“Power went out last night. We need to form a team and go check on our neighbors. Not everyone has generators or a backup source of heat.”
Jeb’s generator had kicked on automatically, and being located at the back of his house outside the laundry room, it hadn’t made enough noise to wake him. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and blinked. Judging by the pale hint of light on the horizon, the full break of dawn was an hour away.
“What time is it, anyway?”
“Five thirty and time to get rollin’,” Tony replied. “I’ve already called Pete. He’s got a woodstove for heat, so his wife won’t freeze to death while he’s out helpin’ others. And seein’ you without a shirt is bad for my self-esteem. I must’ve been in the back row when muscles were handed out.”
Jeb knew Pete, a fledgling farmer in his thirties. Chafing his hands, he invited his neighbor inside. “Can’t help how my upper half looks. What’s the temp out there?”
“Twenty below, and Myrna says it’ll be even colder tonight.”
Jeb shut the door. He was all for helping neighbors, but if he, Tony, and Pete meant to be effective, they’d need to divide the area into sections, gather emergency supplies, and keep in touch by cell phone in case one of them came up against a situation he couldn’t handle alone.
Over coffee that Jeb made quickly at his built-in coffee center, the two men discussed a plan of action. When Jeb was asked which road he wanted to take, he said he’d cover Elderberry Lane. Bad of him, he guessed, but if his message writer lived on that road, maybe she’d get her wish and find a hero standing on her porch.
Jeb found himself thinking of the woman often. She sounded so isolated. He had wished a dozen times that he could figure out which house she lived in and knock on her door to ask if she would make those chocolate chip cookies for him. He’d driven Elderberry a few times early of a morning, and he’d only ever seen a dark-haired woman walking her little girl to the bus stop. In the glare of his headlights, she’d looked too pretty to be the message writer, and her child had been wearing pink snow boots, which the composer of the notes said she couldn’t afford to buy. Nope. If a woman that pretty were in the market for a rescuer, she’d have no problem finding one.
Interrupting Jeb’s thoughts, Tony said, “Even though I had my diesel truck hooked up to a block heater all night, I had a hell of a time startin’ it this mornin’. Way I figure, even if we have only a team of three, we can drive some of our neighbors to relatives or friends who have backup heat.”
Jeb took a swig of coffee. “How long do you think this outage will last?”
“Could be days if another storm hits. Pete knows a guy who works at Mystic’s Lightning Bug Electric, and he says lines are down all over the area. They get one fixed, and another tree falls, and just the weight of the ice is snappin’ the wires in two.” Tony shook his head. “I’ve never seen it this cold. Myrna forgot a plate of brownies in our microwave. It’s mounted above our cookin’ range on an outside wall. Our house felt warm as could be, but when she found those brownies this mornin’, they were froze solid with frost on top. Without heat, some folks could freeze to death.”
The thought gave Jeb the shivers. “What’s our plan if we run across a neighbor who has no friend or relative in town with a woodstove or generator?”
“If we got room, which I don’t, we can put ’em up in our homes. Or we can drive ’em to a motel or B and B that has a backup generator. A last resort would be to call the cops. The churches will provide shelter, and the cops will know where to take people.”
Jeb could count the churches in Mystic Creek on the fingers of one hand. He guessed that when they ran out of room, the fire station, the sheriff’s department, and other public places would take people in.
The mention of shelters reminded Jeb of his livestock and chickens. “Before I can go shopping for emergency supplies, I have to tend to my animals. My truck will be overloaded, so I’ll leave Bozo in the laundry room. Not much in there he can eat.”
“Long as you’ll be gone, the doors might start lookin’ tasty to him,” Tony said with a chuckle. “Good thing you’re a woodworker. You can replace anything he chews up.”
* * *
Jeb donned shoe chains and thick outerwear before taking care of his animals. He knew that Charlie Ramsey would open up the sporting goods store early so people could get supplies. Jeb just prayed Charlie had plenty in stock.
Marble, Jeb’s frosted gray Lincoln ewe, met him at the gate of her pen. For a moment, Jeb thought his eyesight had gone haywire. The sheep looked lopsided. After entering the enclosure, he saw that Marble was as bald as an onion on one side from her flank to her shoulder. Say what? He walked her pasture and found where her mottled wool had frozen to the ice and been jerked out by the roots when she stood up. Ouch! Jeb led the ewe into her shed and put a sheep jacket on her, threw in fresh straw, and made sure the electric ring in her trough had kept her water from freezing.
En route to the barn, he nearly stepped on a gray mourning dove roosting in the snow. For weeks now, he’d seen a pair of doves on his land. Circling the bird, Jeb realized it had frozen to death. He wondered where its partner was. Mourning doves were monogamous, and he knew this bird’s mate would die of grief. Recalling how Marble’s wool had frozen to the ground, Jeb concluded that the dove may have gotten stuck in the snow. It saddened him to think of its mate left alone to face certain death.
* * *
With a hand gone jerky from the freezing air, Amanda tried calling her landlord again and still got his answering machine. At this point, she was inclined to believe he just wasn’t answering the phone. If so, he had a great game going, collecting the rent and spending nothing on repairs. She couldn’t afford to fix anything. When this was all over, she’d have to start looking for another place to live.
Above them, a loud cracking sound cut through the air. Chloe gave a start and stared at the ceiling. “Mommy, is our roof breaking?”
“No, of course not.” Amanda injected more certainty into her voice than she actually felt. She and Mark had lived in a few dumps, but the roofs had always held fast. “You know how this house creaks at night? I think this is the same thing.” Only much louder.
* * *
It took Jeb nearly an hour in town to buy emergency supplies. The backseat of his crew-cab pickup was packed with survival blankets, fuel and wicks for paraffin and kerosene lanterns, D batteries for flashlights, a few actual flashlights in case some people didn’t have one, hand warmers, candles, matches, miniature propane tanks for gas camp stoves, about three dozen energy bars, two of which he’d reserved for himself and tossed on the dash, and several cases of bottled water.
Only then could he begin checking on residents. Though he’d chosen Elderberry Lane as his primary route, he knew several older women who lived alone on Ponderosa. His mother hung out with them at the senior center, and she would expect Jeb to check on them since he lived so close.
He decided to start near the town center on Ponderosa, so his first stop was at Kay Brickle’s. The postmistress of Mystic Creek, she was short and stout with permed gray hair and a mouth that always seemed to be in high gear, mostly to spread gossip.
Trying to be polite, Jeb cut her off. “I’ve got no time to chat, Kay. It appears to me that you’re set up to weather the storm.” Jeb heard the hum of a generator outside. “Does that motor produce enough power to run your furnace?”
“Well . . .” Kay began most sentences with that word, drawing it out until it grated on Jeb’s nerves. “Of course it runs my furnace, and I’ve got a woodstove as backup. I’m not stupid like some folks I could name in this town.”
Jeb grew worried as he drove farther along Ponderosa. He got no answers when he knocked on the doors where he knew his mom’s friends lived. As he progressed from house to house, he saw bright illumination gleaming through the windows of Mary Melissa Dilling’s place.
He thanked God for his shoe chains as he walked to her front porch. From inside he heard a chorus of voices and laughter. When he knocked, Donna Harris, who lived on the adjacent acre, opened the door. Her blond-streaked hair was feathered around her face to set off her merry green eyes.
“Hi, Jeb. Welcome to our ice storm party!”
Jeb peered over her shoulder to see Donna’s sister, Lisa Meekins, Ellie Kay Hathaway, Nancy Hayes, Michelle Nelson, and Thipin Jarlego gathered around a large round table. It looked as if they were playing cards.
“I just wanted to check on all of you,” Jeb explained. “I was getting pretty worried when no one answered my knocks.”
“Mary Melissa has a backup generator!” Thipin Jarlego, a petite blonde with blue eyes who looked younger than her sixty-five years, flashed a ready grin at him over her fanned cards. “When we heard this storm was coming, Judy Burr lent us her husband, Ralph. He blew out our pipes, filled them with safe antifreeze, and we moved in here, dogs and cats included. We’re snug as bugs in a rug.”
Jeb thought he counted five dogs and six cats, but there was so much activity going on that he might have missed a critter or two. He noted that Mary Melissa’s woodstove emitted a blast of heat. “You have plenty of wood within easy reach?”
“We put on shoe chains yesterday and loaded my back veranda with enough logs to last a week,” Mary Melissa assured him as she crossed the living room to give him a hug. Mary Melissa, whose friends called her M&M, was a short sixty-year-old woman with dark brown hair and eyes, and an attractive oval face. “Can’t believe you drove on those icy roads to check on us. Your mama and daddy raised you right.”
Donna patted Jeb’s arm. “No need for you to worry. The Burrs are fine, too, with their backup power, and Sheryl Moses, our young lady fireman—who’s available, by the way—winterized her house and is staying at the station in case of emergencies.”
Jeb ignored the matchmaking attempt. “How about Father John at the Catholic church?”
“The congregation put in a backup generator a couple of years ago that supplies power to the church and the rectory, so he’s fine. Probably calling around to offer other folks shelter. If people bring food and bedding, that church will hold a lot of families, and the church kitchen was designed to cook for crowds.”
“That’s good to know. I’ve only just started my rounds.” Jeb refused food, even though he was starving. “I need to get back out there. Tony Bradley is covering Huckleberry. I need to hit Elderberry. I think a lot of older folks live along that lane.”
Donna laughed. “Have fun with Lucy and Ethel Patrick.”
“Who?” Jeb had never met the women.
Donna’s smile broadened. “You’ll know who they are soon enough.”
As Jeb left the house, he heard one of the women say, “He is so stinkin’ cute. If I were thirty years younger, I’d snatch him up in a heartbeat. What’s the matter with the younger gals in this town?”
Jeb chuckled, forgot to watch his step, and almost did a butt plant on the ice.
* * *
Elderberry turned out to be the geriatric center of Mystic Creek. Jeb started at the more populated end where the road intersected with West Sugar Pine. He helped so many old people that only a few stuck in his mind. One memorable character was Christopher Doyle, a hunched old fellow who claimed he was ninety years young. At his next stop, Jeb found a sweetheart named Esther McGraw, eighty-one and still going strong. She had no heat, and her phone wouldn’t work because it ran off electricity.
“Newfangled gadgets!” she complained. Wobbly on her feet, possibly because she was weighted down with blankets, she led the way to her living room. “I’m worried about why my daughter hasn’t come to check on me. It isn’t like her.”
Jeb secured her house and drove her to her daughter’s. By two that afternoon, his day had become a blur. At some point, hunger forced him to grab a frozen energy bar, break off chunks, and hold them in his mouth until they thawed enough to chew.
He kept in touch with Tony and Pete by cell phone. They sounded as exhausted as he felt, and he was more than thirty years younger than Tony. During his rounds, he met many old people and a couple of younger women, Deb Kistler and Arlene Harmon, thirty-two and forty-one, respectively, who both had backup generators and looked after each other.
The gray gloom of dusk had descended by the time Jeb reached the end of Elderberry. A clapboard house sat back from the gravel thoroughfare, now overlaid with thick ice. He saw no tire tracks outside the garage and decided it must be a vacant rental. As he turned his truck around to head home, he noticed disturbed spots of snow in the front yard. Footprints. On the off chance that someone lived there, Jeb parked on the road and trudged through the white drifts to gain the rickety porch. He heard footsteps inside, and a moment later, a woman cracked open the door to peer out at him over a flimsy chain guard. All he could see clearly of her face was one brown eye, which regarded him with suspicion.
By then, Jeb had his introductory speech memorized. “Hi, I’m Jeb Sterling from over on Huckleberry Road.”
When he’d finished his spiel, she drew the door open a bit wider but didn’t disengage the chain. With a clearer view of her, Jeb realized she was the woman he’d seen walking her daughter to the bus stop. Saying she was pretty didn’t do her justice. She had a lovely oval face, a wealth of long dark hair, and beautiful coffee brown eyes. She wore a jacket with a blanket draped over her shoulders.
“My kitchen pipe broke last night and gushed water everywhere. I had no light to turn off the water main. Now the leak has stopped by itself. I think the line froze solid.”
Jeb guessed she had no source of heat with the power out. She looked halfway frozen, and her eyes conveyed a panic she was barely holding at bay. With temperatures predicted to plummet to thirty below that night, he doubted she and her child would survive. He didn’t want to inquire after her husband or ask if she had one. Those seemed like rude questions to hit her with.
“I can come in and have a look if you’d like,” he offered.
She made a gallant effort to conceal the fact that she was shivering. If the house was in as awful condition as the front porch, it probably had little if any insulation.
“I guess,” she replied, sounding none too certain that it was wise to let him inside.
“Great. I’ll go get my tools.”
When Jeb returned to the porch, the woman didn’t unlatch the chain to allow him entry. “How can I know for sure that you’re truly a neighbor?” she asked. “My little girl and I live alone. I may not be the brightest person alive, but I’m not so dense that I’ll let a strange man into my house without verifying his identity first.”
Jeb nearly retorted that he guessed she and her kid could freeze to death if she thought that was a safer option. But he wanted to be inside before he told her that she and the child would need to stay elsewhere for a few days. He saw fear in her eyes, the kind that ran so deep it obliterated a person’s good sense.
“Smart thinking,” he said instead. Drawing his phone from his pocket, he called the Bradley place, and Myrna picked up. He explained the situation and asked the older woman if she’d be kind enough to vouch for him. Then he slipped the phone through the crack of the door. “Here, talk to Mrs. Bradley. She lives across the road from me and has known me for years. Her husband is out helping neighbors, too.”
With quivering fingers, the woman grasped the cell phone. Apparently Myrna sang Jeb’s praises, because after returning the device to him, the young woman unfastened the chain guard and let him inside.
When Jeb stepped over the threshold into a small living room, he felt no rise in temperature. Shit. He scanned the living area and saw no woodstove, only electric baseboard heaters. A little girl with tousled dark hair was huddled on an old sofa with blankets and pillows piled over her. Her eyes, brown like her mother’s, grew as round as dimes
when Jeb smiled at her. Hmm. A woman and girl, living alone, with lousy heaters. No tire tracks in the driveway, either, to indicate that this gal owned a car. Could she be my message writer?
His brows snapped together in a frown when he saw the thick sheet of ice that had formed on the kitchen floor. “You stay here, if you don’t mind,” he said to the woman. “I’m wearing shoe chains and won’t be as likely to slip.” He glanced down and saw that she wore only socks, one with a hole in the toe. “Chains really help.”
Upon entering the kitchen, Jeb saw that a wall pipe under the sink had frozen and burst. There wasn’t a whole lot he could do except find the water main and turn it off, which would prevent further flooding when things thawed.
He scanned the kitchen. His livestock had better digs. Even so, this woman had tried to make it into a home, with ruffled curtains at the window, red apple canisters on the countertop, a teapot clock on one wall, and cute magnets on the refrigerator. His gaze jerked to the table, where a pink tablet—a very familiar pink—lay next to a vase of fake flowers and an empty cast-iron skillet. Focusing on the stationery, he saw a stack of slender strips resting on top. No question; she’s my message writer.
This was no time to think about that. He had more urgent matters to focus on. “Ma’am, where is your pump house? I need to turn your water main off.”
She gestured with a hand that was faintly blue from the cold. “Out behind the garage, but if you do that, we won’t have anything to drink or be able to use the bathroom.”
Jeb knew that there was no way she would get a drop of water out of those frozen pipes. If it fell to below thirty tonight, this woman and her child could freeze to death. Her wary posture warned him not to say anything about that yet. He’d deal with relocating them when he returned to the house.
Chapter Three
Amanda yearned to dive back under the covers with Chloe, but she couldn’t until the man left. No drinking water. No toilets. She studied her daughter, who had gone quiet. That worried Amanda. Chloe always chattered nonstop, falling silent only when she was asleep. Was the child getting hypothermic even as Amanda studied her? Panic rolled over Amanda. She couldn’t think what to do. Her brain felt as frozen as the water on the kitchen floor. Eyes dull, Chloe stared at Amanda. Present physically but disconnected mentally. Amanda felt the same way.