Page 45 of Call Off the Dark

“There’s some people leaving a driveway up ahead,” Tyler said. “They’re letting them in.”

“Go around in the other lane,” Gracie said.

“No, it’s a blind corner,” Helen said. “We don’t want a head-on collision when we don’t even know if there is a tsunami.”

It was true, they didn’t know. But there might be one, and now they were stalled in the danger zone. So she turned to Tyler and took his face in her hands. She planted her lips on his mouth and kissed him deeply. She felt him melt into her, and then she released him.

“Just in case we die,” she said. “I wanted our last moment to be kissing.”

“Helen!” her dad said, exasperated. “We’re not dying.”

The car in front of them finally pulled forward, and they started to move again too. “But if we did,” Tyler said with a smile, “I’d now die happy.”

And Helen smiled too.

“Heavens, Gary,” Evelyn said. “Why don’t we ever kiss like that?”

The whole car erupted in laughter. When Evelyn wasn’t being annoying, she could be quite funny.

Around the bend, the land rose steeply, and the road led them to the bluff. As the SUV climbed higher, Helen felt her body relaxing. They were running from a tsunami that might not exist, but if it did, they had now outrun it.

Then Tyler’s phone rang.

He answered it on the SUV’s speakerphone, and his mother’s panicked voice filled the space: “Where are you?”

“We’re safe, Mom,” Tyler said in a soothing tone. “I have Gracie. We’ll be there in thirty seconds.”

“Do you have Leo?”

“Leo?” Tyler leaned closer to the dashboard speaker. “I thought you said Leo left first.”

“That’s what everyone said. But he’s not here,” his mother said, her voice rising. “Something must have happened to him!”

Tyler’s face paled as his gaze met Helen’s. She could tell they were having the same thought.

“The Mustang,” Helen said quietly. It had been restored, but the starter had given Leo issues more than once.

Tyler nodded gravely at her and said, “Mom, did you call him?”

“He’s not answering.”

They pulled into the parking lot of the lighthouse, and Tyler stopped the SUV right inside the entrance. The lighthouse stood tall and proud on the bluff. The people that Helen had expected to see at the wedding were beneath it, clustered on the grass.

“I’ll go back for him,” Tyler said, loud enough for the entire car to hear, but he was looking only at Helen.

She shook her head. “It’s been too long.”

Tyler’s face crumpled at her pleading tone.

She reached for his hand. “If you’re going, I’m going.”

Nobody else was moving to exit the car. Helen could feel everyone’s eyes on them, worried and waiting. Tyler blinked hard, his jaw tightening. There was no talking Helen out of it, so either he stayed here, or he went back for Leo with her.

Evelyn broke the silence. “Would you please open the hatch? I can’t breathe back here.”

Tyler pushed the button to pop the hatch and said, “Can everyone get out, please? We need to hurry.”

Helen gave her parents in the back seat a brave smile. “I love you. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”