The Tempest by A.J. Scudiere (best books to read in your 20s .txt) 📕

She shook her head. “We have gas.”

He must have frowned at her, or Dev must have, because she talked as she delivered glasses of water to go with the eggs and toast. “I got under the house yesterday. So I first turned on the stove, and then went down and crawled around. I took a bucket of soap solution that I had dyed red and painted the gas line with it. I didn’t see anything. So I’m cooking with the range.”

Cage nodded but Dev frowned. “Why red soap?”

Cage answered, “If the gas is leaking, it'll create bubbles in a soap solution and you can see where it's leaking from.”

He watched as his friend grew a bit wide-eyed at the prospect. Dev was an engineer, so Cage was a little surprised his friend hadn't heard of any of this, but maybe he hadn’t grown up with a gas line. Turning back to Sarah, Cage asked, “Do you think it was enough of a check? I mean, surely you couldn’t examine the whole line?”

And with only one good arm. But he didn’t say that part. Sarah had done it and done was done.

She shook her head. “No, but I did get to most of it—at least the exposed parts, and it doesn’t matter if it leaks outside the house. At least not right now. I checked the tank out in the back while it was still light yesterday, and I didn't smell propane while I was under the house.”

Sarah did have a good sense of smell, he thought.

“So if it is leaking, it's not leaking enough to blow us up. And we have eggs.” She had been pleased when they moved in and she saw the gas range. At the time, Cage hadn't thought much of it one way or the other but now he, too, was pleased at the rural set up with the big propane tank out beyond Squirrel Log.

He sat on the couch next to Dev, while Sarah automatically took the floor. Maybe she understood they would feel the hard wood like old men this morning. Cage tried to ignore the empty space on his other side. Joule would have sat on the floor without compunction. As he and Dev wolfed down the eggs, Sarah commented, “We have gas and water, just not power.”

When she was met with silence, she explained further. “You can shower.”

Cage only then noticed that Sarah herself looked relatively clean for having been in the ditch yesterday and surviving a tornado. He and Deveron were much worse for the wear. “Oh God, yes. We're horrifying.”

“I'll get you guys clean sheets for tonight,” she told them and motioned with her empty glass as she stood to head back to the kitchen. She was still favoring the one arm and for that he was grateful.

“You two finish eating, get showered and dressed…” She trailed off. But Cage understood. Sarah would stay here and clean up after them so they could get back on the road quickly.

“Can we listen to the radio?” he asked into the space of the room. He didn’t want to listen, but he needed to.

Sarah simply fetched it from the kitchen, where she must have been listening to it while she cooked. Placing it in the center of the table, she added, “You might want to hit the community center first. See if they're there. If their names are on the list.”

The two men looked to each other and agreed. The list had become everything, and he could only hope Joule’s name was on it. He shoveled in the rest of his hot breakfast like it was the first food he’d had in a week.

It was an hour later, after pedaling back to the bicycle shop and making the tough decision to trade out the bikes for the car, that they were finally headed for the community center. Cage wasn't sure if they'd wasted time picking through the empty sports store and snagging the bike rack for the trunk. Or maybe it was brilliant.

Either way, when they arrived at the community center, people were still milling around. Apparently, a crowd had been there all night. The crew was still checking people in. As the two climbed out of the now-battered sedan, he saw a huge red truck pull up and he recognized Boomer and Bob. This time, the load of people they brought in was only five.

Maybe that was a good sign. Maybe it meant that the need for rescue was diminishing. He had faith that Boomer and Bob would find everyone eventually. Heading over to talk to them, the hope on his face must have shown through, puppy-like. Boomer seemed to clearly understand that he was dashing the young man’s hopes as he solemnly shook his head.

Did the man really remember Joule and Izzy’s picture? Their names?

“No Joule, no Isabelle.” The words were a soft, but stark, blow. Yes, Bob and Boomer remembered everyone they were looking for.

Cage only nodded, but the man said, “Be sure to check the list. They still might be there.”

That was the hope he and Deveron were still holding on to. He left the conversation without having said a word. But he clung to his hope. They hadn’t heard about anything during the night—the radio hadn't gone off, and the storms seemed to have finally abated. Sarah had even charged Dev’s cell phone off a battery. The radio announcer hadn’t commented about any new storms. If more had happened, they should have heard.

Cage was counting that as a win. He had to.

It took some jostling and then waiting to get to the list, printed and posted on the wall of the community center. A young woman stood by with a badge around her neck and a clipboard in her hand. The clear symbols said she worked here.

She was answering questions, but Cage didn't have questions. He’d known when he saw the ever-expanding list, that his sister's name wasn't going