No Judgments Read online

  The apartment was dark and dank thanks to the rest of the windows being boarded up and there not being any power. But I didn’t have to see Sonny’s guinea pigs to know that they were alive. I could hear them squeaking excitedly from the other room, having overheard my not-so-graceful entrance into the apartment.

  After unlocking the front door for Drew, I followed the sounds into Sonny’s bedroom, where I found the two little rodents—R2-D2, a black-and-white shorthaired, and C-3P0, a longhaired golden “Teddy”—darting around their cage, covered in shavings. The bedding had obviously become soaked thanks to the flood and was now sticking to the poor animals’ fur.

  “Oh, you poor things!” I looked around Sonny’s room for something I could put the guinea pigs in in order to get them out of the mess. Fortunately Sonny had left the animals’ traveling case on his bed, along with a bag of the pellets they were supposed to eat.

  “Well, boys,” I said to the guinea pigs as they continued to poke their little toes and noses through the mesh of their cage at me, grunting and squealing, almost as if they were trying to describe to me what they’d been through since Sonny had been gone. “Looks like you’re going home with me.”

  “Huh.” Drew was standing in the doorway with a beer in one hand—one that he’d evidently found in Lydia’s refrigerator—looking down on the scene with an expression of mild disbelief on his face. I wasn’t sure which he found most incredible, the fact that I was lifting a trembling, grunting R2-D2 into the traveling case, or that he was in the situation at all.

  “What,” he asked, “are you doing with that rat?”

  “They’re guinea pigs, not rats.”

  “If you say so. What are you doing to them?”

  “Water leaked in here and got the bedding of their cage all wet. Now it’s sticking to their fur. They’re going to need a bath, I think.”

  “Are you even supposed to bathe guinea pigs?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Are you supposed to take beers out of the refrigerators of people you don’t even know?”

  He glanced down at the beer in his hand. “Hey, if I don’t drink it, it’s just going to get hot and explode in there. I’m doing your friend a favor. You want one?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m taking these guinea pigs back to your aunt’s house, and then I’ll see if I can reach Sonny’s mom and find out whether or not you’re supposed to give guinea pigs a bath.”

  “Well.” Drew eyed the animal carrier. “Lu’s going to love that.”

  “I think she will, actually. She likes animals. She’s already taken in a pair of rabbits, a parrot, and my cat. Two little guinea pigs aren’t going to make a difference.”

  He let out a laugh. “Whatever you say.”

  “Well, I can’t leave them here,” I said defensively. “There’s no power. It must be ninety degrees in here. It stinks, and it’s filthy.”

  “I’m not disagreeing with you, ergo the beer. But . . .”

  I glared at him. “Listen, if you don’t like it, you can leave. I’m sure there must be more important things for you to be doing right now. Aren’t you supposed to be a carpenter? Shouldn’t you be out making emergency repairs on someone’s house?”

  “Probably,” he said, a slow grin beginning to creep across his handsome face. “Too bad there’s no cell service, so no one can reach me.”

  “Fine. Well, if you want I can drop you back at your house first, before I go to your aunt’s, so you won’t have to face her if you’re so afraid of what you think she’s going to say if I show up there with two so-called rats.”

  “Oh, no.” The grin broadened. “I’m sticking around so I can watch how the rest of this plays out. You’re not getting rid of me that easy, Fresh Water.”

  And the weird thing was that even though his words should have annoyed me, I sort of liked hearing them.

  That’s when I should have realized the true extent of the hurricane’s damage.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Little Bridge Aqueduct Authority reports pressure is increasing down its main transmission line as crews continue to shut off leaks. Anyone who sees water coming out of broken lines should contact the LBAA.

  Drew!”

  Aunt Lu’s scream upon seeing her nephew enter her home was almost as loud as the howls of Hurricane Marilyn had been, but significantly more joyful.

  As the older woman threw her arms around his neck, I could see that she had tears in her eyes.

  And they were not, as Drew had tried to tease me, tears at the fact that I was bringing “rats” into her home, but of happiness because I’d returned her beloved nephew to her.

  Leaving the family to their tender reunion—through which I could hear Drew saying, over and over again, “Come on, now, Lu, everything is fine”—I headed to my room in the library to check on Gary . . .

  Only to find him—and all my other stuff—gone.

  “Um.” I didn’t want to interrupt such an intimate moment with questions about the whereabouts of my cat, let alone my clothing, but my heart had begun to beat practically out of my chest, particularly about Gary. According to the people at the animal shelter, it can take a cat days to get to know the inside of a new home well enough to feel comfortable in it, weeks not to get lost in a new neighborhood (the shelter preferred that new owners not allow their cats out of the house at all). If someone had let Gary outside, I might never see him again. “Does anyone know where Gary is?”

  “Oh.” Aunt Lu was drying her eyes on the edge of a dish towel. “He got so lonely in there while you were gone. We could hear him crying.”

  This was not boding well. I had to fight to keep my tone even. “So . . . ?”

  “So Nevaeh and Katie took him upstairs with them. They’re playing with him in Nevaeh’s room.”

  “Oh.” Relief washed over me. “Thanks.”

  While this didn’t exactly explain where the rest of my stuff had disappeared to, it didn’t particularly surprise me. It sounded, in fact, like typical Gary behavior. After his lonely days in the animal shelter, he loved being the center of attention, and whenever he wasn’t, he did whatever he had to in order to ensure that he was. This generally consisted of persistent—but cute—mewing.

  I popped into the laundry room to get the guinea pigs settled. The rabbits had been moved back to their outdoor pen, so it was simple enough to put Sonny’s pets into the cage the rabbits had been using, swapping out the rabbit food for guinea pig food. I made some bedding for the guinea pigs out of torn newspaper (the Hartwells had piles and piles of the Little Bridge Gazette, since there’d been no recycling pickup due to the evacuation order). Then I hurried upstairs to see what was up with Gary.

  I hadn’t been to the second floor of the Hartwell home before, but it was like the first, heavily wainscoted and wallpapered. Only here, the ceiling in the hallway at the top of the stairs had been painted by a nineteenth-century muralist: a bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds floating by. Here and there cherubic angels peeked out from behind the clouds, and bluebirds darted, ribbons streaming from their beaks. With the sun pouring in from the French doors along the second-floor terrace, it looked, quite literally, like heaven.

  And in the room of the girl whose name was heaven spelled backward, I found my cat purring in a sunny spot on the canopy bed, a tiny doll tiara on his head.

  “Oh, Bree,” Nevaeh said, when she noticed me in the partially opened doorway. “Isn’t Gary the cutest? He’s been such a good boy.”

  Katie had her cell phone out and was taking photos of my cat from different angles. “We’re totally going to make your cat a social media star,” she informed me. “After the Internet comes back on.”

  “Like Grumpy Cat,” Nevaeh said. “Only Gary’s not grumpy. He’s a little prince. Aren’t you, baby?”

  Gary, in his absolute element, let out a little meow at me, as if both questioning where I’d been and asking why I’d been so slack in making him the social media star that he so clearly was
.

  “That’s great,” I said, because it was. “If anyone deserves to be an Internet sensation, it’s Gary. Nevaeh, I just thought I’d let you know that your uncle Drew got through the storm just fine. He’s downstairs if you want to say hi to him.”

  “Oh, good.” Nevaeh was completely absorbed with looking through her drawers for Gary’s next costume. “I’ll come down and tell him hi in a minute. I knew he was going to be fine. I don’t know why everyone was so worried. He spent, like, ages storm-proofing that house.”

  “Um,” I said. “Okay.”

  I was reminded of my own teenage years, when family drama had seemed much less important than the dramas going on within my circle of friends.

  “You know Uncle Ed wants us to go over to the café in a little bit to start serving food to all the people who don’t have power or didn’t stock up, or whatever,” she went on. “He’s over there now, getting stuff ready.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, there are some guinea pigs downstairs that I brought over from a friend’s house. They need a little TLC and probably a bath. They nearly drowned in the flooding from Marilyn. So maybe you guys could help me—”

  “What?” Katie nearly dropped her phone. “Guinea pigs?”

  “Oh my God.” Nevaeh’s eyes widened. “I love guinea pigs!”

  I thought the two girls were going to bowl me over in their haste to get down the stairs to see Sonny’s pets. Though suddenly abandoned, Gary didn’t appear particularly upset. He only bent his head toward a paw that appeared to need licking, his tiara sliding off as he began grooming.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, and—removing the tiara and then cradling him in my arms the way Drew had done—I followed the girls downstairs. “You’ll always be a star to me, big boy.”

  Gary purred happily, still enjoying his newfound fame.

  Mrs. Hartwell was waiting for me in the library, looking nervous.

  “Oh, Bree,” she said, twisting her hands as I went to deposit Gary back on the inflatable mattress where he belonged.

  Except that I’d forgotten. The air mattress was gone. So was all the bedding I’d used the night before. Of course my things were gone, including Gary’s litter box. Was it in Nevaeh’s room? I hadn’t thought to look.

  What was going on? Now that the storm was over, did Mrs. Hartwell expect me to go back to my apartment? That made perfect sense, of course, except . . . well, there was no power there, and when I’d opened the door to take a quick look inside to survey the damage, the place had reeked of damp.

  I didn’t mind going back, of course, but . . .

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank you enough for bringing Drew home to me,” Mrs. Hartwell was saying.

  “Oh, you’re welcome, Mrs. Har—Lucy.” I smiled at her as Gary made a beeline for his favorite chair, the pink-silk-cushioned love seat. Mrs. Hartwell, however, didn’t seem to care. “It was nothing, though, really. And Ed’s the one who donated the gas. Could I just ask you quickly what happened to the stuff I had in here? It’s no problem except that Gary’s litter box—”

  “Oh, I wanted to talk to you about that, Bree.”

  Wait. What? This did not sound good. Had I done something wrong? From the anxious look on her face, it appeared as if I had . . .

  “Bree, this morning, while you were gone, the sheriff stopped by—”

  “The sheriff?”

  What on earth could the sheriff have wanted with me? I hadn’t disobeyed any laws.

  Well, except for breaking into my landlady’s house. But that had been in order to rescue her son’s guinea pigs! And I’m sure she’d have wanted me to do that.

  And I hadn’t done it alone. I had had a partner in crime.

  “Where’s your nephew?” I asked quickly.

  “Drew? Oh, he’s out back, looking at the pool. It really is going to need a lot of work if we’re ever going to get it back to the way it was. But we’re so fortunate that’s really the only damage we suffered. So many have it so much worse.”

  “Sure. Well, listen, if it’s about the guinea pigs, Drew can help explain. See, he saw Sean Petrovich driving out of town last night. And Sean said he’d take care of them. But then Sean evacuated at the last minute with his girlfriend. So what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t leave them to die. They’re living creatures, just like the rest of us.”

  Mrs. Hartwell stared at me, looking bemused. “Honey, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t?” I was confused. “But you said the sheriff—?”

  “Oh, yes. Sheriff Hartwell stopped by this morning because he says he’s been receiving emergency calls all day on his satellite phone from the governor. Apparently, you’re a very important young lady. Bree, why didn’t you tell us that your mother is Judge Justine from the radio?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Little Bridge Island remains closed to anyone who is not currently in residence or is working in an official capacity with the hurricane relief effort. There will be no exceptions by order of the Sheriff’s Office.

  I sat on the pink-silk-cushioned love seat, staring at the keypad to the Hartwells’ landline.

  I knew by heart the number I was supposed to dial. I just really, really didn’t want to press it.

  Instead, I took out my cell phone and looked up the number of my landlady, Lydia Petrovich. Then I pressed the buttons on the landline, dialing her instead.

  She answered on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Lydia? Hi, it’s Sabrina Beckham, your tenant in—”

  “Bree!” She sounded relieved to hear from me. “Oh, Bree, sweetheart, how are you? Where are you?”

  “I’m in Little Bridge, Lydia, and I just wanted to tell you—”

  “You’re in Little Bridge? But how can that be? On television they’re saying that—”

  I smiled. “I know what they’re saying on TV, Lydia. But it’s not true. I mean, the apartment building did flood a little, and a few houses along the beach were destroyed, along with the bridge to the mainland. But for the most part, we didn’t receive that much damage.”

  I heard her tell someone on her side of the phone everything I’d just said, only in Russian. When she came back on, she sounded excited. “When you say the apartment building flooded a little, how much do you mean?”

  “Only a few inches. And please tell Sonny not to worry about R2-D2 and C-3PO, because I got them out. They’re just fine.”

  Her tone sharpened. “What do you mean you got them out? What happened to Sean? Sean was supposed to look after them.”

  “Well . . .” As matter-of-factly as I could, I told Lydia what had happened with Sean.

  But even though I’d been careful not to cast Sean as the bad guy, Lydia was spitting mad by the time I got through. Most of what she said, however, I didn’t understand, since I don’t know many Russian curse words.

  “Lydia, Lydia.” I tried to calm her down. “Please. The storm was really, really bad at that point. It was only natural that he was scared. Let’s try not to judge. We don’t know what was going through his head.”

  “I know exactly what was going through his head,” she cried. “Helping himself and himself only, because he’s a spoiled little brat, just like his mother, my sister, and he always has been. Of course I will judge him. When that bridge opens back up and I get my hands on him, he’s going to wish he was never born, that—”

  “Well, it’s over now,” I interrupted in my most soothing voice. “And it all turned out okay. Your son’s guinea pigs are fine, okay? So let’s concentrate on that.”

  “Mom,” I heard Sonny saying in the background, “what’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” she told him, in a calmer voice. “Everything’s fine. Your little piggies are fine. Bree saved them.”

  “Bree? What about Sean?”

  “Never mind about Sean. He—” There was another long pause while I overheard the mother and son discussing something anim
atedly in Russian. I heard the name Chett mentioned frequently.

  Finally Lydia came back on the line with me. “Bree, I know it’s a lot to ask, but could you do us another favor? You’re the only person we’ve heard from who’s still on the island, with cell service being out.”

  “Of course. Anything you need.”

  “Chett, one of Sonny’s friends from the community college, evacuated as well, and left behind his bird. He thought he’d only be gone a day or so. But now, with the bridge out—”

  “Of course,” I said. “I understand.”

  I was lying. I didn’t understand how anyone could evacuate and leave their pets behind without someone to look after them.

  But, like I’d told Lydia, I wasn’t there to judge.

  Instead, I reached for a pen and a pad of paper that sat near the Hartwells’ landline. The pad said HOME in fancy cursive across the top.

  “Give me Chett’s phone number, and I’ll get in touch with him about his bird.”

  “Oh, you’re such an angel, Bree,” Lydia said, and gave me the information.

  After I’d said good-bye and hung up, I looked at Gary. Displaced from his favorite seat, he regarded me resentfully from the Persian carpet.

  “What have you got to be so upset about?” I asked. “You’re living in the lap of luxury. I’m the one with problems.”

  Gary yawned, then turned his head to lazily lick a paw.

  Sighing, I dialed Chett’s number. He answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Chett? This is Bree, Sonny’s frie—”

  “I know who you are, ma’am.” Chett spoke with a Southern accent, his voice breathless and impossibly young. “Sonny already let me know that you’d be calling.”

  “Oh.” Sonny must have texted Chett while I’d still been on the phone with his mother. “Okay. Well, so he must have told you that—”

  “Yeah, that you’re in Little Bridge, and you said you’d check on my birds?”

  “Um . . . birds, as in more than one?”

  “Yeah, I have eight of ’em?” Chett’s voice rose at the end of his sentences to make it sound like he was asking a question, even when he wasn’t. “They’re cockatiels. I put ’em in the attic because I was afraid it was going to flood. But now I heard on the news that it didn’t, it was more of a wind event? I live on Roosevelt, so maybe you would know. Did it flood over there?”