In Mexico Beach, unimaginable loss and uncertain futures collide after Hurricane Michael
A nondescript, mud-covered purse, held in the evidence cage at the makeshift
A pink wallet. A pink comb. Lipstick. Prescription sunglasses. A sock purse with a handful of bicentennial silver dollars. A
Keys to a front door that doesn't exist, and to a Kia Sportage likely at the bottom of the canal.
"Where did they find it?"
"I think it was in the debris pile," Kelly answers.
The remains of her mother's house are just two blocks away from the department's trailer at
Standing on the concrete slab where her mother's modest, single-story but brightly colored home for over 20 years once stood, it's hard to imagine a house was ever there at all. Vicari herself has trouble pinpointing exactly which room she's in, or on really, relying on items -- a fan, her granddaughter Lily's mattress, a microwave, a shower head -- to get her bearings.
The only part of the lot still clearly definable is the garden, once "whimsical" Vicari says, with an iron horse statue and brightly spray painted tires holding plants now corroded by the salt of the storm surge. All that's left are the green stalks of dozens of lilies that never bloomed.
"I think," she starts, pointing to the right front corner of the slab. "That's her fan. I think she would have been there ... or in the hallway. That would have been the only safe place in the house."
"I really didn't want to know, not right now anyways," Vicari said. "I just didn't want to really know everything. It's so much to absorb."
***
With the Category 4 monster Hurricane Michael just offshore and
He wasn't the first, but he would be the last to try and save Agnes' life before conditions deteriorated to the point where, even if she had tried to leave, she likely couldn't have saved herself. Vicari had tried to talk her mom into leaving too. Holed up with her family in a friend's brick home in
"Lily talked to her at the end, and I didn't know until later, but she realized it was too late that she stayed," Vicari said. "And that was it."
But why, when everyone else around her was retreating, when police officers were begging, did she decide to stay in her little three-bedroom cement home?
The question prompts a long sigh from Vicari.
"Why did she stay?"
Because they always stayed, Vicari lands on. For 23 years, they stayed. They stayed for Ivan. They stayed for Katrina. The last storm Agnes left for was Opal, and the experience was so miserable, leaving was never an option again.
"They made her leave for Opal, and she drove, I think, 11 hours into the storm, because they went that way," Vicari said. "Getting back was miserable and then they got here and there was like, a puddle."
Agnes' home was bookended by a multi-story condo up on stilts on the beach side and a row of multi-story cement condos on the other. Hers was one of three such homes, relics of a time before
"I made a joke, it's a pretty good size property but it's a little cement house. Meanwhile everyone has these gorgeous, huge houses," Vicari said. "I thought she was crazy at first, but she made it her own."
None of the three houses survived the record-setting storm surge -- over 15 feet according to the latest data from the
"They're putting the crap on my side!" she said with a laugh. "Well, her side."
Technically, though, it's Vicari's side now, though the official documents --the title to the car, the money for the funeral, the diamonds -- are in a lock box that has yet to surface. The missing documents are a big holdup for the insurance company, she said, who don't seem to understand the house has not only been destroyed, but has been swept away. The lockbox, Vicari believes, has to be in the rubble somewhere. Or, she turns and points, in the neighbor's pool.
For a second, her gaze turns to the wider world around her, where houses were picked up and deposited in the street blocks away, where personal belongings have been moved into other lots or pushed into the woods, where cars end up in the canal five blocks away, where her mother's furniture has never been found. In that world, something as small as a lockbox could be anywhere. But that thought is too much. She refocuses -- it has to be in the house. Or the pool.
"We have to hire somebody, I guess, to go through all of this," Vicari said.
Had she survived, Vicari doesn't think her mother would have been able to take what has become of her world, where her beloved
"I can just see her now," Vicariously said. "Weeping and weeping and weeping."
Now, Agnes' daughter and granddaughter have to come to terms with a future that doesn't include Sunday spaghetti dinners together. Doesn't include sleepovers, or Easter egg decorations. Doesn't include
Now, Agnes' daughter and granddaughter have to come to terms with a future that, once they sell the land, likely doesn't include
"We have to leave now, because this was our whole life," Vicari said. "And grandma's not here. We always felt like grandma's house was our anchor. We always had grandma's house. We always felt like this is where we would come back to."
"We may come back to sell or something, but I can't see us ever coming back here."
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