Free What Stands in a Storm by Kim Cross

hopefully on ESPN.
    Will was the same age as Danielle’s sister, Michelle, who had been his homecoming date the year before she met Clay, her fiancé. In the formal photo Will wore black trousers, a Hawaiian shirt with black and tan palm fronds, and an oddly serious expression. He had been trying to hide the jawbreaker in his mouth.
    Danielle had poor luck with boys herself, but she loved matchmaking and considered Will perfect for Loryn, given their farm upbringings and ESPN dreams. They would make a good-looking couple as well, with their dark hair, tanned skin, and hazel eyes. One rode a tractor; the other a horse. Will had helped deliver his first calf when he was two years old. Loryn loved barrel racing.
    Will regularly came over to fix Danielle’s car and always turned down their offers to pay him for the work. Instead, they fed him and let him do laundry. They would play Xbox games and eat pizza while the drier rumbled. Not long ago, Danielle had called him to help aguest at the Wingate, a young lady whose car would not go. After fixing her car, he pumped her gas, and the three of them went out to dinner. When the young woman asked how she could pay him back, he said, “Let me take you out.” She said yes.
    But that was before Loryn. There was something special about this girl. Even his family remarked that she was just the kind of girl who would have caught his eye.
    â€œThey just looked like they went together,” Will’s mother would tell her friends.
    They had been out on a date but were taking things slow. As pretty as she was, Loryn had not had a serious boyfriend yet. She was waiting for the right one to come along rather than suffer dates with fools. Will had felt the sting of heartbreak and was in no rush. But Will had mentioned Loryn to his younger sister. And Loryn had told her mom about Will.
    Will joined the girls often for movie night—he loved popcorn and Harry Potter—and he had been spending more time lately over at the house. After her last-day-at-work lunch, Danielle glanced at her phone and saw his text.
1:49
Will
so when we gonna make up movie night
2:32
Danielle
well I’m off tonight :-p
2:33
Will
well then tonight it is what time you’ll be home
2:33
Danielle
should get there by 5 now my room is a mess so we can watch a movie downstairs LOL plus my place might be safer than ur place
2:34
Will
sounds good to me
2:44
Danielle
ok I’ll text you when I’m heading there
    On the TV in the lobby of TES, the voices of the weathermen rung with urgency. James Spann was showing live video from a SkyCamabove Cullman. A textbook supercell thunderstorm was hovering on the horizon, with a bright rain-free base on the right and a dark curtain of rain on the left.
    Danielle and a coworker stood in the small lobby and watched the scene unfold on a small TV. On the screen, a dark finger reached down from the cloud and began to claw the earth. The camera zoomed in. Fragments of debris were visible, whirling. It was 2:46 p.m.
    â€œWe’ve got a tornado down,” James Spann said on the air. “This is a tornado emergency for the City of Cullman.”
    The charcoal mass writhed malevolently against the milky sky. To a storm spotter, the funnel looked like a textbook specimen from Kansas or Oklahoma. It was rare to see one so clearly defined in the South, where funnels often come in disguise, cloaked by a curtain of rain.
    Danielle watched the monster grow on the TV screen, thickening, darkening, and churning mercilessly toward the heart of Cullman.
    The church!
    Sacred Heart church, where Michelle would be married next week, was a landmark of downtown Cullman, a city of fifteen thousand about an hour’s drive north of Birmingham. Built in 1916, the Romanesque church was one of the prettiest Catholic sanctuaries in the state, with a roseate window framed by steeples topped with twin golden crosses. Its stained-glass windows, crafted in Germany, were so