Whirlwind

68

Afton, Texas

Kate, Blake and Jenna, with Caleb in her arms, walked to Afton.

The tornado had picked up their SUV and dropped it on its roof one hundred yards away. Everywhere they looked the earth had been savagely plowed as if forces had clawed at the planet in anger.

Crossing over the torn-up terrain, it took them half an hour to get to the hamlet. Their cell phones didn’t work-the storm had taken out towers, but it had spared the tiny community. Broken branches, fence posts and muddied clumps of grass littered the main street, but buildings were untouched.

Several people had gathered at L. T. Smith’s Store and Gas. They were exchanging stories by the time Kate and the others got there. When they entered, relief blossomed on the manager’s face.

“Thank the Lord, I’m so glad to see you folks!” he said. “We sent some guys to check on Dixon’s because people had gone out that way. We haven’t heard back on everyone yet. Is there anything I can get you?”

Before they could respond, four men rushed in behind them, carrying an injured woman on a door. She was on her back, alive and moaning, her face a veil of blood and dirt.

“Call an ambulance, L.T.!” one of the men said. “Ebb Davis found her in the hay beside his barn! The winds musta dropped her there! Buddy and Toby are still out at Dixon’s-it got hit real bad.”

“Put her down here.” The manager arranged storage crates near the bread shelf, and the men set the door holding the woman upon them. Then, as the manager used his landline to call, Jenna, holding Caleb, moved to the injured woman to take a close, hard look at her.

Recognition registered.

“This is the woman who took Caleb,” Jenna said. Then, to the woman: “Why? Why did you steal my baby?”

“I’m sorry,” she groaned.

The manager was still on the phone when Kate went to him and grabbed his arm. “Call the sheriff’s office right now!” To the men who’d brought her in she said, “Where’s the man who was with her?”

They shook their heads. “Never saw anyone else,” one of the men said.

Blake and Jenna recounted their ordeal while more people arrived. As awareness dawned on those listening, murmurs rippled around the store.

“That’s the flea market baby from the Dallas tornado…” “They’re the parents…” “They found him, here…” “She said that woman took him…”

Pavel Gromov and Yanna Petrova were among the people in the store who’d endured the storm. When the tornado had reached the cabin, they’d managed to get down on the floor. They’d survived the destruction with a few cuts on their arms and faces. Their car was also miraculously not damaged and they drove away unnoticed along a path that twisted through a back section of the Dixon property. They made their way to town where they told local residents that they were tourists on holiday when the storm hit.

Now, after hearing the Coopers tell their story, and prompted by the distant wail of sirens, Gromov and Yanna approached the injured woman. A man in his early twenties with first-aid training said that she had fractured ribs. He was cleaning her face with a towel.

Gromov leaned down, kept his voice soft and took her hand. “Are you Remy Toxton?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

The sirens got closer.

“Now is not the time to lie.” He squeezed. “Are you Remy Toxton?”

“Yes.”

“Did you become pregnant at a Moscow clinic?”

Remy nodded.

“Where’s the baby from that pregnancy?”

“Louisiana.”

“Shreveport?”

Her chest heaved as she let out a sob. “Yes, that’s where he died.”

The sirens were getting louder.

Gromov stood. His face was creased.

He turned to Yanna and then he looked thoughtfully at the Coopers before he stood next to Jenna and studied Caleb.

“This is your son who was missing?” Gromov said.

“Yes,” Jenna answered.

“He’s a beautiful baby.”

“Thank you.”

“I see the resemblance to his father.”

Jenna smiled.

Gromov’s eyes filled with sadness as he accepted that his dream had turned to dust, then he and Yanna left the store and got in their rented car. Driving carefully around debris, they left Afton.

As the paramedics and Dickens County Sheriff’s deputies arrived, two other men pulled alongside them in a farm truck and rushed into the store.

“The Dixon place is gone. We found a dead man in the rubble,” one said. “Must’ve been out there hunting.”

“Looks like he tried to tie himself down. He was all tangled up in the debris,” the other added, breathless.

The deputies called for assistance to get a car out to the Dixon ranch as the paramedics began assessing Remy Toxton. Her injuries were not life threatening.

When the deputies obtained the preliminary details of what had transpired from Jenna, Blake and Kate, they requested the paramedics hold off taking Remy to a hospital.

After a quick series of calls to their dispatcher and computer checks, confirming details through NCIC, Remy Toxton was charged and read her rights.

She remained silent throughout the process, never once asking about Mason, or for an attorney. She stared at the ceiling as the deputies handcuffed her to the gurney, then cleared the paramedics to take her to hospital with a deputy as her escort.

FBI case agents Phil Grogan and Nicole Quinn were alerted and on their way from Lubbock. Kate called her friend Heather in Ohio to let her know what had happened then joined Jenna and Blake on the bench at the front of the store, where they waited for the FBI agents.

As word spread, local residents approached them with praise and congratulations.

“Something positive has come out of the storm,” L.T., the store’s manager, said as he took their picture.

Jenna Cooper couldn’t take her eyes off Caleb, but when she finally did, she turned to Kate.

“We would have lost him forever without you. I know that in my heart. You’re a good person, Kate, and a pretty good reporter, too. You never gave up…you never let go.”

Kate nodded, but her smile faded as she looked into the distance and deeper into the clearing sky. She reflected on all that the Coopers had suffered, and all that she’d endured up to that moment in her hard life. The outcome had restored Kate’s faith to never ever give up, whatever the odds. For in Jenna and Blake’s miracle, Kate had found reason to hope that maybe, just maybe, her little sister had somehow survived that night in the river all those years ago.

Kate almost laughed for she was suddenly haunted by an unresolved aching, yet comforted by an irony.

It was her sister’s tragedy that led to her becoming a reporter.

And here I am, an unemployed one, sitting on a huge story.

But it doesn’t matter right now. It’s not what I need right now.

She cupped her hands over her face and let the tears flow.

What Kate needed more than anything was to get back home to Ohio and hold her daughter.