“Well, on the bright side, at least we’re not paying rent,” Rue’s mother joked.Ī dark bright side, because the mortgage company that employed Rue’s mother was going bankrupt too. Its insurance company was going bankrupt from too many claims, so the apartment company was walking away too, leaving everyone squatting in the ruins. Then word came down that the apartment company was abandoning the building. They used bedspreads and sheets to cover the windows, makeshift shelter while they waited for maintenance to fix things. Something big and heavy had blasted into the masonry and then flown away. Popped it off like a can opener.īy the time sunny skies returned, their windows were gone and one wall had crumbled. Delia ripped the roof off the Blue Palms. There wasn’t enough time to recover, to breathe, to restock supplies. But to Rue, it was starting to feel like God was bowling against them.
Literally floated.īefore Miami could recover from Carrie, Delia hit. “When we moved here, I thought this through.”ĭown on the street, the band’s van floated away. “The Blue Palms are rock solid,” her father said.
The Blue Palms was the safest apartment complex in the neighborhood, built to endure the New Meteorological Scale. Rue huddled with her parents and members of her mother’s new band in their apartment. “My dad says you should have seen it coming,” Rue’s friend Hunter said. Old-timers laughed that they’d bought land with bad irrigation rights and a crummy well. Rue’s parents might have held on, but failing snows meant inadequate irrigation water, and soon their domestic water failed too, the aquifer below their home unable to recharge. But other mountain towns were dying as well, drought whittling away their picturesque scenery, thinning their snowpack, and choking their summer skies with smoke. Glass globs sparkled, treasure gems, the remnants of picture windows.Īt first, Rue’s mother and father had laughed, seeing people who had complained about dirt specks in their radish greens fleeing an inferno that cared not for their wealth. Aluminum puddled in silver castings, rivulets of melt. In the aftermath, Rue collected trophies from amongst the blackened Anasazi-like ruins of billionaire mansions, picking her way through concrete foundation outlines.
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