Fully Loaded - Blake Crouch [59]
“Searching for that elusive storm?”
“Something like that. This western part of Kansas is the last region I haven’t spent a ton of time in. Long range models were predicting an active couple of weeks, so I thought why not give it a shot.”
Melanie glanced over her shoulder at the two other occupied tables, then sat in the booth across from Peter.
“You ever seen a tornado?”
“I’ve seen nine of them.”
“Like in real life?”
“Yep.”
“What’s the closest you ever got?”
“A mile away.”
“What was it like?”
Like standing next to God, but he didn’t say that.
“Amazing.”
She looked at her tables. “I better get back to it.” She got up.
“Melanie?”
“Yes?”
His heart thumped in his chest.
“I’m going out again tomorrow. Now, there’s no guarantee the weather will cooperate, but—”
“I’d love to, Peter.”
“You would?”
“You must’ve read my mind. I was hoping you’d ask.”
It was like nothing he’d done in years, and he felt both joy and debilitating regret that in a moment of weakness (or strength) he’d exposed himself.
The waitress said, “Glass of red?”
His throat constricting. “Be great.”
She headed back toward the kitchen, and he stared through the windowglass, watching the prairie darken. Kept telling himself that it was still Saturday night and he was only in Kansas and his RV just five blocks away. As if that piece of news might tether him to the world he knew.
Melanie lived two miles out of town at the end of a dirt road, spruce trees forming a windbreak along the north and west boundaries of the homestead. It had seemed an idyllic farmhouse from the highway, austere on the morning prairie. Proximity destroyed the illusion. The white paint had chipped almost completely away, and the weathered boards and the rusting tin roof and smiling porch presented more of a ghost house than a livable dwelling.
Melanie emerged and spent a minute locking the door after her. Came down the bowing steps and through the weeds onto the drive as Peter leaned across the seat to open her door, the pair of coffees he’d bought at the gas station steaming into his face.
“I could barely sleep I was so excited,” she said as they rolled along the dirt road toward the highway.
“Could turn out to be a bust,” Peter warned. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
“Well, it’s all about the journey, right?”
They drove west on the interstate, the sun a blood blister in the side mirrors, its light so watery and diffused you could stare it down. Adult contemporary droned through the speakers at a reasonable volume, the small talk coming just often enough to keep the stretches of silence from passing the point of no return.
They crossed the border into Colorado at a quarter past eleven and Peter pointed through the windshield. “You see that?”
“You mean those clouds?”
“The one that looks like an anvil is going to be a thunderstorm when it grows up.”
“This is good?”
“Very good. Major convection underway.”
Melanie squealed and clapped her hands, something free and childlike in her excitement.
He took the next exit and pulled over so they could track the gathering storm cells on the laptop—irregular blobs of green with nuclei of hot pinks and fuchsia.
“They’re still maturing,” he said, running his finger along the screen, tracking the loop of their northwesterly movement on the radar. “We’ll take 385. Should intercept them in about forty minutes. If we’re lucky, they’ll be booming.”
They went north. The summer sky turned dark. Peter lowered his window, let the musty air rush in. Straining to hear thunder over the engine.
They pulled onto the shoulder on the outskirts of Wray, Colorado. Peter killed the engine and glanced over at the computer, now in Melanie’s lap.
“We’re in position,” he said.
The first fat drops of rain splattered on the windshield as Peter squinted at the screen.
He opened his door, got out, crossed the road.
Melanie joined him.
Strings of lightning bent down and rain sagged from the clouds in ragged black tendrils.
“It’s so beautiful,” she said, and he wondered if she really meant it, if it touched