, the baby’s crying was getting louder.

“Shut that kid up!” Mason barked at her from the computer.

“You shut up! What do you think I’m doing? His bottle’s not ready.”

Remy had been prepared for the baby.

Days earlier she’d bought the essentials: formula, the ready-to-use kind, rice cereal, applesauce, diapers, wipes and hair dye. But driving away from the destruction at the flea market she’d worried about the baby’s little wound on his forehead. She got Mason to stop at a drugstore for bandages and disinfectant.

Still, she had a feeling that she’d forgotten something.

Remy tested the temperature of the formula by squirting some on her wrist, then took Caleb in her arms. She had given him a bottle when they arrived yesterday afternoon. He fussed at first when she held him and rooted around for her breast, but eventually took the bottle; then another one in the night. He was a good eater, she thought, watching him suck hard, almost chomping, on the nipple.

As she held him, inhaling his sweet baby scent, a wave of hormonal emotion rolled through her, and she shuddered.

He was such a beautiful baby boy.

My baby was a boy.

Caleb nuzzled against her. Remy was growing increasingly concerned about the bump on his head from the tornado. Was it a scrape, a surface cut or something nastier? After she was done feeding and changing him, she cleaned his cut and put on a fresh bandage.

Mason was still at her laptop, reading news stories and rubbing his lips a little harder. Remy braced for what was coming. She knew his cravings, his mood swings and his irritability.

He’d made her a lot of promises about their future and struggled to keep them. Remy and Mason didn’t always see eye to eye, but deep down they were welded to the same philosophy: whatever life takes from you, you take it back.

“What’re you thinking, babe?” she asked him.

“I never thought you’d do it. You’re seriously going through with this?”

“We have to.”

He blinked hard, the way he did when he was battling not to lose it with her, especially because of all they’d endured lately. He strained to keep his temper and his voice gentle.

“We’ve got a lot at stake here, and this doesn’t help, Remy.”

“We’re running out of money. We’re running out of time. Do you see any other options? I had to do something. Besides, the article says they think we’re likely all dead. It’s perfect for us.”

“This kid is five months old. You think you can pass him off as a one-month old?”

“Yes, because it’s all meant to be. We’ll just say he’s big.”

“All right, are you going to make the call?”

“Not just yet.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got a plan. We need to keep him a little while longer.”

“What for? If we’re going to do this, let’s move fast, get it done.”

“First, I want to have a doctor look at the bump on his head. To make sure he’s healthy, so nothing will come back on us.”

“What? Where? That could be dangerous. We’ve already got people looking for us, Remy. I think we should just get away from here, now.”

“You gotta trust me, babe. Let me play this my way. We’re going to do this-it’s going to work. Then we’ll be done running. It’ll be over and we’ll get our little place in the sun. We’ll start our new lives, our real lives, and make all of our dreams come true.”

Mason ran his hands over his stubbled face.

“Hey.” She touched his shoulder. “I’m hungry. Why don’t you go get us some breakfast, babe? Then we’ll get rolling.”

He looked at her, internally confronting their situation. Then he washed up, dressed and left.

Remy returned to Caleb, lowered herself to the floor, smiling at him.

“You’re so lucky. Yes, you are. Your mother was weak, unworthy. She couldn’t face up to her responsibilities to protect you. You’ll never have to worry about seeing her again. You’re so lucky I was there to save you from certain death in that storm. Yes, you are. Now, very soon I’m going to put you in a better place. Yes, I am. It’s all meant to be.”