“Deal.”
We climb out and Taylor squeaks, immediately reaching back in for her winter coat. “It’s thirty degrees right now,” she says.
I nod. “It’ll get colder when the sun sets in an hour.”
“Better do this then.” She pops the trunk, and between the two of us, we still aren’t going to get everything into the cabin on one trip. We’ve each got two bags of groceries and our overnight bags, but we’ve barely made a dent.
Taylor shakes her head as she eyes the backseat. “The whole Target bedding section is stuffed back there.”
“I’ll come back out to get the water jugs, but other than that, we’re probably good to leave the rest of it.”
She follows me to the door, where I enter the code for the keyless lock.
“Your mom’s birthday?” she guesses.
“My dad is consistent,” I say as the lock whirs open.
I reach in to flip on the light, but nothing happens. “I’m going to have to check the circuit box. Go ahead and make yourself comfortable.”
After I set my load down, I go back outside and check the breakers on the side of the house, but they’re all fine.
“No luck?” Taylor asks when I come back in.
I shake my head. “I’m just going to do what any grown man would do in this situation and call my dad.”
She nods. “I’ll go check out the kitchen situation.”
My dad must be done with patients for the day because he answers his cell on the third ring. “Everything okay?” he asks.
“Kind of, except I’m here and there’s no power. I already checked the circuit breakers.”
“Huh. I’ll see if I can get hold of any neighbors, but the Egberts are the only ones there year-round. If I can’t get them, you could try walking up to their place to see if anyone is there and ask if they’ve lost power too.”
“But in the meantime . . .” I prompt him.
“Ah. In the meantime, there should be plenty of firewood so you can use any of the fireplaces, although you might do better to stay in a smaller room for warmth. And there’s the woodburning stove too. It’ll keep that side of the living room pretty warm. There’s a gas generator out in the garage. Not sure how much gas is there, but if it’s full, it’ll run the whole house for about five hours before it needs refueling. You can check and see if the water is running, and you should have enough nonperishable stuff in the cabinets to tide you over until you’re on the road in the morning.”
“Thanks, Dad. Let me know if you get hold of the Egberts.”
We hang up, and I give Taylor a look.
“I got the gist of it,” she says. “He doesn’t know what the problem is?”
“Nope.” I recap the info about the Egberts and the generator.
“Divide and conquer?” she suggests. “I’ll figure out a dinner, you get the generator, and we go from there?”
“I’ll get a fire started first,” I tell her.
I head back outside as Taylor heads for the kitchen. The cabin is two stories, but the back part—the side we entered—has all the bedrooms. The front third of the house has a vaulted ceiling and wall of windows overlooking the slight downward slope of the mountain. This makes it sound fancy; it isn’t. It was built in the sixties, I think, and it’s comfortable and cozy, but it’s mainly serviceable. It has the same furniture and bedding that my mom thrifted when they bought it.
There are five bedrooms total, and two of them have double bunkbeds for when kids—first my friends and now my niece and nephew—visit, and the other rooms have queen-sized beds for couples. How much space you have to maneuveraroundthose beds depends totally on which room.
I fetch a cord of wood from a stack on the side of the house. The air smells different here. Creekville has fresh air, so that’s not it. I pause, trying to figure out what I’m sensing, but it’s too cold to stand there thinking about it.
I enter through the front of the house this time and smile as I walk into the large, welcoming living room. It’s full of overstuffed leather sofa and chairs, most of them cracked, wisps of their stuffing poking through in a couple of places. The giant beanbag I used to fight over with Zeke is still there, and I wonder if his kids squabble over it now.
Before I even decide whether to start with the woodburning stove or the fireplace, I realize we’ve got another problem.
