Between comforting Jody and organizing and preparing meals—a job Paige admitted that she hated—she kept herself out of the mainstream of conversation. While the others taped windows and barricaded furniture against two of the three glass doors, Julianna cooked whatever she could find that would keep for a day or two without refrigeration. So far they had experienced no problems with power outages, but everyone knew it could happen anytime, and she wanted to be prepared. More than prepared, she wanted to be busy and as far away from Gray as possible. Buried feelings were pushing to the surface. She didn’t want to feel anything, not jealousy, not sadness, not the irrational fear that the howling winds and driving rain induced in her. She wanted to be in bed, asleep, without so much as dreams to remind her she was alive. But when it came time to go to bed, sleep came with difficulty. In the hours just before dawn, the rain stopped. Sometime during the long night she had made a fragile peace with the wind’s roar and the unrelenting staccato rhythm of the rain, but now their absence woke her immediately.
