That night, I’d fallen asleep by accident. Head resting against the wall of the reading nook, face turned away from the lamplight. It was only a nap, but it was long enough that when my eyes blinked open, the short hand of the big antique clock on the wall was pushing ten p.m.
“Shit,” I said to no one, my voice carrying through the grand, empty house, the shelves of books all around me eventually swallowing the sound.
The snow outside was coming down heavy now, thick and fast around the streetlights. There were two lonely cars parallel parked on the road out front, already buried in white. It was so quiet, as though the snow silenced the world, a mother’s great long shhhh to her sleeping child as it fell toward the ground.
My phone blinked with a message. Was I so out of it that I hadn’t heard it ring? I pushed the button for voice mail and listened.
“Hi, sweetheart, guess who?” said the voice of my mother. “I’ve tried your cell several times, but the ringer must be off. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we are getting a surprise storm, and I’m worried about you being out so late. And before you hem and haw and even though I am still youthful enough for people to mistake me as your older sister, I am your mother and it’s my duty to worry. Can you please call me and let me know you’re all right? Love you!” There was a click, and the voice-mail system offered me a slew of options—save the message, erase the message, forward the message, followed by three more possibilities that I stopped listening to.
I called home. It barely rang once before my mother picked up.
“Sweetie! I’m so glad to hear your voice.”
“I’m fine, Mom,” I said in a tone that told her to stop being crazy. “Don’t worry about me. I’m here late all the time, remember? I love this house.”
“Yes, but not in a snowstorm.”
“They didn’t predict snow.”
“But that doesn’t mean it isn’t piling up outside,” my mother said. “And how do you plan on getting home in this? Hmmm?”
“I’ll walk, like always.”
“Oh, no, you won’t.” She was doing her best I’m your mother impersonation. “Not in this mess.”
“Ma—”
“I’m calling your father. He will come pick you up.”
“Don’t bother Dad! He’s working.”
“Exactly. Which means he’s already out and about and you’ll get picked up in a big safe police car that can handle this blizzard. My little Jeep is a death trap in snow like this, and I don’t want to risk it.”
I stood by the window, taking in the scene outside again. It was piling up fast. If I tried to walk, I would be shin deep in snow the whole way, with all the watery slush freezing at the bottom. “Fine. Call Dad.”
“Good. Though, let the record show that I was going to call your father either way, even if you did not acquiesce.”
I laughed. “That sounded very TV-lawyer-ish.”
“That’s excellent since I’ve been practicing,” she said, though the worry was still clear underneath the humor.
“Ma, I’m going to go now.”
“All right,” she sighed. “Just promise me you won’t go out in this until your father shows up. I don’t know how long it will take him to come get you, but you stay put until his car pulls up. Inside the house.”
“Yesss,” I agreed.
“I love you, Jane.”
“I love you, too.”
We both hung up.
The clock said it was five past ten. Everything was lit by a ghostly bright glow from the snow. As the minute hand made its way toward ten fifteen and onward to ten thirty and ten forty-five, I returned to my reading, occasionally glancing outside to see if my father had arrived. The hands of the clock passed eleven. A few more minutes went by, but not enough that the big hand reached a quarter after.
Then something strange happened.
The lights at the front of the house went out.
It must be the storm, I thought as I looked into the darkness of the snow and the night, trying to make out something, anything at all, now that the O’Connors’ front lawn had disappeared into blackness. A power outage. A tree fallen across wires, the weight of the ice just too much. But then I remembered the glow of my desk lamp—no, I saw it—falling across the stack of books. My coffee mug. The skin of my own hands. Illuminating the reading nook where I sat. A new thought, a question really, came to me:
Why had the lights in the front yard gone out, but not the house ones?
Why the outside, but not the inside?
Could they be on different electric grids?
That must be it, was the next thought to cross my mind. I considered calling my mother, calling my dad, too, but then decided that would be overreacting. It was just a couple of lights. The clock on the wall said it was well after eleven. My father’s police car would be pulling up any minute.
I decided to get back to my reading while I waited. I’d only turned a single page when something else happened to pull me away again, something that frightened me for real this time.
The light on the desk went out.
The darkness around me was complete.
I reached for my phone.
Quickly, I texted my father.
Daddy, are you close?