A Gathering Wave

Chapter 2

Logan whirled down the driveway and to the end of the street, her feet slamming the pavement below her. Thunder crackled overhead and an icy wind descended upon the neighborhood.

She didn't dare look back.

Her lungs burned as she rounded the next corner where the rain shower was more of a deluge. It was difficult to see. At first she thought this was due to the storm, but then she noticed that the street-lamps were all dark.

Logan yelped as her feet slid into a puddle and she slipped.

She hit the concrete hard but she got up. Distantly she knew she was bleeding—she could feel the warmth of her blood dripping from her knee—but she pushed it to the back of her mind.

She ran, not going in any particular direction. All she could fathom was getting away, far away, from whatever it was she had just seen. Logan ran until her lungs burned, ran until her mind was white and blank and she felt nothing but the all-encompassing need to be home.

Her home was thousands of miles away, but she ran anyway, like she could get there on foot.

She didn't know how long she ran. She didn't know how long it took for the realization to set in that she wasn't in an unfamiliar place anymore.

The deserted neighborhood and the white home and the man were distant... the cemetery even farther away—but the understanding that came next was quiet. It settled onto her as the wind fell. And then the night was silent.

She knew this place.

Logan stood at the edge of a different driveway. A solitary streetlamp illuminated a small, red-brick home. The only home in the neighborhood without a willow tree. Instead, an oak tree towered in the front yard, covering the home in shade and shadow. She had chipped her front tooth falling out of that tree.

This place. It had once been home.

The home of her birth. The home they all had shared. But as she stood at the edge of the driveway, her dark eyes flickering to the sealed garage and the crack in the pavement leading up to the front door—all Logan could think was that nowhere had ever felt less like home before.

Numb with fear and cold, she turned to look back in the direction from which she had come.

There was nothing, of course. No man. No white home. Even the wind had gone. There was just a small, suburban neighborhood in the middle of the night. It didn't feel real. None of it.

Something kept Logan rooted there, staring into the hazy darkness. She had always loved the way rain felt—like beginning again. But the storm in the air made her hesitate. Made her remember. Why had she come here in the first place? The simple answer was to say goodbye to Tommy. It was the only answer she could articulate. And yet...

It had been raining that night.

The thought occurred to her with miraculous speed. So quick, that at first she didn't dispute it.

But no, it couldn't have been raining.

They were nearly snowed in that winter, nearly decided not to go the airport because of the snow. There was no rain. It hadn't been warm enough for rain in weeks.

Logan didn't know what to do.

She knew where she was, but she couldn't recall where the cemetery was in comparison. Her instinct was to fish her phone out of her pocket and map it, but as the thought occurred to her, a crackle of blue flared across the distant horizon. And the reality of what she had seen barreled back into her.