Chapter 23: Hurricane Delia
Renée was released on bond forty-eight hours later.
Celeste's appeal was dismissed the following week.
For the first time in years, I felt like I could breathe.
That should have been the end.
It wasn't.
Because in the second week of September the following year, a tropical depression formed off the coast of Cuba, and nobody paid much attention to it until it was too late.
They named her Delia.
She was supposed to turn north into the Gulf.
She didn't.
Zuri was seven by then. She was spending a long weekend in Key West with her grandfather for his seventy-fifth birthday. Just the two of them. It was a tradition she'd invented herself: "Grandpa-and-me days." They sailed the Simone, ate key lime pie for breakfast, and went to the aquarium to visit a rescued sea turtle she had named Admiral.
I'd driven her down on Thursday.
Delia was a Category 1 storm on Thursday. Four hundred miles away. Expected to curve west.
On Saturday morning, she exploded.
Category 4.
And she turned straight toward the Florida Keys.
My phone lit up with emergency alerts at 6:12 a.m. MANDATORY EVACUATION. MONROE COUNTY. ALL ZONES.
I called my father.
"Dad. You need to leave. Now."
"I know. I'm packing the car."
"Is Zuri okay?"
"She's eating cereal and asking if Admiral the turtle is going to be scared." I heard him chuckle. "We'll be on the road in an hour, son. Don't worry."
I got in my car anyway.
Savannah to Key West is ten hours on a good day.
It was not a good day.
At 9:40, my father called back.
"The car won't start," he said. "Battery's dead. I've called Tyler. He's coming from the yard."
"Dad—"
"It's fine. Tyler's ten minutes away."
At 11:15, Tyler called me.
"Ryan. The bridge at Cow Key is closed. There's a tanker truck jackknifed across both lanes. I can't get to the island. I'm trying to find a boat."
My heart started pounding.
"Where's Dad? Where's Zuri?"
"At the house. On Olivia Street. I told them to stay put until I got there."
I called my father.
No answer.
I called again.
No answer.
I called Zuri's phone.
It went straight to voicemail.
At 2:30 in the afternoon, I reached the Florida Turnpike and found the southbound lanes blocked by Florida Highway Patrol cars, lights flashing, troopers turning everyone back north.
"Nobody goes south, sir," a trooper said through my window. "Storm surge is already over U.S. 1 in three places. Landfall is in four hours."
"My father and my seven-year-old daughter are in Key West."
The trooper's face changed.
"I'm sorry, sir. Nobody goes south."
I pulled onto the shoulder.
The rain had started. The sky over the Everglades was the color of a bruise.
I sat in my car with my hands gripping the wheel and stared at my phone.
Then it rang.
ZUZU.
I almost dropped it.
"Zuri? Baby?"
May you like
And over the howling, roaring wind, my daughter said the words I had prayed I would never hear again.
"Hey Siri called Daddy," she sobbed. "Daddy, Grandpa fell down. And the water's coming in the house."
