Meet Me in Barefoot Bay - Roxanne St. Claire Page 0,1

Lacey could see Ashley scramble into the tub, but the mattress was stuck on something in the door. She turned to maneuver the beast when the other window ruptured with a stunning crash.

Ducking from the flying debris, Lacey saw what had the mattress jammed.

Ashley’s unicorn.

Window blinds came sailing in behind her. No time. No time for unicorns.

“Hurry, Mom!”

With a Herculean thrust, she freed the mattress, the force propelling her toward the tub, but in her mind all she could see was the goddamn unicorn.

The one Zoe brought to the hospital when Ashley was born and Ashley slept with every night until she was almost ten. In minutes Aunt Zoe’s uni would be a memory, like everything else they owned.

From inside the tub Ashley reached up and pulled at Lacey’s arm. “Get in!”

This time Lacey froze, the mattress pressing down with the full weight of what they were losing. Everything. Every picture, every gift, every book, every Christmas ornament, every—

“Mom!”

The bathroom door slammed shut behind her, caught in a crosswind, making the room eerily quiet for a second.

In that instant of suspended time, Lacey dove for the unicorn, scooping it up with one hand while managing to brace the mattress with the other.

“What are you doing?” Ashley hollered.

“Saving something.” She leaped into the tub on top of her shrieking daughter, dropping the stuffed animal so she could hoist the mattress over and seal them in a new kind of darkness.

The door shot back open, the little window over the toilet gave way, and tornado-strength winds whipped through the room. Under her, Lacey could hear her daughter sobbing, feel her quivering with fright, her coltish legs squeezing for dear life.

And life was dear. Troubled, stressful, messy, not everything she dreamed it would be, but dear. Lacey Armstrong was not about to give it up to Mother Nature’s temper tantrum.

“Reach around me and help me hold this thing down,” Lacey demanded, her fingernails breaking as she dug into the quilted tufts, desperate for a grip.

Her arms screaming with the effort, she clung to the mattress, closed her eyes, and listened to the sounds of that dear life literally falling apart around her.

It wasn’t much, this old house she’d inherited from her grandparents, built with big dreams and little money, but it was all she had.

No, it wasn’t, she reminded herself again. All she had was quivering and crying underneath her. Everything else was just stuff. Wet, ruined, storm-tattered stuff. They were alive and they had each other and their wits and dreams and hopes.

“This is a nightmare, Mom.” Ashley’s sob silenced Lacey’s inner litany of life-support platitudes.

“Just hold on, Ash. We’ll make it. I’ve been through worse.” Hadn’t she?

Wasn’t it worse to return to Mimosa Key a pregnant college dropout, facing her mother’s bitter and brutal disappointment? Wasn’t it worse to stare into David Fox’s dreamy, distant eyes and say “I’m going to keep this baby,” only for him to announce he was on his way to a sheep farm in Patagonia?

Pata-frickin’-gonia. It still ticked her off, fourteen years later.

She was not going to die, damn it. And neither was Ashley. She stole a look over her shoulder, meeting her daughter’s petrified gaze.

“Listen to me,” Lacey demanded through gritted teeth. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

Ashley managed a nod.

They just had to hang on and… pray. Because most people would be cutting some sweet deals with God at a time like this. But Lacey wasn’t most people, and she didn’t make deals with anybody. She made plans. Lots of plans that never—

A strong gust lifted the mattress, pulling a scream from her throat as rain and wind and debris whipped over them, and then part of the ceiling thudded down on the mattress. With the weight of saturated drywall and insulation holding their makeshift roof in place, Lacey could let go of the mattress. Relieved, she worked a space on the edge where the tub curved down to give them some air and finally let her body squeeze in next to Ashley.

Now Lacey could think of something else besides survival.

After survival, comes… what? Facing the stark truth that everything was gone. What was she going to do with no home, no clothes, no struggling cake-baking business, and maybe no customers remaining on Mimosa Key to buy her cookies and cupcakes?

The answer was the thunderous roar of the rest of the second floor being ripped away as if an imaginary giant had plucked a weed from his garden. Instantly rain dumped