“Maybe,” Cherie allowed.
“You know Doug’s not half as bad as some of these guys,” Angela went on. “At least you know he’s not with some hooker—”
“Do I?” Cherie said.
“Oh, please! Yes, you do! He might not always have the most common sense but the big doofus loves you and that’s got to count for something.”
Cherie smiled and shifted under her blanket, watching the candles flicker, thinking of times she and Doug had lit candles even when there wasn’t a blackout.
“It does,” she admitted. “It counts for a lot. I just don’t like being home alone in the dark. And I wish he’d stand up to Timmy Harpwell. The guy is such an—”
“‘Asshole,’” Angela chimed in.
“I was going to say ‘idiot,’ but ‘asshole’ works for me.”
They both laughed. Cherie had been feeling sorry for herself, home alone in the storm. She wished now that when Doug had told her he would be out late, she had asked Angela to come over. But, of course, absurdly petite as she was—the girl still had the same body she’d had at twelve—she might have just blown away.
Barks erupted from beneath the coffee table and she jumped, heart hammering in her chest. Her little terrier bolted from beneath the table in a blur of reddish gold fur, yipping his head off.
“Oh, you little prick!” Cherie said, one hand over her chest, feeling the rapid thunder of her racing heart as she caught her breath.
“What’s going on?” Angela asked.
“Brady’s having a fit.”
The dog stood in front of the front door, barking and sniffing. He turned to look at her and then erupted in another round of lunatic barks, edging closer to the door.
“What’s he barking at?” Angela asked.
“No idea,” Cherie said, throwing back the blanket and sitting up.
She wore an old, faded green Coventry High T-shirt and plaid flannel pajama pants. Her red hair up in a ponytail and no makeup at all, she was not prepared for visitors, so she prayed that this wasn’t Doug bringing one of the guys home from the garage. She could see it now, one of his buddies too drunk to drive in the blizzard, ending up sleeping on her sofa.
“Ange, honey, let me go. I think this might be Doug.”
“If it’s not, call me back. I’m bored.”
“At least you still have power,” Cherie said, walking to the door. “I’ll talk to you later.”
They said their good nights and Cherie ended the call. Brady kept barking, his nails scritch-scratching against the small rectangle of tiles by the front door. Cherie unlocked the door and opened it, hugging herself against the frigid air that swept in. Even the streetlights were out, but she could see there was no car in the driveway or on the street in front of the house.
Barking, Brady darted past her legs and squeezed out through the six-inch gap she’d opened.
“Damm it,” Cherie snapped. “Come back here, you spaz!”
But there was no stopping the little dog. Brady rocketed down the steps and into the snow. It was so deep that he was practically lost, jumping and barking and spinning in circles as the wind swept brutally across the yard.
“Shit,” she whispered. “Brady, please, come on! Get inside!”
For a moment she held out hope, but the dog just kept barking. She sighed, getting more irritated by the moment, and slipped her feet into the boots she’d kicked off by the door earlier in the day. Still clutching her cell phone, she stepped out into the storm, realizing immediately that it had been a mistake to come out—even for a minute—without a jacket.
The cold bit into her alabaster skin and her teeth chattered.
“Come on, baby,” she said, descending the few steps to reach the dog.
It seemed like at least a foot had fallen already and she winced as the driving snow pelted her face. The cold sank its teeth into her, digging all the way down to her bones. Cherie started across the lawn, boots sinking deeply into the heavy, wet snow. The wind struck her so hard that she staggered, trying to keep her balance, and as it whipped past her ears she almost thought she could hear a voice, a hushed whisper.
Brady paused his barking, cocking his head, ears at attention. He seemed to be staring at her as he took a snow-shuffling step backward. Flakes had built up on his snout and now the wind drove against the little dog hard enough to ruffle his fur.
The wind whispered to her again and this time Cherie turned, eyes narrowed against the storm. In the blinding whiteness she could make out the warm lights inside her house, and that just pissed her off more. She spun on the dog, took a step toward him, and Brady erupted into a fresh round of barking. Cherie knew all his tones, just as a mother knows the difference in cries of hunger or panic or pain in her infant, but these were new to her, a plaintive, frantic barking that tugged at her heartstrings. If not for the storm she would have wanted to grab the dog up and snuggle with him, give him comfort. Right now, she just wanted to kick his ass.
“That’s it!” she said, slogging toward him, turning her face away from the stinging brutality of the storm.
The dog barked fiercely, backing up, trying to elude her. When she was nearly upon him, he turned to try to run, but could not move quickly in the deepening snow, and Cherie snatched him into her arms.
“Come on, you little shit,” she cooed lovingly, pressing his small body against her chest. “Let’s get in.…”
The whisper came again, carried on the wind, a low susurrus that insinuated itself into her ears like the soft, chuffing laughter of mischievous children playing hide-and-seek. This time she heard it more clearly and she strained to listen, thinking there must be words in that whisper, that someone must be nearby. Perhaps lost or injured in the storm.
“Hello?” she called, turning toward the bushes that ran along the front of the house. The storm stole her voice away, carrying it off to be a whisper in someone else’s ear, and her bright orange hair blew across her eyes.
Screw it,
she thought, turning into the gale and slogging back to the front stairs. Somehow she had come a good twenty feet from the door without realizing it. Snow had begun to rime the fabric of her clothes and to cling to her cheeks and eyelashes.
Just as she reached the steps, Brady began to whine and tremble and then at last to growl. Cherie glanced round, wondering if he’d heard the whisper, too, and while she was turned away the dog twisted in her grasp and gave her a vicious bite to the hand, his teeth breaking the skin and digging in. Crying out in pain, she let go and the dog dropped to the snow, tumbled and righted himself, and then ran off into the storm so quickly that it was almost as if he had vanished.
In shock, she stood there and stared at the place where he had disappeared into the blizzard, wondering what she was supposed to do now. The temptation to just leave him out there was great, but if anything happened to him, she would never forgive herself.
“Son of a bitch.”
She had to go in and warm up, put on some layers and a winter coat, hat, and gloves. But first she had to see to her hand, which was throbbing, the bite wound burning. For a long moment she could only stare at the punctures where Brady’s teeth had torn her flesh, and then her gaze tracked down, to the sprinkle of her blood dripping into the snow, the crimson splashes quickly being whited out again.
How did I get here?
she thought.
How did I get to this night, home alone?
Sighing, she held her injured hand against her shirt and turned to mount the steps. As she did, she realized that the wind had mostly died, as if the storm held its breath … or as if something stood between her and the worst of the gale.
It whispered and it took hold of her throat with long, frozen talons. Another yanked her hair and her head snapped backward. In the sky she saw more of them, falling from the sky with the ice and snow, driven by the wind. They twisted and slunk through the storm, turning the wind to their favor.
Frigid fingers cut deeper than Brady’s teeth.
As they lifted her and she felt her feet leave the ground, one unlaced boot slipping off and tumbling into the snow, Cherie began to cry.
Her tears turned to ice on her cheeks.
THREE
“Mr. Manning, you should not go out there,” said the Chinese waiter. “You too drunk to drive good even without this storm. You should stay. Free food and drinks. Well, maybe free coffee. We all staying tonight. We have pillows and blankets.”
Doug ruminated on that one for a blurry, boozy moment. Several waitresses had gathered to observe the waiter’s attempts to get him to stay and he couldn’t tell from their expressions whether they hoped he would or they’d rather he hit the road. If the manager of the Jade Panda was worried enough to make his staff sleep in the restaurant, maybe it was a mistake to try to drive in the blizzard.
“It’s only seven or eight miles,” he said, hearing the sloppy slurring on some words and cursing himself for that last whiskey. Or the last three.
You should stay,
a voice said in the back of his mind. A surprisingly clear, sober, nonslurred voice
. Don’t be stupid.
“I … I can’t. Cherie, my wife, she’s expecting me.”
“You call her,” said the waiter.
Peng,
Doug remembered.
His name is Peng. Actually Chinese, unlike most of the other random Asians on the staff. White people don’t know the difference.
“The phone is not working but you have cell phone, yes?” Peng asked.
Doug nodded, reaching into his pocket. So drunk that when he did, he felt himself slip off-balance and staggered a step and thought to himself,
You are so fuckin’ drunk.
But not so drunk that he couldn’t open up his contacts list and call
HOME.
Only after he’d stared at the screen for what seemed like forever, swaying on his feet, did he understand why the call was not going through.
No signal.
He shook his head, mind made up now. Stuffing the phone back into his pocket, swaying a little, he turned to the waiter—what the hell was his name again? He’d just known it.
“I gotta go,” he said.
The waiter started to argue but Doug was already headed for the door. He slammed out into the night, rocked by the blizzard, the cold so sharp that it instantly numbed his face. The Mustang was halfway across the lot, next to the post that held up the Jade Panda sign, but the sign was almost entirely obscured. Beneath the dim light cast by the lampposts, the true strength of the blizzard was visible … thick, heavy snow falling at a clip like he’d never seen before.
Cherie would be waiting for him. She would be worried. In the morning, she would be massively pissed off at him for getting fired, even though he’d done it standing up for her honor. But he couldn’t let her spend the night alone without any way of knowing if he was still alive. They fought like hell and she could be a total bitch at times and she took too many pills and he was worried about that, but she was his wife and he loved her. Couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.
He had to get home.
Getting out of the parking lot was a bitch. The Mustang’s tires slewed and spun and he ended up going right over the curb to get into the street, but once he was on the road and moving, he was all right.
Driving too fast. Way too drunk. In the middle of a blizzard New England would talk about for a decade.
But all right.
Until the warmth of the car’s heater began to settle into his bones and the hypnotic swipe of the windshield wipers eased their gentle rhythm into the beat of his heart, and his eyelids began to feel heavy. So heavy.
Until he came to the end of Monument Street, where the choices were left or right, but the only thing that lay straight ahead was acres of snow-laden trees.
Doug snapped his eyes open in time to hit the brakes, but the tires found no purchase and the snowbank came up too fast and then he was through it and down the hill and the hood was buckled around a tree and his forehead was bleeding and the windshield was cracked where his skull had struck it.
He heard a tire spinning as the cold began to seep in, began to settle and accumulate quickly on the glass around him.
Half conscious, he thought he saw a face out there, beyond the spider-webbing of cracks in the windshield, but he knew he must be imagining it. The only thing outside the ruined Mustang was the storm.
The engine ticked as it cooled.
Doug closed his eyes.
More than half the city had lost power. Everyone had hunkered down to wait out the blizzard, and that seemed to include the hookers and meth-heads on Copper Hill, the city’s worst neighborhood. Joe Keenan hadn’t received a single call about gunshots or domestic violence tonight, but even if he had, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to respond. The side streets were thick with snow, and if he got stuck in a drift somewhere he’d never hear the end of it.
Now he cruised along Winchester Street, noting the candlelight glow inside the old Victorians and Federal Colonials. Old-growth trees, weighted with snow, hung their branches over the road to form a surreal white tunnel. One of those old oaks had come down and taken the power line with it. Keenan rolled up in his patrol car, headlights washing over the figures in orange jackets, swaddled in hats and scarves and stomping their feet to keep warm as they cut into the splintered tree while others were dealing with the fallen power lines.
Thirteen lines down so far,
Keenan thought.
Gonna be a long night.
Tens of thousands were without power in Coventry alone, and these poor bastards were going to be working around the clock out here in the storm until every bulb was burning again. Right now they would be focused on cutting off power to the fallen lines—most of the cleanup and repair would have to wait until morning—so it surprised him to see them taking apart the massive fallen oak.
Keenan put on his blues, the lights dancing around the car, mixing with the red and orange emergency lights of the workers’ vehicles and making strange, unnatural colors. One of the workers approached the car. Keenan figured him for a foreman, considering that he seemed focused mostly on drinking from a huge thermos while the others tried not to electrocute themselves.