The hurricane was a Category 4. The evacuation list had eighteen names on it. Mine wasn't one of them.
I was locked in a resort bathroom when my husband's boat pulled away from the dock. He didn't check. He assumed I'd been handled — the way he assumes the lights come on, the way he assumes someone else has already taken care of it.
The Coast Guard found me days later, bleeding, on an island that no longer existed.
Now Weston Crenshaw has walked away from the CEO chair, sold the car, left the compound, and sits on a folding chair in an empty apartment learning what nothing feels like. He says he knew for eight minutes before the boat launched. He says he tried to come back.
Eight hours of screaming doesn't undo eight minutes of not checking.
I'm an architect. I don't trust a structure because it's standing.
I test it.
