"Marlow Creek gauge is up two feet in ninety minutes," Gordon said, "and the one at Cutler's Mill isn't reporting at all, which means it's probably underwater or a tree took it out. County wants somebody at the operations center who can read this stuff, and I've got Ramirez on the Fishkill side. I need you, Nora. I'm sorry."
"Give me twenty minutes."
She called Mrs. Pruitt, who was already in her car on the way to her daughter's flooded basement in Wappingers Falls. "Oh, honey, any other night—" She called the high school girl down the street, who didn't answer. She stood in the kitchen with the phone in her hand and the windows rattling and Lila sitting on the stairs in her pajamas, watching her.
There was one more number. It was a real number, he'd said. One that worked.
She looked at Lila. Lila looked back.
Nora dialed.
He answered on the first ring, as if he'd been holding the phone. "Nora?"
"I have to go to work," she said. "There's a flood. I don't have anyone. I need—" She stopped. She had to ask it. She had to ask it out loud, standing in her own kitchen, with her daughter listening. "Tom. Have you been drinking?"
"No," he said. "I haven't had a drink since January fourth. The bottle's in the trash can at the north end of the station, under a newspaper. You can go look if you want. I'm not saying that to be smart. I mean you can actually go look."
She shut her eyes.
"I can be there in fifteen minutes," he said.
He was there in twelve, soaked through, his canvas jacket gone black with rain, his hair plastered flat. He stood dripping in the front hall under the coat hooks, beside the peacoat, and Nora looked at the two coats hanging side by side and then at him, and for the first time since the platform she let herself look straight into his face, and it was not her husband's face. It had never been her husband's face. It was the face of a man who had walked a mile and a half uphill in a tropical storm because she'd asked him to.
"She goes to bed at eight-thirty," Nora said. "She'll try for nine. Flashlights are in the drawer by the stove. If the power goes out the sump pump in the basement has a battery backup; don't touch it. Do not light any candles, she knocks things over. My cell's on the fridge. I'll call when I can."
"Okay."
"Tom." She was at the door, her own rain jacket on, her keys in her hand. "On Thursday. In the parking lot."
"You don't have to—"
"I'm not apologizing yet," she said. "I'm just saying I'm going to. Later. When I'm not about to drive into a flood."
Something moved in his face. "Okay," he said. "Drive careful, Nora."