He Gave Our Helicopter Away, So I Stopped Waiting to Be Rescued novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Grand Brooks

Grand Brooks had taken the storm on its chin, and it showed.

Half the lagoon dock was missing, and the staff had tied our boat to a cleat on the boathouse wall.

A line of housekeepers in rain ponchos stood on the sand with brooms and bin bags, looking at the wreckage of the beach bar.

When they saw me step off the boat with Tilda, they stopped.

A woman at the end of the line pulled off her hood. "Ms. Linscott. You're alive."

"We're alive."

"They told us you were at the villa, sleeping."

"They told you wrong."

She looked at the baby, at my bandaged hand, and at Fraser carrying our bag up the boards behind me.

Then she put down her broom, and the line did the same, one after another, until twenty people stood bare-handed on the sand.

"Whatever you need," the woman said. "Say it."

"Tea for the crew. Then I want to see the shelter that was hit."

"The roof is still on the floor," she said.

"Good. Leave it there."

The shelter was the strongest building on Grand Brooks, a concrete bunker with a steel roof.

I had specified that roof myself, for a storm twice as bad as this one.

A palm had come through it near the north corner.

Part of the trunk lay in the guest hall with its fronds still wet.

I stood in the doorway with Tilda on my shoulder and looked at it for a long time.

"It wasn't supposed to do that," I said.

"The palm?"

"The roof. Look at the fixing line."

Fraser came to stand beside me and followed my finger.

The steel ran in clean, bolted panels, and one panel near the break was held by thin, bright screws instead of the heavy bolts I had written into the drawing.

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