THE STORM THAT TESTED GREYHAVEN

Chapter 14

That night, Ethan sat on his porch.

The storm had been gone for days.

But sometimes, when the wind moved through the trees, he still remembered it.

The noise.

The darkness.

The rain.

The fear.

And the people.

Especially the people.

He remembered Walter handing him coffee at four in the morning.

June forcing him to eat.

Caleb pulling ropes beside him.

Sam standing in the rain.

The young men carrying sandbags.

The old man protecting a photograph of his home.

Nobody had known whether everything would survive.

They worked anyway.

Ethan looked toward the harbor.

A few lights moved across the water.

He thought about how different his life had become.

Not long ago, he had arrived in Greyhaven with almost nothing.

He had been a stranger.

He had expected to leave.

Then came the people.

The work.

The festival.

The memories.

And now the storm.

He had spent years thinking home was a place where nothing bad happened.

Greyhaven taught him otherwise.

Home wasn’t the absence of storms.

Home was the place where people ran toward you when the storm came.