Trust Me

Prologue 

It's June, and the whole Robertson family is at the park, enjoying hot dogs and hamburgers and thinly sliced watermelon.  It's a perfect day, not a cloud in the sky, but one little girl in a pink skirt is shaking.  

"Anna, honey, what's wrong?"  A soft woman gathers the little girl up in her arms and holds her close.  Anna shakes her head, and one silver tear slides down her cheek. She doesn't want to talk about it.  Talking about it will just make it happen faster.  Instead, she looks at the sky, where the cloudless blue is slowly being overtaken by little white fluffs, marshmallows at most.  She shivers and nestles closer to her grandmother.

Mary Robertson looks down at her crying granddaughter, and waves over a tall, dark-haired man nearby.  "Rob?  Something's the matter with Anna."

The man comes over and kneels down so he's eye-level with his daughter.  "Anna, are you okay?

Anna shakes her head.  The wind tosses her blonde hair, and she starts to cry harder.

Rob glances up at his mother, worry creasing his brow.  "Anna, honey..."  He reaches for her, suddenly she jumps out of her grandma's lap and races to one of the green plastic picnic tables, huddling underneath.  Rob and Mary look at each other, shocked.

"Anna!"  Rob calls, heading after his daughter.  She sit underneath the table, knees pulled up to her chest, rocking back and forth, sobbing.

"Daddy, we have to go home.  We have to go back to the hotel."  

"Why, Anna?"  Rob glances around.  Various family members have turned to stare at the crying child.  He locks eyes with his wife, who rolls hers and turns back to the conversation she's having with Rob's aunt.  "Why do we have to go home, Anna?"

"Because..."  she falters, her eyes traveling to the horizon, where darker clouds are starting to make their way across the sky.  A tight sob escapes her throat, and she throws her arms around her father.  "Becauseatornado'scomingandwe'reallgoingtodie!!!"  she screams, the words slinging together until they become one.

Rob pulls away from his daughter and looks into her blue eyes.  "There is no tornado coming, Anna. We're going to be just fine."

"No!  We have to go back to the hotel!"  

"We're not going to go back to the hotel, Anna.  We're going to be fine."

"No!!"

As the clouds crept closer, and the wind got stronger, Anna grew more and more panicked.  She screamed and cried and begged to go home.  Rob did his best to calm her, but she refused to be comforted.  She just kept repeating, over and over, that they had to go home.

Katy, Rob's wife, intervened, but her angry words and harsh voice only made Anna more upset.  Finally, as the first drops of rain fell from the darkened sky, the family cleaned up the barbeque and headed for home.  Once they were all packed into the station wagon, Katy turned around and yelled at Anna for a good ten minutes about causing scenes in front of the family, and she's too old for this, and what on earth possessed her to make her think that was okay?

Anna just silently stared out the window, at the rain coming down, at the black clouds that could kill them.

She knew her parents were right.  Her dad knew all about tornados, he'd grown up in Kansas.  He would know if one was coming.  He would protect her.

But no matter how many times she told herself this, she couldn't make herself believe it.

***

Rob gently closed the door to the hotel room, where Anna was curled up in a ball underneath the covers.  It had taken a good hour to get her to fall asleep, she was so scared about the storm.

He headed down the hallway towards the vending machine next to the elevators, and put in a dollar.  A dented can of Diet Coke crashed into his hands.

He had to admit, it was kind of unnerving to see those black clouds take over that perfect blue sky, but he had seen tornado clouds a million times before, and those were just perfectly normal, early-summer thunderheads.  He knew there was nothing to be afraid of, and yet he couldn't shake the image of his little girl, rocking and shaking underneath that picnic table.  

He remembered a few days before they'd come on this vacation, when he'd tried to leave Anna in the care of a sixteen-year-old babysitter while he and Katy went out to see a movie.  Anna had panicked, screaming and crying and clutching on to his leg for dear life.  Eventually, the poor babysitter managed to convince Anna to help her make cookies, but she said that the whole time Anna wouldn't stop looking over her shoulder at the locked door and shuddering.

He wondered how long this would last.  If it was just a phase, or something bigger.  As he slid the key-card through the slot, he told himself that this was just one of those things seven-year-olds do.  It didn't mean anything.

But as he climbed into bed next to Katy, he couldn't push away the little voice in his heart that told him that was a lie.