Page 8

8

FLORENCE

I scream bloody murder when Shelby finally opens the door because she has a gun pointed at us. A gun, of all things! I explained that when she didn’t answer the door, Herb went around the side to see if she was in the kitchen, and then we thought we’d try the door once more because she must be home this far past the girls’ bedtime.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Shelby asks breathlessly, holding her heart and sitting herself down on the nearest armchair to breathe.

“The power is out at the Oleander and Heather didn’t know who to call.”

“Well, why didn’t you call me?” she says, and she still seems quite sour with us. She places the gun in a box and locks it, then blows out a long slow breath and tries to be gentler with us. “She should have fucking called me. A first course of action before giving me an actual heart attack.”

“We did, dear,” I tell her. “Call you. Eight times.”

“Oh. Shit.”

“Where’s your phone?”

“I don’t know, it literally vanished. Okay, wait, what about the generator? You’re telling me the backup generator didn’t come on either?”

“I don’t know much about generators, but it appears not.”

“Louis Gomez in room nine is a wizard with that sort of thing—well, you know that, but he’s still at his daughter’s for the holidays,” Herb adds.

“Okay,” Shelby says. “Damn. Everyone’s okay?” she asks and we nod. “So, we need to get someone over there. Did Heather call anyone else to help?”

“Well, after she couldn’t reach you, Mort suggested trying Evan or maybe Clay to come take a look, but then she just started crying saying everyone was gonna die, so we thought we’d take over. Plus Evan was off shift and lives across town and you mentioned Clay was at work, so we figured this was best,” I say.

“Right,” Shelby says. “Shit. Okay. Wait here a minute and just…make yourselves at home while I set up the portable generator heater in the girls’ room and try to find my damn phone.”

We pull quilts from a pile by the stack of firewood and bundle up as the house gets colder. Everyone around these parts has generator-powered heaters and firewood. We just wait out a power outage in bad storms as a way of life. Shelby pokes her head back around the hall corner and adds…

“In the meantime, please call Willard’s HVAC, will you Florence? Tell them it’s an emergency.” And I do. At least nobody is connected to any medical equipment or anything. It’s not that sort of place. There are a few gas heaters and fireplaces at the Oleander’s too, so the worst of it will be missing a Great British Bake Off marathon and a lot of complaining, but they’ll live.

Herb’s the only resident who still has a driver’s license. Bernie has an old Firebird he stores in the back lot and spends summer days trying to restore it, but I’ve never actually seen him drive, so I can only assume Herb is the only one who still does, but that’s not the reason I keep him as a friend, mind you; don’t get the wrong idea about that. He smokes cigars in the car so I earn my rides each time putting up with that filth. I told him it smelled barnyardy and he said actually some cigars are supposed to smell barnyardy and musky but that I was incorrect and his smelled like wood and leather. I told him I just bought a new cherry blossom–scented shampoo and I preferred not to waste my nine dollars on cherry blossom shampoo only to smell like a barnyard or an old book, and could he wait ten minutes until we arrived and smoke it outdoors. The saga is never ending.

“I think she meant sit here and don’t touch anything when she told you to make yourself at home,” I tell Millie as she plucks through the bottles on the rolling bar and holds one up. The flames from the fire are too dim for me to make it out. “Chocolate vodka,” she explains. I didn’t know they made such a thing.

“I think we could all go for a drink,” Herb says, warming his hands in front of the fire. It’s no use telling them that maybe now’s not the time, and let’s deal with getting heat to thirty-five seniors before they freeze to death, but I let them have their fun because I guess there’s not much we can do except get the right people over there to help.

After Shelby sets the girls up in one bed with extra blankets and a heater, and after Willard’s is on the way to the Oleander’s, she joins us by the fire and we huddle in—Shelby on the floor in front of the ottoman, and Herb sitting on the hearth. Me and Millie in armchairs with blankets across our legs. We’re used to whiteouts and power outages up here—we’re built sturdy for it—but right now, knowing there’s some psychopath out there on the loose, it takes a different shape, and I can tell everyone is on edge.

“I gave her a list for emergencies,” Shelby says, taking the Baileys away from Herb who tried to take a swig straight from the bottle, placing it back down on the coffee table.

“I mean what if it were a fire? Would she call me and send you all over town before calling the fire department?” Shelby seethes, and she has every reason to be worked up.

“She said she didn’t want to get the bill from Willard’s if it was something Clay or someone could fix,” Millie says and I see the expression on Shelby’s face shift when she hears this. We aren’t supposed to know there are money troubles. I don’t know much, really. I wish I did—just that things are tight, so I think Heather was trying to help, bless her.

“Herb wanted an egg foo young anyway, so we were headed to the Super Jumbo on the way,” I say, patting Shelby’s back.

“If Willard’s can’t get it back up and running, we’ll call Helping Hands—that transport service—in case we need to bus everyone over to the Y for the night. God, I hope not,” Shelby says.

“Willard’s is heading there and will call back in thirty. Heather’s a basket case, but they’re all fine,” I say, placing my phone on the coffee table so we all hear the call when it comes. Then I take a sip of the warming martini that’s really just vodka and Baileys in a mug, but Millie can call it what she likes, it’s hitting the spot.

We’re all quiet for a few minutes and I look around Shelby’s house in the flickering light. A cozy, one-hundred-year-old farmhouse, creaky floors, drafty windows. It’s tidy but small, slightly dated with its wood paneling and kitchen wallpaper patterned with small fruit baskets, but it’s like every other house in this neck of the woods, and people seem to like the nostalgia of it; the cabin feel. There aren’t a lot of HGTV-style renos up here and I like it that way. Maybe it’s because it’s something to rely on—that it all stays the same here and feels like it’s suspended in time, dated as it may be. It’s a comfort.

“I didn’t hear about blackouts or any lines down,” Shelby says. She stands, goes to the counter and checks the gun box is locked for the third time and brings a few more candles over, which she sets on the coffee table to help light the room. It feels like we’re sitting around a campfire in the woods, and it’s not so far off from that. Herb didn’t get his egg foo young, so he’s chomping on a sleeve of butter crackers he found when he was “making himself at home” and Millie’s already downed a couple of shots of Baileys, which I wasn’t aware was meant to be consumed that way, so she’s smiling inappropriately considering the situation. The old fool is of no help whatsoever.

I, however, am not here to eat at Super Jumbo or get tipsy off expired Baileys. I am here on a fact-finding mission for my new podcast, even though I haven’t told anyone that. I looked it up on my laptop yesterday, and I have a plan. “Shelby, dear. While we’re waiting for Willard’s I wanted to say I saw the news, and I know you must be anxious about seeing that footage.”

Shelby seems to freeze at this, her eyes wide and slightly shocked. Nobody talks about what happened to her, like a silent pact we’ve all made, but it’s time. Something’s happening. Herb puts the packet of butter crackers down and Millie stops midsip and stares at me.

“Is it okay if I ask you a couple of questions?” I ask, taking out a notepad and pen.

“Now?” Herb says, more loudly than necessary.

“We can’t go anywhere at the moment, nobody has much to say, so I thought maybe we can talk about what the hell’s really going on around here.”

“Flor, I’m not sure what you mean. The footage didn’t show anything useful,” Shelby says. “Nothing I didn’t already know—we all know a guy got in. It didn’t help anything seeing a blur on a camera. So…”

“Well,” I say. “It’s just that I know your car battery isn’t dead, because I was with you just a few weeks ago when I tagged along while you ran errands, and you got a bunch of those candy cane things filled with M my God. Someone wanted at least one of us dead.