No Judgments: A Novel (Little Bridge Island Book 1)

Time: 7:18 P.M.

Temperature: 77ºF

Wind Speed: 65 MPH

Wind Gust: 115 MPH

Precipitation: 3.3 in.

Oh, how thoughtful. I haven’t seen one of those in years. The girls will love it.”

That’s what Mrs. Hartwell said when I dug out my cheese ball and offered to serve it as an appetizer, since I thought it might cheer her up.

It did. Neither Nevaeh nor Katie had ever seen such a thing before, and after obediently setting the massive dining room table, as Mrs. Hartwell had asked, with her best silverware and china, they dug into the unfamiliar treat, gushing over it as enthusiastically as if I’d made it myself.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” Nevaeh declared, shoveling port wine cheese spread into her mouth.

“Me, too!” Katie had bits of cracker stuck in her braces.

“Lu never lets me eat this stuff,” Ed said, slicing off about a third of the cheese ball for himself. “She says it’s bad for my cholesterol. Hey, where’s the hurricane dip?”

“Coming,” Mrs. Hartwell called from the kitchen, where she was warming tortillas for the ropa vieja. “Is anyone saving any of that cheese for me?”

I appreciated the brave show Drew’s aunt was putting on. I appreciated it so much that, before clearing the tray to make room for dinner, I snapped a quick photo of what was left of the demolished cheese ball and sent it to Drew Hartwell, along with the message “See what you’re missing?”

Since I knew both his aunt and uncle had tried to call and text him and received no reply, I didn’t expect a reply, either.

So I was surprised when, just as we were sitting down to dinner, I saw a text bubble appear beneath my message to him . . . three animated dots, indicating he was writing back.

Indicating that, at least for now, he was alive.

I had looked up excitedly to share this fact with the rest of the table when Mrs. Hartwell, her tone brisk but polite, said, “No cell phones at the table, please.”

“But—”

“That’s the rule!” Nevaeh smirked. “We don’t have different rules for guests. No cell phones at the table.”

Guiltily, I dropped my phone in my lap and tried to ignore Nevaeh’s and Katie’s giggles . . . as well as the strange sense of disappointment I felt, realizing it would be a while before I’d be able to check for Drew’s reply.

What did I care, anyway?

Unbidden, a memory of how Drew had looked, gently cradling Gary in his arms, came back to me.

And then an entirely different memory—how he’d looked earlier that day outside my apartment door, shirtless.

Anything else I can do for you, Fresh Water?

Oh my God. Maybe I did like him. Maybe I more than liked him. Why else was I so worried about him?

No. No, it wasn’t possible.

But then why else was I shoveling the food Mrs. Hartwell had so lovingly prepared into my mouth so quickly? I hardly tasted it.

And then why else did I excuse myself to go to the bathroom while everyone else was midway through their meal, only so I could check my phone to see what he’d written back to me?

And then why else did I feel such a crushing sense of disappointment in the bathroom when I saw that the text bubbles had disappeared, and that Drew hadn’t written back after all? In fact, I’d received no messages at all, not even from my mother, which was odd, considering she’d been texting me approximately once an hour. All that was written on my screen was . . .

“No service!” Nevaeh’s voice was a panic-filled shriek.

The wind was gusting more strongly than ever. On the radio—which Ed had insisted on keeping on throughout our meal—Wayne and Fred said their anemometer had broken, torn off by one of the gusts, so they now had no way of measuring how strong the winds were, aside from spitting.

“No service!” Nevaeh cried again dramatically. “I’m going to die!”

“You’re not going to die.” Dinner was over, and Mrs. Hartwell was calmly cutting slices of lemon pudding cake for dessert. “Go and get your bedding from upstairs. You and Katie are sleeping down here in the living room on the pullout couch, remember?”

“What’s the point?” Nevaeh accepted her slice of cake with an air of defeatism. “Without cable, we can’t even watch TV.”

“You can watch DVDs,” Mrs. Hartwell said. “You’ve still never seen the last season of that Sex and the City you like so much.”

Nevaeh brightened. “Oh, yeah. Do you want to watch that with us, Bree?”

I had just taken a bite of the slice of lemon pudding cake. I suppose it tasted good, but I was so worried about Drew, I could have been eating sand and not known the difference.

“I’ve already seen it,” I said. “But after I help your aunt out with the dishes, I could join you guys for a little while, if you want.”

Nevaeh looked at me like I was crazy. “Uncle Ed does the dishes.”

Ed was too absorbed in his radio show to confirm this, but when I glanced at Mrs. Hartwell, she nodded. “On nights when I cook, Ed does the dishes. When he cooks, I do the dishes. That’s how we’ve managed to stay married for so long without killing each other.”

“Oh.” I smiled at her. “That makes sense.”

Relieved of dish duty, I went to check on Gary. He was curled up on the pink-silk-cushioned chair in the library, looking as if that was where he’d been sleeping his entire life.

He let out a pink, toothless yawn when he saw me, then stretched luxuriously, letting out a self-satisfied meow.

“No,” I said firmly, and removed him from the chair before his claws could snag the undoubtedly expensive antique cushion, depositing him on the air mattress.

Gary let out a little grunt of discontent—he clearly considered the air mattress unworthy of a cat of his breeding and intelligence—but eventually curled into a ball and went back to sleep.

Before joining the girls, I stopped by the window in the front door. Pushing back the lace curtain, I peered out. I could see very little because the power was out everywhere except the house in which I stood. The entire street had been plunged into the thickest, darkest night I’d ever seen.

But because of the light streaming from the hallway behind me, I could see a few things . . . and those things were disturbing. Rain was streaming diagonally, blown sideways by the wind. Leaves and branches were tossed across the front yard like confetti, some of them quite large. Beyond the picket fence, out in the street, a four-foot-tall trash can went sailing by, tossed by the wind as lightly as if it were a child’s beach pail.

The noise of the storm was disturbing as well. It sounded exactly as people always seemed to describe hurricanes on news footage—like a freight train, roaring relentlessly past, only never seeming to end.

But then there were the mysterious explosions. Pop. Pop. Bang. When I’d asked Ed earlier what these sounds were, he said they could be anything—coconuts flying through the air and hitting houses or cars. Trees falling. Transformers exploding. Literally anything. That’s why it was important during hurricanes to keep windows shuttered, tree limbs trimmed, and people out of cars on which trees could topple.

Even farther away was another sound—a roaring, like a crowd in an enormous stadium, cheering on their favorite team or rock idol. That sound, Ed informed me, was the sea. We were fortunate that the storm had hit while the moon was waning, and at low tide. Otherwise, the surge would be much worse. As it was, businesses and homes close to the shoreline could expect to flood . . . including the Mermaid Café, which Ed and some of the busboys had sandbagged late in the afternoon, when it looked like Little Bridge was going to take a direct hit.

How was Drew faring in such high winds, so close to the sea, in all this darkness? He wasn’t tucked up safe, high on top of a hill, in a comfortable mansion, with a generator providing power for air-conditioning and DVD-watching, with pink-cushioned love seats and warm, delicious food.

Was he all right? What about poor Socks?

I found myself uttering up a little prayer as I stared out into all that storm-tossed darkness. Please take care of him, I prayed. Please take care of that stupid, stubborn, silly man. And his dogs, too.

And then I hastily amended the prayer to include all the people I knew in Little Bridge, lest anyone get the idea that I cared more about Drew than, say, Angela. Because that of course was not true.

“Bree!” Nevaeh called from the pullout couch in the living room. “You’re missing it!”

I dragged myself away from the window and joined the girls, though my head—and heart—were elsewhere.