Homewrecker

04 - 𝓼𝓲𝓷𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓰

It wasn't until the morning that the news coverage really started to capture the magnitude of damage the tornado had caused in its fourteen-minute-long lifespan, when the skies were bright and clear like some sort of meteorological taunt, a blatant reminder of how it was just so unlike yesterday.

After a nurse had stitched the wound that reached from my hairline to half an inch down my temple, in the corner of a corridor on an office chair, the McKnights drove me to their home, something that should've taken only ten minutes but the drive turned into an hour with the debris cluttering the road and first responder vehicles.

When we finally reached their home, I glimpsed through the car's windows that there was some wind damage. There were a few branches down in their lawn, but the trees on their property still had their leaves and bark for the most part. There was one of those decorative windmills lying sideways on their front lawn, which they said didn't belong to them, but left there to see if someone would claim it. They told me there was a downed streetlight a block up the street, but it was almost pitch-black outside when we got to their house.

The remaining streetlights were unlit, the windows in the neighboring homes were dark, and there were no porch lights turned on. When we got inside, Mrs. McKnight started lighting candles around the living room, the smell of melting wax and various fragrances—ranging from apple cinnamon to tropical coconut—filling the room. Indie's dad handed everyone a flashlight before going upstairs to bed, Mrs. McKnight and Indie's little brother, T.J., following after them. Indie grabbed the throw pillows from the couch and tossed them on the floor.

"Your mom is probably fine," she whispered a few moments later when we blew out all the candles and crawled onto the sofa cushions, also thrown to the floor, and left one flashlight turned on. It was so dark, too dark to make anything or anyone out, but I was still grateful she was facing away from me when I nodded, biting down on my lip. "She's probably with Jude. Have you tried calling him?"

I nodded again, even though she still couldn't see me. "Yeah, there's no service." I swallowed, trying to take in a breath as quietly as I could. "Do you think I'll find her tomorrow?" I whispered, my voice weak and breaking, like all the glass sprinkled over the asphalt and embedded in the grass outside.

"Yeah," she whispered back, quickly and confidently. But I guess you probably would if all your family was upstairs asleep. "She'll probably be knocking on the door before we even wake up. Then you'll be like, mom, go away, I'm sleeping!"

I snorted softly, just because she was trying, but somehow, I knew that she was wrong. Which she was, because the next morning I woke up a little after six before she did, glancing up at the overhead lighting that had turned back on while we slept.

I got up, went into their bathroom and used wet toilet paper to clean some of the blood off around the stitches the nurse said would probably scar, finger-combing my hair delicately around them, before I headed into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. There was a television on the counter, and I found the button on the side to turn it on, quickly lowering the volume down as I sat down at a barstool before turning it to a local news channel.

They already had helicopter footage rolling, and it was almost unbelievable how it looked from the sky because it was a literal trail of debris, like the tornado had left plywood and siding instead of breadcrumbs as it tracked its 4.6 miles across Shiloh. And then there would be houses, still standing and completely intact, next to houses that were just piles of everything a family ever owned, like it picked and chose who to ruin.

I could make out specks of something on otherwise grassy, green lawns but the houses were fine, strong, there. Then there was footage of the overturned semi we passed on the way to the hospital, and a reporter stated the driver was in critical condition. She added, a moment later, something that made my heart sink down to my chest.