change clothes. Did it mean that the kiss she’d shared with Luke would only bring on a storm in their lives if she let it go any further?
There you go, overthinking everything. Her mother’s voice was back in her head. Why don’t you just move forward?
Diana hurried up to her room and stripped off her wet clothing, hung it over the back of a ladder-back chair to dry, and pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and an oversize T-shirt with Minnie Mouse on the front. Mama, he’s rich, and I barely make it from one paycheck to the next.
What’s that got to do with anything? her mother continued to argue.
“Hey, you decent?” Joanie asked, knocking on the bedroom door.
“Come on in.” Diana was glad for the interruption so she could get her mother out of her head. “Sounds like the storm is over.”
“Look out your window,” Joanie said.
Diana crossed the floor and drew back the floral curtains. “Good grief! That is one eerie look out there.”
“Tootsie says it’s the color of a tornado, and everything has gone all still and weird. She sent me up to bring you downstairs so we can get into the cellar until it’s passed through,” Joanie told her.
“Where is this cellar?” Diana asked.
“Cellar is right out the back door. The noise that sounds like a freight train off in the distance is the storm coming at us. We’ve seen our share of tornadoes in Sugar Run, so you should remember the sound,” Joanie said as she darted out of the room.
“I wasn’t thinking of a tornado at this time of year.” Diana ran down the stairs to find Luke waiting for her in the kitchen.
“Come on.” He grabbed Diana’s hand and held it tightly when the wind tried to force them back into the house as they rushed to the cellar. He sent her down before him and then closed the door behind in a hurry.
“I hope either the house or the motor home is still standing when this is over,” Tootsie yelled above the turmoil. “If they’re both gone, I guess we’ll hitch us a ride to town and catch a bus back to Sugar Run.”
“That is a lot of noise out there,” Diana hollered. “Wouldn’t you be sad if you lost everything?”
“Sure I would, but I’ve got you four kids, so I haven’t lost everything even if the storm takes the house and motor home with it,” Tootsie replied.
Diana’s hand still tingled from Luke’s touch. Maybe her mother was right about analyzing everything to death. But when Gerald announced that he’d been seeing another woman and wanted a divorce, it had shocked the hell out of her. She’d vowed nothing would ever sneak up on her like that again. So far she’d managed to avoid any more heartbreaking surprises.
Old wooden benches lined two sides of the cellar. Shelves, probably built when Tootsie’s mama or grandmother canned vegetables and fruit in the summer, covered the third wall. Tootsie, Carmen, and Joanie sat across from Diana and Luke. The noise got louder and louder, and then suddenly everything became so quiet that it was creepy.
Rain and hail began to pelt the metal can over the vent on top of the cellar. Luke took a deep breath and climbed the steps. “Uncle Smokey always said that when it starts to rain, the bad part is over, so we can go back to the house now.”
“If we’ve got a house,” Tootsie said.
“I’m going to think positive.” Luke put his back against the door and pushed. “Y’all get ready to run from here to the house, soon as I open the door. It sounds like that hail is pretty good sized.”
Bigger than a pecan thrown from a tree limb, Diana thought as she hung back to let Tootsie go first. If any of her friends slipped and fell or got knocked out by a hailstone, she could at least pick them up and carry them to safety. That was one of the benefits of being almost six feet tall.
“What are you waiting for?” Luke asked her as hailstones the size of Ping-Pong balls bounced off the cellar door.
“Are they all inside?” she asked.
He nodded.
She took the steps two at a time, made it halfway across the short distance, slipped on a pile of hail, and fell flat on her back. Hail and rain beat down on her for a full ten seconds before Luke scooped her up in his arms, slung her over his shoulder like a