Good Hope Road by Lisa Wingate Read Free Book Online Page B

still pulling survivors out of the collapsed houses and buildings in town. There should be some search dogs here in the morning, we hope. Nineteen tornadoes touched down all over the tristate area, so there’s damage everywhere. Roads are closed, hospitals are jammed. Help is slow in coming. We’re just doing the best we can to dig ourselves out and take care of the injured.”
    “It’s that bad?” I tried to picture it in my head. “Dear Lord, Weldon, how can that be?”
    Weldon was too tired to mince words. “The armory is about the only building left standing in town. Doc Howard and I set up a field hospital there, but a vet and a pharmacist aren’t much of a substitute for a real doctor. We’ve got a couple of EMTs from the Hindsville Volunteer Fire Department, and we’re doing the best we can to take care of folks until we can get them to a real hospital. The park out at the lake was full of campers here for the music festival. There’s no telling how many people are hurt out there.”
    “My Lord,” I whispered. I wanted to wrap Weldon in my arms and curl him in my lap like I did when he was a little boy, so I could protect him from all that was happening. “My Lord. I’ll get my clothes on and come help.”
    “No, Mama,” he snapped, starting toward the door with the blankets. “Just stay here, all right? It’s black as pitch out there—no lights on anywhere in town and rubble everywhere. You just stay here and help Janet take care of the kids. You’d be in the hospital if we could get you there.”
    I felt my hackles rise. “Ain’t nothing wrong with me.” It’s a terrible thing to have your own children talk to you like you’re an infant. “I’m fine.”
    “Just stay here,” he barked, heading toward the door. “There’s nothing you can do in town, and . . .” He paused as a voice came over the radio on his belt. He pressed it to his ear, trying to make out the words, then clipped the radio back on his belt and turned toward the door in a hurry.
    “Weldon, what’s going on?” I tried to get out of bed to go after him, but my body was heavy as lead.
    “One of the sheriff’s deputies has found a medical doctor. At least that’s what I think he said. The man was trying to beat it out on the backroads to the interstate as the storm came in, and his car got stuck in the mud. Been stranded at one of the flooded low-water crossings all night, somewhere out past Good Hope Road. The deputy’s going to try to get through the crossing at Ataberry and bring the doctor back to town.” He combed his hair from his face, his eyes flickering in the lamplight. “Pray they make it, Mama. We need a doctor. Now.”

CHAPTER 4
    JENILEE
     
     
    T he image of Nate hovered in the doorway as I drifted awake in the gray predawn light. Drew stood beside him, not smiling, just watching, his eyes not blue and sparkling like Nate’s, but dark like Daddy’s, brooding, sad, angry.
    I blinked hard, and the images faded like smoke, weaving in and out of the faint glow from the windows.
    I thought about the last time Drew came home, after he got out of the army four years ago. The year before Mama died.
    He came while Daddy was gone hunting and Mama was at work, trying to make it through the day even though she was sick from chemo. Drew stayed just long enough to get the boxes of his stuff that were stored in the barn. No one would have seen him at all if I hadn’t ditched school that day.
    He greeted me as if I were someone he didn’t know and didn’t want to know, as if he hated me as much as he hated that house and Daddy.
    “Hey, Jenilee,” he said, standing in the doorway with his ball cap pulled low over his eyes. He looked over his shoulder at his truck, wanting to be gone from there, as if staying in that house any longer would bring it all back. There was a girl sitting in his truck, staring across the pasture at my grandparents’ old house.
    Drew looked at the matted orange carpet between us,