“Tell me what it was that y’all relived,” Nessa said as she backed the vehicle out and started down the dirt road toward the highway.

“She and Grandpa Everett were engaged,” April started. “Grandpa was working on the railroad, and Nanny Lucy had just finished high school. He had come to see her that evening in the house south of Blossom where she and her folks lived. A storm came up, but it wasn’t just a thunderstorm like this, but a full-fledged tornado. The four of them, Nanny Lucy, her parents, and Grandpa, were crammed in a cellar along with several neighbors for over an hour, waiting for the tornado to pass over. She said . . .” April’s hands went to her ears when a streak of lightning hit a nearby tree, and the thunder that followed it sounded like it was sitting on top of Nessa’s SUV.

“That was pretty close.” Nessa’s voice quivered. “We’re more than halfway there, so what do you want to do? Go home or go on?”

“Might as well go on.” April dropped her hands and felt compelled to go on with the story, too. Maybe there was something in it that would make more sense to Nessa than it did to her. “It tore up a lot of property around town. Nanny Lucy said that the whole time she and Grandpa were in the cellar, she prayed that God wouldn’t let the tornado ruin their little house that Grandpa had bought for them up by Hope Creek, the very house that we’re living in now. She promised that she would raise her kids up in the church if God would spare hers and Grandpa’s life and their house. He did, and she was faithful in taking her kids to church after that, even though Grandpa wouldn’t go with her. And she was terrified of storms from then on, so every time the wind blew, we had to go to the cellar.”

“Daddy never mentioned that, but he sure gets antsy when it storms. He says that it’s God’s way of showing us He’s still in control.” Nessa turned right and headed toward Paris.

“I always figured tornadoes were spawned by the devil, and that God was turning Lucifer loose with them to punish us for all our sins with tornadoes. That’s the short form of what Nanny Lucy said when she was having one of her days.” April closed her eyes tightly and shivered all the way to her toes when another streak of lightning zigzagged across the sky. “I hate storms to this day.”

Nessa nodded. “Flynn had it easier than we did. He didn’t have to go to church and be scared to death of the devil, or even of God.”

April shivered again when a clap of thunder followed the lightning. “Nanny Lucy used to say that her kids were like little seeds. She planted them all, but at harvest time God got one, and the devil got the other two.”

“I’m not real sure about all that.” Nessa turned the windshield wipers on low when the first drops of rain fell. “If you’d had to live with my father, you might think the devil got all three of the seeds. He preaches a good sermon, but he’s got a hard heart.”

“What about us three?” April asked. “What would she say about us?”

“That I’m bossy. You are a lost soul. And Flynn needs closure,” Nessa answered. “That’s what Jackson told me she said about us.”

“She got it right about us, but what would Flynn need closure about?” April wondered out loud.

“Who knows? Maybe when he trusts us, he’ll tell us what he’s hiding in his heart. What are you hiding?” They passed the exit to Sun Valley, Texas.

April pointed to the sign. “See that? I lost my virginity when I was fifteen up there in that little town. I was supposed to be at my girlfriend’s house from noon until night church, but I went with my boyfriend up to an old barn, and we had sex.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Nessa asked.

“You asked what I’m hiding,” April said.

“I’m sure you’ve had sex with other guys since then, right?” Nessa asked.

“Nanny Lucy found out that I wasn’t at my girlfriend’s house and grounded me until the end of the school year. Then it was summer, and she extended the punishment for three more months.” April kept her eyes on the wipers going back and forth across the windshield.

Nanny Lucy had met her at the door, Grandpa’s old leather belt already in hand, and the punishment had been twenty licks for sneaking around. She could almost feel every single lick she’d felt then as the doubled belt slapped against her bare legs and back.

“You’re not hiding it if she found out,” Nessa told her.

“She didn’t find out about the sex, because I wouldn’t tell her. But she ranted at me the whole time she whipped me with a belt, saying that if I wasn’t at my girlfriend’s house, then I had to be out with some worthless boy. She accused me of being just like my wild mother and told me if I’d gotten myself pregnant, I could go live in a box under a bridge,” April said. “When I asked her why she hadn’t kicked my mother out, she said a mother didn’t throw her kid out in the street. Then she reminded me that I wasn’t her child, and she would throw me out.”

“‘What would God think if I did that?’ Or ‘What would the people in Blossom think?’ she said each time she swung that belt. She said she’d hoped that I would be a godly child to make up for my mother, but that it looked like the devil was going to get another one.”

“You didn’t get pregnant, did you?” Nessa asked.

“No, but I sure sweated it. I skipped two periods and was making plans to run away so that Nanny Lucy wouldn’t have to even know about it when I finally started just before I’d missed the third one, and from that day until I left home, I didn’t have sex again,” April said.

“That first time isn’t what it’s cracked up to be at all, is it?” Nessa pulled into the Home Depot parking lot. “I was pretty disappointed. It was far more of a thrill knowing that I was doing something that I shouldn’t on the sofa in my dad’s study at the church than the actual sex.”

“Holy smoke!” April gasped. “Did you really?”

“Yep, I did, and this is the first time I’m admitting that, too.” Nessa slung the door open and picked up an umbrella from the back seat. “Sit tight. This thing is oversized, so we can both use it.”

“So?” April asked when she was under the umbrella with Nessa. “Were you afraid that you might be pregnant?”

“Nope, I made sure the boy used a condom,” Nessa said. “If I’d gotten pregnant in high school, Daddy would have guilted me to death, and Mama would have probably sent me away to an unwed mothers’ home.”

April felt closer to her cousin in that rainy moment than she ever had before. “Do you think that tornado that ripped through Blossom back then is still affecting us?”

“Kind of like the butterfly effect?” Nessa asked as they entered the store.

“Something like that,” April answered. “If the tornado hadn’t scared Nanny Lucy so badly, she wouldn’t have been so adamant about going to church. If she hadn’t pressured the boys, then your dad wouldn’t be so strict on you, and Flynn’s daddy and my mother wouldn’t have rebelled. Are we ever going to be free of it?”

“I don’t know. The question now is, What are we going to do about it?” Nessa headed toward the customer service counter.