Chapter 15: Power Out

The lights went out at ten past two.

I woke on the couch to a silence with no refrigerator hum in it, and the dark was complete.

The wind had picked up, and rain was coming sideways against the windows.

I felt my way to the stove and opened the door.

The coals were orange and low, and the woodbox beside it held three split logs.

I fed two of them in and kept the last.

Then I pulled on my jacket and went out to the porch for more, and the wood stacked there was soaked through.

I came back in with an armload that hissed on the coals and filled the room with smoke.

"Open the damper," Lena said.

She was standing in the hall door in her cardigan with a blanket around her shoulders.

I opened it, and the smoke began to leave.

"The bedroom has no heat," she said. "I can see my breath."

"Take the couch. I'll sit by the stove."

"Don't be noble. Rule four says you sleep on the couch. It doesn't say I can't sit on it."

She crossed the room, sat on the far cushion, and pulled her knees up under the blanket.

I sat down at the other end and left a cushion's width between us.

For a while we listened to the rain.

The stove ticked. The wet logs spat.

"My hands are dead," Lena said.

She held them out in the orange light, and the fingertips were white.

"Give me them."

I hadn't planned to say it.

She looked at me for a long moment, and I expected her to say rule five.

Instead she moved down the couch and put both hands flat against my ribs, under my open jacket, against my shirt.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Silence Was Not Forgiveness from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.