Free Forecast by Janette Turner Hospital

hair. Her hand comes to rest on his shoulder. In the flares of lightning, she watches the flutter of his lashes against his cheek.
    Francesca is throwing a tantrum beyond the screen-porch and Leah hears the crash of a tree going over but it is happening like a movie in slow motion with the sound turned low. Steven stirs and moans a little but does not wake. Other noisesintrude like a cascade of whites and blues, very close, and Leah knows that if she did not have the mute button on for this show, the colours would cut her. Windows come and go, she thinks tranquilly. They blow in, they blow out. Somewhere, definitely, a window has been shattered. Not this room, she thinks. Bedroom perhaps. She should have let Marsyas board them up.
    She can feel the sofa tilting slightly, sliding, and perhaps the house? Perhaps the foundations are going? Leah tries to resist, but the house is slipping its moorings, listing into salt marsh and sleep and the dream-past. Soon a man from the National Guard will knock at the door and she will have to climb back up the floorboards, she will have to carry Steven on her shoulder. Your son and your daughter-in-law have laid charges, the National Guardsman will say. Reckless negligence. Failure to evacuate in time.
    But the airport was closed, Leah pleads. There was nothing I could do.
    Just answer the phone, the Guardsman orders.
    Phone? Leah says. Phone lines are down. It’s my alarm.
    She gropes for it, knocking candle and photographs, dislodging the past from its box.
    Steven sits bolt upright, wide-eyed. ‘It’s Mommy,’ he says, then his head sinks back onto Leah’s lap. His eyes are closed.
    Answer it, orders the man from the National Guard.
    Leah fumbles for the receiver in the dark. We’re all right, she says. The National Guard are here to get us out. I tried to call before but the lines were down.
    What? she says, startled. Who?
    She holds the receiver away from herself and looks into it, dazed. It resembles a nautilus shell. When she puts the shell to her ear, she hears ocean. She hears hurricane. She hears the past.
    This is so strange, she says. This is very very strange. Where are you?
    Steven moves, and Leah extricates one arm from under his shoulder.
    She watches words float from the shell in her hand.
    It’s been twenty years, says the voice in the nautilus phone.
    I know, Leah says. Believe me, I know. But we agreed on that. No contact, we said.
    You didn’t give me much choice, the shell says.
    You didn’t have to be so absolute, Leah protests. For twenty years, not one word, and suddenly you call in the middle of a storm?
    The whole world, he says, can watch a hurricane live these days. We’ve got Francesca on satellite TV. I’ve been watching her coming ashore and I knowyou’re right in her path. I wanted to know if you were safe.
    Leah watches Steven making fish mouths in his sleep.
    Where are you? she asks.
    It’s daylight here, he says. It’s tomorrow. I know you’re still in the dark.
    But how did you find my phone number? she wants to know.
    That’s a very curious story, he says. If we met, I could tell you about it. It’s so curious, it has to be fate.
    Leah traces the whorls of Steven’s ear with her index finger.
    I’ll tell you something even stranger, she says. You know that picture a street photographer took?
    I still have it in my wallet, he says. It has ‘Love, Leah’ written on the back.
    His voice is like the pull of ocean in the pearled curve of the shell at her ear. She can feel herself being sucked in.
    Will you meet me again? he wants to know.
    I don’t know, she says. I’d have to make arrangements, I’d have to think … can you give me some time?
    Hello?
    Hello?
    7. Voyage of the Pine Tree Galleon
    A small fleet of rooftops and wardrobes beckons Steven but he steers clear. He knows what he knows. Dolphins brush the undersides of his feet. Jimmy Saunders waves and