Darned if You Do Read Free Page B

apartment open and a baritone voice call, “
Machree?
What are you doing up?”
    â€œConnor! Where did you go?” He must have noticed that the lights were on. She went to greet him with a hug. He was in a thick, sky blue terry robe and black leather slippers. So he hadn’t gone outdoors.
    â€œDown in the basement, starting the generator.”
    â€œYou mean it actually works? It did all this?” She gestured around the warm, well-lit apartment with its humming mechanicals.
    â€œOf course,” he replied, his gentle tone belying the hurt in his eyes.
    â€œOh, Connor, I’m sorry! It was wrong of me to doubt you!”
    The generator had become a point of contention when Betsy and Connor had attended a farm auction—Connor loved auctions—and he had raised his hand once too often while bidding on a big, old, dusty generator and found himself in possession of it. He had had to hire someone to truck the thing to the building Betsy owned and help him wrestle it into the basement. Then, after cleaning it of dust, dirt, and worse, he’d had to construct exhaust piping for it. It had taken him a week of tinkering to get its diesel engine to run in more than fits and starts, and when he did, it was noisy, and the piping leaked and filled the basement with noxious fumes. It had taken all Betsy’s reserve not to declare the thing a failure and order it removed.
    Why didn’t she? Because he was so proud of having acquired, at a bargain price, a machine that he hoped never to need but would be priceless if he did.
    Connor had the soul of a survivalist. In the basement he also kept a big, padlocked, waterproof chest filled with water treatment pills, a serious first aid kit, and enough canned goods and dried food to keep them both fed and watered for at least a month. He kept his car in top condition and rarely let the gas gauge go lower than half empty. He was a more-than-adequate plumber and electrician, and good—no, great—at first aid.
    Betsy had found his pessimistic attitude toward civilization’s durability aggravating at times. But now that awful old generator was chugging away at so great a distance its racket could not be heard, its leak long corrected, and she was warm and able to operate her well-lit kitchen, and even open her shop for business later—much later—that morning. And the same was true of her entire building, with two other tenants in the upstairs apartments and two other businesses on the ground floor.
    â€œI think we’re the only point of light at this end of the lake,” Connor said now.
    â€œYou mean you did go outside?”
    â€œIndeed not,” he said, raising both hands, amused. “I got out my crank-powered radio and listened to the news. This whole end of the lake is without power, trees are blocking roads, and there is flash flooding all over the county. They’re asking people to stay at home. My cell phone can’t get a signal, since there’s no power to feed to the towers out here.”
    â€œWow,” she said. Connor was not saying
I told you so
even with the expression on his face.
    She laughed at his courteous reserve and embraced him again. “I love you,” she said. “You are amazing. And thank you for buying that horrible, noisy, smelly, wonderful machine.”
    â€œYou are welcome. Now can we go back to bed?” he said. “I could use another couple hours of sleep.”

Chapter Four

    A T midafternoon, the power was still out in Excelsior. Clouds had thickened again, and though the violent storms had passed, there was occasional heavy rain and a chill wind. Between that and some of the trees having been largely stripped of their leaves, suddenly it looked, and felt, like November, though it was not yet October; not a pleasant situation when houses and stores were without heat and light.
    People had begun cleaning up their yards, whether just picking up debris by hand,