When We Let Go by Delancey Stewart (read with me .txt) đź“•
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- Author: Delancey Stewart
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At some point, the constant pounding of rain must have lulled me to sleep, but it wasn’t a restful sleep. It was more of a dark purgatory between day and night, sleep and waking. I was on edge, even in my slumber, thanks to the incredible noise of thunder crashing down around me and the wind wailing through the treetops and rocking my trailer. There were several tremendously loud crashes in the midst of it, the kind that shook the ground and made you wonder if God was cruel enough to send an earthquake as an ironic accompaniment to the storm. I was certain that something had fallen from the treetops. Something big.
The heating system had kicked on as well, and it was by no means quiet. The hum of the heat added to the sound of the storm and fueled the frightening dreams that plagued me—monsters chasing me through the forest, knocking me from cliff tops. In another dream, the trailer somehow plunged off its moorings and slid down the hillside into the pond I’d nearly drown in as a child, sinking to the bottom before the entire pool turned to ice.
I woke to a cold eerie silence, shivering beneath the blankets in my clothes. It felt as if the mattress I slept on had been turned to ice beneath me. I bundled myself within the quilt I’d thrown on top of the bed, and slipped my feet into the slippers that waited on the frozen floor. How had it turned so cold so quickly?
Teeth chattering, I shuffled out to make coffee and turn up the heater. The coffee maker responded to my repeated button pushing with a cold indifference that lit a tiny fire of panic within me. It was a bad day for the coffeemaker to die, I told myself, and turned to the heater, pretending I didn’t already know that it would respond as the coffeemaker had. The thermostat had a battery in it, which was the only reason I could see that the temperature inside the trailer had dropped to just above forty degrees. As I went around flicking light switches, I finally accepted that the power was out.
Which left me stranded on a hilltop in the cold, surrounded by mud (confirmed by a glance out at the previously dusty ground around the trailer.)
I stared out the window at the debris that littered the ground—branches that had perched unwavering above me all spring and summer—and my eyes caught on the end of a branch that looked incredibly large, peeking out from behind where the new car sat near the road. Moving to the window next to the bed gave me a clear view of the other side of the car, and confirmed my fear. A tree was down across the road in front of the property, and from here, it appeared that it blocked my property completely from the village below. I stared at the downed pine, disbelieving. I picked up my cell phone, which had been charging next to the bed and jabbed the power button, but the phone was dead. I was basically trapped, without power. Or a phone.
I crawled back into bed and settled in to wait for one of three things: sunshine, help, or the motivation to get myself out of this mess. The rain continued to trickle down. Like my misfortune, the storm refused to call it quits completely.
All I could think about the next evening as the rain pelted the mountains and the storm raged around me was that Maddie was up there on that hilltop in her rickety trailer. I didn’t think it was safe—and I couldn’t sleep at all, as worry for her crept around the corners of my consciousness, making me feel personally responsible for whatever might happen to her. When the power flickered and then switched off completely close to three in the morning, I couldn’t take the worry any more.
Despite the pounding rain and almost constant flashes of lightning, I dashed to my car and guided it carefully down to the meadow loop that would take me up to Maddie’s lot. The thunder boomed around me, and it felt like it was vibrating the entire Earth. Leaves and branches littered the road, and I avoided a few of the bigger things that had fallen, but as I approached the hill that led up to Maddie’s lot, my heart jumped into my throat.
A tree was down across the road, and from where I sat facing the reddish trunk illuminated in my headlights, it looked like it could have fallen across the trailer as well. I said a silent prayer and slid out of the car, immediately soaked by the driving rain. The tree blocked the road entirely, and I couldn’t see over it easily, so I launched myself over the trunk, scrambling over the rough bark and sliding down the other side.
Was she hurt? Was she even alive? I followed the trunk back toward the trailer, and relief began to seep around the edges of my worry as I saw that the tree had fallen from behind where the trailer stood, missing it by a good margin. I was so relieved, I actually sank against the trunk for a long minute, letting the rain run down my face and neck in rivers, soaking me clean through.
If anyone from the village saw me out here in the middle of the night, leaning against this fallen tree in the pouring rain, they’d have some confirmation that I was indeed insane—I was pretty sure of that. But the relief I felt knowing that Maddie was safe, at least for now, was worth the risk.
I climbed back into my car eventually, considering what it meant that I felt so protective of this woman I barely knew—that I cared so much what happened to her.
The next day I was back at Maddie’s lot in the morning, hoping to check in and verify for myself that she really was okay. I was sure she was freezing—the whole village had lost power. But when I got there, she wasn’t there. A car was parked outside, but Maddie didn’t seem to be within.
I walked a circle around the trailer, looking for damage and noticing a large plastic bag with a weatherization kit inside. She must have bought it intending to get it set up before the storm hit, but she’d been too late.
A lingering worry over where Maddie was lodged in the back of my mind, but in the meantime, I figured I could help her by setting up the trailer for winter. She’d bought the right things, or it seemed that way at least, and I was about a quarter of the way through getting the insulation placed when another man slid down the side of the fallen tree and approached.
“Hey there,” he called, giving me a questioning look. He was older, had grey hair and a weathered face, but he looked friendly enough. I’d seen him, I thought, but couldn’t place him.
“Hey,” I answered. “Connor Charles. How are you doing?”
He nodded, reached out and shook my hand. “John Trench. I live just down the hill there on the meadow.” He motioned past the tree. “Maddie’s nearest neighbor, I reckon. Thought I’d give her a hand up here, get things cleaned up.”
“That’s exactly what I was doing,” I said. “Looks like she was all set to winterize the trailer, just didn’t get to it in time.”
“That’s what she said.” He nodded again.
“So she’s okay then? Is she at your place?” Relief trickled through me.
“I came up early this morning when we realized the power was out. Invited her to stay for a few days. We’ve got a generator down at the cabin, and without a heater up here …” he trailed off. “Well.”
“That was nice of you,” I said.
“Her parents were good friends of ours,” he said, and then he moved next to me and began pulling additional insulation from the winterization kit. “Let’s see if we can get this set up.”
We worked side by side for more than an hour then, getting panels dug in around the trailer to keep wind and cold from blowing beneath it. I wasn’t sure if it would help much, but figured every little bit would count. We didn’t talk after that first conversation, and now and then I could feel the man’s eyes on me, but for the most part the morning passed quickly, amiably.
John retrieved a chainsaw and some plywood from his house and we added the plywood panels to the base of the trailer, adding an additional wind and weather break. Then we took turns hacking at the fallen tree. It was hard sweaty work, but it felt good to do something to help Maddie. And even having John’s company was a nice change from the solitude and silence I usually endured.
We were finishing up somewhere after lunch time, and John shook my hand again. “Come down and have some soup, son. My wife makes a fantastic split pea.”
I couldn’t turn down the invitation, and the promise of seeing Maddie again lit a happy little fire inside me. “Thanks very much,” I said, and followed John Trench to his cabin, a small A-frame house tucked back off the road.
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