The first wave of thunderstorms finally arrived a little after one o'clock in the afternoon. The entire day had been overcast but being the dutiful husband left alone at home while the wife, kids, and her parents enjoyed the Florida sunshine down around Orlando, I figured I might as well work on a few items of the Honey-Do list my lovely spouse, Emily, had left me despite the incoming bad weather. Namely bagging up dead leaves left over from autumn along with trimming the hedges and a few low hanging limbs on the trees. All seemingly small tasks until you realized how much time had passed since stepping outside earlier that morning.
As the hours passed I became so engrossed in my chores it was the weather itself that pulled me back to reality. The wind suddenly picked up blowing a pile of leaves that I had painstakingly raked out from underneath the hedges sending them all over the backyard. After a moment of disgust at all my work going to waste I looked up at the overcast sky and saw an angry black line of clouds coming in from the northwest. Adding emphasis to the approaching squall line were flashes of lightning that made the storm all that more menacing.
"You better get inside Jason," my next door neighbor Laura said from the backdoor off her enclosed deck, "I just heard over the television there's a tornado warning. It's going to stay this way until early tomorrow morning."
"Thanks," I said, "now I have a perfect excuse to go inside and sit on my butt all day."
Laura waved back and sort of giggled at my response before going back inside the house she shared with her husband, Kevin, and their young son Jacob. For just a moment I was slightly puzzled, while I had stayed home the past five days instead of going with my family to Florida, mainly so I didn't have deal with my in-laws, every time I left the neighborhood I didn't see any sign of Laura or Kevin's cars. Since it was summer I had assumed they had gone on vacation themselves. As I climbed the steps of my deck to enter the backdoor of my own house, I figured that for some reason they must have decided to put their cars inside the garage for a change.
Thankfully I didn't take my assumption to the next level and use the emergency key we had to their house and start bringing in the mail. I can only imagine the look on their faces had I let myself in while they were relaxing in the living room. Taking it even further, I shuddered to think what Emily or I would have said if either Kevin or Laura had falsely assumed we were gone and used the emergency key we gave them for our house to come in unannounced. We were all good friends but in the suburbs it's best to not to cross certain lines without an invitation.
Whatever the case I went inside and quickly made myself a sandwich, grabbed a beer, then plopped in the recliner to watch a little television. Of course twenty minutes later the full force of the thunderstorm hit my area causing the power to go out. I didn't care, I grabbed another beer and just relaxed while listening to nature's fury.
Sometime later I wake up to hear the ring tone on my cellphone going off. It takes me a few seconds to gather my wits and locate the thing. "Hello," I say groggily while rubbing my eyes.
"Hey Jason," my neighbor Kevin says in a much too cheerful mood, "I'm sorry, sounds like I woke you up."
"No problem, that thunderstorm forced me inside. Must have dozed off when the power went out.
"Yeah, that's why I'm calling," Kevin said, "Laura just called me a few minutes ago hysterical, she says a tree limb smashed a window, could you go look at it?"
"You mean you're not at home?" I ask a little confused.
"No, one of my sales partners suddenly got sick and I had to take his place at a conference in Dallas. Been gone for three days and probably won't be able to get back for a couple of more, I'd greatly appreciate if you could help her out."
"No problem Kevin, in fact I'll take some pictures with my cell phone so you'll have some idea about the damage."
Several seconds pass by and I can hear Kevin talking to someone else in the background, I even hear some sort of strange music and female laughter. "Hello Kevin," I say again.
"Yeah thanks!" Kevin says suddenly returning to our conversation. "I'll call Laura back and tell her you're coming over."
Kevin abruptly cut the call seemly more concerned about whatever was going at his sales conference. I thought about trying to call my wife but figured Emily was probably in one of the Disney parks with the kids and her parents. The last thing I wanted to hear was my dad-in-law make some snarky comment. So I just put my flip-flops back on and went out the front door to go see if I could help Laura. Stepping out on my front porch to walk over to my neighbor's house, I was relieved to see that at least for the moment there was no lightning and the rain and calmed down to a light drizzle.
Laura almost immediately opened her front the door after I knocked just twice. "Come on in Jason, the limb crashed through Jacob's bedroom window sending glass everywhere," she said clearly shaken.
Where's Jacob?" I asked following her across the living room and into the hallway.
"He's at my parents house," she said. "When my dad found out your kids were gone and that Kevin had to take off for Dallas he came and got Jacob. Frankly, I was relieved, poor guy didn't have anything to do."
"Yeah, I actually wondered what he would do since Neil and Sean are with their mother down in Orlando. All three spend so much time running between our houses I've found it far too quiet."
It was then that I walked into Jacob's room. Not only had a tree limb that was at least six-feet long and six-inches wide crashed through the glass it had busted most of the window frame with the blacked end laying in the middle of the boy's bed. Standing close to the shattered remains of the window I looked outside. It looked like lightning had struck the tree with the limb falling and hitting several other branches before going through the window. Jacob would have certainly been injured had he been laying on his bed at that moment.
