Chapter 4

Misty sighed as she laid down on the couch.

"Uh, oh," Janie said from where she stood in the kitchen, finishing up the wiping of the counter. Misty didn't mind sharing the small, two-bedroom-one-bath, apartment with her co-worker. She'd rather have a roommate than live alone, that was for sure.

"I know what that sigh is," she said. The water ran in the kitchen while Misty stared at the ceiling, her phone resting on her chest. She couldn't believe Link hadn't called or texted yet. At the same time, she didn't expect him to.

"All right." Janie exhaled as she lifted Misty's socked feet and sat underneath them. "Start talking."

"I miss him so much," she said, because she could admit she had started to fall in love with Lincoln Glover. She didn't know what to do about it, but she could admit she'd enjoyed dating him, she'd loved kissing him, and she missed him greatly.

"Did his parents say anything?" Janie asked.

Misty closed her eyes and shook her head. "No," she said. "He got squirreled away to dance with his cousin, and his parents said nothing."

"You said Sammy said you must be Misty."

"Yeah, that," she said. "Then they looked at each other, and the next thing I know, his daddy's asked me to dance."

"And he said nothing?"

"He's tighter-lipped than Link." Misty smiled then, because she'd often teased Link about how he never said more than what was necessary. He'd teased her back that she said plenty for the both of them.

Her chest felt absolutely hollow, and Misty feared taking a breath. Perhaps her ribs would shatter with the oxygen, or the air would super-cool her lungs to the point of freezing. Tears pressed behind her eyes, and she hadn't felt this helpless since she'd hugged her brother good-bye and then watched him get led away in handcuffs and shackles.

Alone. She'd done that alone, while her mother had stayed home, claiming she couldn't handle seeing Danny like that. Misty couldn't imagine not being there, but her mother had always chosen herself over her children, so Misty shouldn't have expected anything differently.

She hated going back to that place, because she'd worked so dang hard to pull herself out of that pit. She'd never felt lighter than she had when she'd driven across the Texas border and left New Orleans and Louisiana in her rearview mirror.

Drawing a deep breath, Misty yanked on the string that had started to unravel. It snapped, relieving her of any more memories. "Then Mitch arrived, and he spun me away, and the next thing I know, Link's gone."

"And nothing since," Janie said, not asking. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," Misty whispered. "All his mom would say before his daddy hustled me onto the dance floor was that I should talk to Link."

"Maybe you should."

"I don't even know what to say." Misty groaned and sat up. She started pulling the barrettes out of her hair. "I know what he's going to say, and you know what? I don't have answers for him."

"Okay, practice on me," Janie said. She shook her hair over her shoulders and straightened them.

"I'm not going to practice on you."

"Go on," she said with a smile. "Maybe it'll help you iron out your thoughts."

"Sure." She closed her eyes and ran her hands through her hair. She had colored it. She'd started doing yoga in the morning before work. Walking along the river in the evening. Anything different than she'd done when she was the Misty-with-Link. Because it hurt too much to be the Misty-without-Link.

"I miss you," she said, opening her eyes. "I'm sorry about last year, and I'd love to meet at the coffee truck and get coffee with you."

"Why?" Janie barked out, her voice lower. "So you can eat all my cookies?" A smile flashed on her face, but she shoved it away.

Misty almost rolled her eyes, but her heartbeat shuddered through her body. "I'll buy you another box of cookies."

"And then what, Misty?"

"Then, I don't know. We could go hiking like we used to, and you could show me that old car you've been working on with your momma, and I don't know. Just…something."

"We can't go back to who and what we were before," Janie said in her fake cowboy voice.

"I know," Misty said, but she honestly hadn't considered that. "But I want to." She wiped at her right eye, though she wasn't about to cry. "I could bring you lunch up on the ranch. I always said I would, but I never did."

"So what's changed?" Janie asked. "You're not planning to live here in Three Rivers are you?"

Misty pulled her eyes from the carpet then, and she looked at her best friend. She couldn't get herself to say no, of course not. But she wasn't planning on staying in Three Rivers once her restoration assignment ended.

And Link knew that.

No wonder she hadn't heard from him.

Janie wore a look of sympathy, and she shook her head. "I'm sorry, Misty."

"Me too." She got to her feet, because she thought she might cry, and she really wanted to do that alone. "I'm going to bed. Thanks for cleaning up dinner."

"Thanks for making it." Janie watched Misty as she went by, and Misty did her best not to run down the hall to her bedroom. She had the back bedroom, with a large window that overlooked the big grassy area behind the apartment building. Janie's window overlooked the balcony and parking lot, and Misty thanked the Lord that she had a better view as she moved to the glass and looked out.

Darkness had already covered Texas, and she couldn't stop herself from wondering what Link was doing right now. "He's in bed," she murmured to herself. Link was a cowboy, which he'd used as a reason for being in bed by nine p.m., but eventually, Misty had gotten him to admit that he simply liked getting up early. It was part of his personality, whether he wore a cowboy hat or not.

She and Janie had stayed at the wedding until the end, and then Misty had been too keyed up to simply change out of her party dress and into her pjs. So she'd cooked up a feast of red beans and rice, and now her stomach clenched around the rich Creole food.

She had no idea how she'd ever fall asleep, though her mind simply wanted to be shut off. She went through the motions of brushing her teeth and returned to her bedroom and snapped off the lamp.

The window called to her again, and Misty moved over to it. "Lord," she said to the glass, to the darkness beyond. She didn't regularly pray, though she had gone to church many times in the year she'd been living and working in Three Rivers.

She didn't know how to pray, though she'd listened to others do it loads of times. She almost felt like God had forgotten about her, or that He expected her to be perfect in her speech, in her gratitude, in what she wanted or needed.

And she didn't even know what to say.

"I know I only come to You when I'm sad or upset or hurt," she whispered. "I'm sorry I'm not better about that. I just…don't know what to do about Lincoln Glover." Pure pain flowed through her, and she hung her head as those tears came again.

"I hurt him, Lord, and I feel so guilty about it. I don't know how to fix it. Please, help me fix it." She felt completely out of words, and she turned away from the window without even saying amen.

She crawled into bed and hid under the covers the way she had as a child, a teenager, and a younger adult than she was now. Outside of the bedding, she wasn't safe. The world raged. But under the blanket, she could concoct a sense of safety, however false, that lasted long enough for her to fall asleep.

Misty jolted awake at the sound of a heinous buzzer. Then an alarm. Flashing lights strobed through her room as Misty sat up and threw her safety blanket off.

Then she smelled smoke.

"Janie!" she yelled as she took the quick steps to the door. But she hesitated, her brain screaming at her to wait! Think! The words sounded in her head as loudly as the fire alarm, as intensely as her heart hammered in her eardrums.

She turned and grabbed her phone from her nightstand and shoved her feet into a pair of sandals with furry stuff inside.

"Misty!" Janie called from the other side of the door, and then it got pushed open. Janie's dark eyes flashed with pure fear. "Our apartment is on fire."

"Fire?" Misty couldn't comprehend much over the buzzing alarm, but she stumbled into the hallway with Janie. There wasn't much smoke out here, but it still warned Misty strongly as she smelled it.

The kitchen definitely held more smoke than anywhere else, but not a stitch of light existed. "Our power's out," Misty said.

Someone banged on their front door as Janie turned them toward it, and both of them cried out. "You guys okay in there?" a man called, and Misty towed Janie toward the door now.

"No," she said as she hurried to unlock the door. It opened in too, and Misty half-expected a huge flame to roar inside with the introduction of more oxygen. "Something happened in our kitchen."

She pulled Janie outside and into the arms of their next-door neighbor, Seth. Misty panted as he hugged them both, and then he faced the apartment again.

That was when a horrible buzz filled the air, and Misty looked up to the porch light above her apartment. It wasn't on, and in that moment, it brightened and burst.

She screamed and threw her hands up to cover her face from the falling glass, and Seth swore as he pulled her and Janie down. "We've got to go," he said, and they all stumbled and crawled for a few feet.

Misty found her balance, and she followed Seth and Janie toward the stairwell as lights along the entire fourth floor disappeared. Just went out.

Another alarm started to wail, and Misty gripped her phone like her life depended on it. She thought of all the things she'd left inside her apartment. Her purse, with her wallet. All of her clothes. Her painting supplies. Her phone charger. Everything but the pale purple pajamas on her body and her phone.

"I'm calling nine-one-one," she said when they reached the third floor. She looked to her right, to the building beside the one where she lived, where Ralf had an apartment. Lights went out as if someone had dropped a curtain, as if a giant eyelid had closed over the whole building.

"The power is out in a lot of places," she murmured. Seth and Janie continued downstairs while Misty tapped to call Emergency Services. The moment someone answered, she said, "The fire alarm in my apartment went off, and the place was filled with smoke. We made it outside, but all the power is out. The electricity surged, and yeah. We need help."

"I see you're over in the Ivy Ridge subdivision," he said. "The apartment buildings there?"

"Yes, sir," she said.

"This is our fifth or sixth call. We've got fire, police, and medical on the way."

Relief filled Misty. "Okay," she said. "Thank you." Even as she spoke, she heard the sirens. She didn't want to be without Janie for too long, so she hurried down the flights of stairs, glad Janie hadn't wandered too far from the door.

Misty gripped her hand while Seth went to start banging on more doors. She couldn't look away from the corner of the fourth floor, where smoke definitely lifted into the air silently. Ominously.

"Come on." Ralf appeared in front of Misty, suddenly there in the night. She realized then that it wasn't nearly as dark as it had been a few minutes ago. Police, fire engines, and ambulances had arrived, throwing red, blue, and white light around.

"We don't need to be here," he said.

"There was a fire in our apartment," Misty said. "Maybe we started all of this." Guilt and horror pulled through her, and she started to weep again. She let Ralf lead her away, and they huddled near her car until the cops came to talk to them.

"Name and apartment," one of the officers in the pair said.

Before any of them could speak, the other policeman there said, "We have to relocate everyone in this complex. An electrical fire started in Building A here, and it quickly spread throughout the area."

"We have two thousand people without power," the first officer said. "We're working to find temporary shelter for people tonight who don't have friends or family they can call and huddle up with." He looked at the three of them, and Misty hadn't felt this alone in a long, long time.

"But we want to make sure everyone is accounted for," the second officer said. "We'll go apartment by apartment if we have to, but we want to keep our people safe too."

"We're in Building A," Janie said, her voice so much stronger than Misty felt. Her brain had started buzzing about "a friend" she could call for somewhere to stay.

Link.

What would he do when she called him in the middle of the night, begging for a bed to sleep in until the sun came up?

And what about tomorrow night?she wondered.

Janie gave them the information they needed, then Ralf did, and Misty just stood there with them, shivering in the summer nighttime heat as she thought about the cowboy cabins Link had told her about.

We have several, he'd said once. They're only full during the harvest. We might have a few extra cowboys on the ranch during branding or round-up.

Shiloh Ridge Ranch had beds going un-slept in. She, Janie, and Ralf could make the drive and go back to bed. There'd be food and plenty of people to welcome them. Link had told her his family was huge, and that he wanted to introduce her to all of them, that they'd love her, welcome her, and try to feed her so much food, she'd never be hungry again.

They'd laughed about it; he'd broken up with her a week later, when she'd reminded him that meeting his family was anything but casual.

I guess I don't know how to do casual, he'd said. I want more than that, and you don't, so it's time for us to be done.

Done.

Done, done, done.

He'd left his beloved cookies on her dining room table when he'd walked out, and Misty hadn't seen much of him since—until the wedding.

Finally, the officers left. The three of them stood there and looked at one another. They'd been dispatched here by the state of Texas to do a job. The state paid for their apartments, and surely Patty in the office down in Dallas could get them somewhere else to live fairly quickly.

But when?

"Well," Ralf said with a big sigh. "I guess we'll wait until they tell us where the shelters are tonight."

Misty held up her phone, her thoughts finally ready to come out of her mouth. "I can call Link, and we can stay at Shiloh Ridge Ranch until we get new apartments."

Janie blinked at her, her eyes wide as the summer moon. Ralf settled on his back leg and folded his arms, a silent challenge to see if Misty would really do such a thing.

She stood there and stared at her friends, the chaos around her so loud and so obnoxious. Misty thought of the peace and serenity waiting for her at Shiloh Ridge. Supposed, as she'd never been there, but Link had told her about the wide sky, the way he could talk to the wind and listen to it whisper back.

She didn't want to go to a group shelter, and she couldn't stay here. She had her phone and her car and Link's number, and Misty pressed her eyes closed.

Really, Lord?she asked silently. Is this the answer to my prayer?

She wasn't sure, but she couldn't stand there and wait for someone to save her. She'd saved herself from terrible situations before, and while she'd failed with her brother, she wouldn't fail her friends.

She tapped and it was surprisingly fast and easy to get to Link's name and make the call. But the cellphone felt like a two-ton boulder as she lifted it to her ear, and she started praying in earnest again that her ex-boyfriend would answer her middle-of-the-night call.