Chapter 8: The Stairwell

For three days we were polite.

He knocked before he came in to check the faucet. I said thank you. He said it was nothing.

On Wednesday night a storm took the power out of the whole block.

I was home from the pharmacy, sitting on Grandma's couch with a textbook.

Everything went black, and the refrigerator shut off with a sigh.

Doors opened in the hall.

Somebody laughed, and somebody dropped something.

Then Maureen's voice came down the stairwell, loud and cheerful.

"Nobody panic! The fuse box is in the basement and my son knows where it is."

I found Grandma's flashlight in the drawer under the phone.

Crispin was already on the stairs, in jeans and a gray sweatshirt, with a headlamp on his forehead and a toolbox in one hand.

"Where are you going?" he said.

"You'll need someone to hold the light."

"I have a light."

"It's on your head. You can't aim it and work."

He looked at me for a long second, and then he turned and started down.

The basement smelled like cold stone and old paint.

The fuse box was bolted to the far wall behind a stack of folding chairs.

I stood close beside him with the flashlight pointed where he said.

He worked fast and said little.

He had hung his headlamp on a nail.

The beam from my flashlight caught the side of his face, the line of his jaw and the pulse in his throat.

My hand wasn't steady, and the light shook.

"Hold it still, please," he said.

"I am."

"Lacey."

"I'm trying."

He turned his head, and the light was right on his eyes.

He did not look away.

"Then evict me," I said.

I had meant to say something else. I had meant to say I was sorry about the stairwell.

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