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Narrative

The Calm Before the Storm

Brenda Redmond recognized the quiet tension that had taken over Shepardsport, the hushed voices and watchful looks. She’d seen it during hurricane watches back in Houston, and the tornado watches when she’d stayed with her grandparents in Indiana one summer. That awareness of elevated risk, balanced with a knowledge that life had to go on in the meantime, and necessary work would not wait.

It had hung over her all afternoon, as she did her best to keep her mind on class, on her teaching responsibility. Keeping a tight focus on the task at hand had enabled her to push the worry out of her mind, but now that it was exercise time, all those thoughts were crowding back in.

Maybe she would’ve had an easier time if she’d been assigned one of the machines where you were supposed to count your reps. Instead, she drew a stationary bicycle, which was purely timed exercise.

By the time she finished her cool-down and changed back into her regular clothes, she was trying to decide whether she should sit with her radio friends or with the other pilots’ families. And then she heard a familiar voice call her name.

“Hi, Dad. Don’t you usually have a later exercise slot?”

Ken Redmond’s lips quirked upward. “I switched with Harlan. I want to be on deck when that CME goes through the Earth-Moon system.”

No matter how busy you might be with work or training, mandatory exercise hours were non-negotiable. If you needed to, you could swap time slots, but unless illness or injury had you incapacitated, you made your exercise hours.

“How bad is it going to be?” As soon as Brenda said it, she realized just how shaky her voice sounded. Not exactly the professional voice of the DJ.

“Right now it looks like we should just barely catch the outer edges of it. We’ll probably have to power down surface equipment, but otherwise it should be business as usual down here.”

Except his voice suggested a but at the end of that superficially confident statement. Brenda looked closely at her father. She wasn’t that strong on solar astronomy or engineering, but she was pretty good at reading people. Maybe not as sharp as Autumn Belfontaine or the rest of the news team, but with someone she knew as well as her dad, she could pick up the unspoken stuff.

However, now was probably not the best time to come straight out and challenge him on it. Especially if he was downplaying real concerns in order to keep from alarming people, he’d want a little more privacy than the settlement gymnasium to discuss it.

“Would there be a better place to discuss this?” She cast a meaningful look around at the people sweating away.

Her dad got that little thought-furrow between his eyebrows. “Can you come down to my office after supper?”

“I’ll need to make sure I have someone to watch the kids, but I think I can swing it.”