Episode 7: Integrity

“Some people rebuild because it’s their duty. Others rebuild because they can’t bear to walk away.”

The floodwaters took most of the night to recede, leaving behind a smell of river mud and diesel fuel.

By sunrise, the whole town felt washed in gray: storefronts boarded, debris tangled in the guardrails, the air heavy with the kind of silence that comes only after something has broken.

Jackson stepped off the bus and saw people gathering — neighbors carrying shovels, volunteers unloading pallets of bottled water, a church group setting up tables for meals.

But at the center of it all was Asha.

Exhausted, shivering in a damp hoodie, but steady — speaking with purpose, delegating tasks, keeping tempers calm.

She’d been out here since before dawn.

Maybe since before the storm even ended.

Asha moved through the crowd with a quiet authority Jackson had never fully appreciated until now.

She checked on an elderly man whose trailer was half-submerged.

She coordinated with EMTs.

She directed teenagers to carry cleaning supplies door-to-door.

She listened — really listened — to every frightened voice, every story, every “I don’t know what to do now.”

Her words were gentle, but her posture was steel.

“We’ll get through this,” she kept repeating.

“One house at a time. One family at a time. Nobody gets left behind.”

Jackson watched her lift a broken fence panel out of the road with two other volunteers.

She could barely stand upright afterward, but she didn’t pause.

Didn’t complain.

Didn’t break.

He felt a swell of respect he couldn’t name — something close to reverence.

Around mid-morning, someone turned up the radio on the back of a pickup truck.

A reporter’s voice cut through the static:

“Councilwoman Marjorie Kellum has resigned effective immediately, citing ‘health concerns’ and an inability to continue in her role following the catastrophic failure of the Briar Creek Dam.’”

A hush passed over the volunteers.

Jackson exhaled slowly.

Everyone knew what “health concerns” meant:

scandal, liability, cowardice — pick your poison.

Asha just nodded, jaw set.

“Good,” she said softly.

“No one should lead a town they refuse to see.”

She didn’t gloat.

She didn’t smile.

She simply kept working.

As if the town had always been hers to tend.

As for Thomas, his name whispered across the relief station like a rumor:

“Gone.”

“Took off.”

“Maybe drowned.”

“Maybe ran.”

No one knew.

No one had seen him since the night the dam broke.

Jane arrived carrying blankets, her clothes still smelling like the library stacks.

When people asked if she’d heard anything about Thomas, she just shrugged and said:

“Karma is a bitch, and dark waters run deep.”

Then she handed Jackson a thermos of coffee and disappeared into the crowd.

Her bluntness didn’t shock him.

Not today.

Jackson carried boxes of canned food into the community hall, swept mud from front steps, and helped haul soaked furniture to the curb.

He worked beside strangers and old classmates, and beside Asha whenever their paths crossed.

Every time he watched her steady a frightened family or coax a stubborn homeowner into accepting help, he felt something old in him crack open.

Asha had been fighting for this town long before the dam failed.

Long before Marjorie’s lies.

Long before Jackson started paying attention.

How had he never seen the weight she carried?

Near the end of the day, as volunteers sorted blankets inside the school gym, Jackson paused at a window streaked with dried rain.

He thought of Becky.

They had drifted — slowly, silently — pulled apart by ideology, exhaustion, misunderstandings, life.

But she mattered.

And the events of the past day made it clear how fragile people were, how quickly the world could shift under their feet.

He whispered to himself:

“I need to check on her.”

Not as an obligation.

Not as nostalgia.

But because friendship — real friendship — deserved tending, just like everything else they were trying to rebuild.

He hoped she would open the door.

He hoped they could find their way back.

In the fading light, Asha raised her bullhorn one last time:

“Same time tomorrow. We’ve still got a lot of town left to save.”

Jackson realized he wanted to be part of that.

Maybe for the first time in his life, he wasn’t watching the world happen.

He was standing in it.