It’s amazing what you can forget when you don’t want to think about it. Later Becca told me she had been worried all along about Mom not having enough pills. Not me. Maybe that was on purpose. Ever since Dad died, Becca had worried Mom would die, too. Again, not me. I refused to think about it, because thinking about something bad might make it more likely to happen. Which was stupid, but that’s how my brain works.

Anyhow, bottom line, I had to think about it now. No choice. It wasn’t like she’d die the moment she ran out of medication. Being really careful with her diet would help Mom keep her blood sugar balanced for a while. Avoiding stress, that would help, too. But the medication kept her stable over the long run, so we needed to find more pills for her, that’s all there was to it.

But how? The nearest real pharmacy was fifty miles away, down through the forests and the mountains. In the dead of winter, all snowed in like we were, it might as well be a thousand miles.

Then an idea clicked on like a beautiful lightbulb.

*  *  *

It took a while to get in to see King Man. We didn’t have a police station in Harmony, and the volunteer police officer didn’t get an office or anything, so he was running his kingdom out of the old firehouse.

“King Man,” that’s what Gronk had started calling him, ever since Reggie Kingman won the vote at the town meeting. Gronk was joking, of course, but it was sort of true, because trying to see Kingman was like waiting in line at a royal palace or something. Not that the old firehouse was much of a palace. More like a dinky garage with a useless fire truck taking up most of the space. In the back was a small, windowless room that reminded me of the custodian’s closet at school. Maybe that’s why Kingman chose it. His throne was a swivel chair, and his crown was a knitted wool hat with earflaps, because the old potbelly stove barely kept the place above freezing.

King Man’s special crystal radio that connected us to the outside world? It sat there on display, shiny and black as an ancient insect, in a wire cabinet over his desk. No microphone or speakers, just an old-fashioned headset and an antique-looking telegraph key wired up to a shortwave radio antenna.

Lucky for us, King Man knew Morse code. Learned it when he was a Boy Scout and still had the merit badge to prove it.

A bunch of people were waiting to see him, mostly to complain about the firewood tax. King Man had imposed a tax, amounting to half a cord per household, to provide for those who didn’t have enough, and to keep the fire burning for the geezers he had installed in Moulton House.

From what I could tell, everybody in line thought it was a great idea, making sure nobody froze to death, but they all had a good excuse for why they shouldn’t have to give up quite so much firewood. And it seemed like most of them were still grumbling when they left. Or complaining how it wasn’t fair that Webster Bragg refused to contribute when everyone knew he had more wood pellets than anyone else.

Being the king didn’t look like much fun, that’s for sure.

“Charlie Cobb,” he said when I finally got in the door. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

The smile faded from his eyes as he heard that Mom might run out of medicine.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I wish there was something I could do. Truly, I do.”

“What about your radio thing? Telegraph a signal code to the emergency people. This is an emergency, right?”

King Man looked a little sick to his stomach. “Charlie, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work like that. The, um, connection is more of a general information thing, and operation is restricted. They’re not running a delivery service.”

The little office was cool enough so we could see our breath, but for some reason those two words, delivery and service? They made my face hot, and my brain, too. “Can’t you at least try? Ask and see what they say.”

He hesitated, fiddling with one of his earflaps, and for a moment he looked more like Barf Man the custodian than King Man the ruler of Harmony. “Sure, sure. I’ll ask, Charlie, but I know what the response will be. There must be hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in the north country who are low on medication.”

“They could at least tell us where to find some!”

“Um, yeah. Um, possibly.”

“ ‘Um, yeah’! This is my mom’s life at stake, and all you can say is ‘um, yeah’? What kind of king are you if you won’t help!”

“Huh?” He looked startled. “In the first place, I’m not any kind of king, believe me. I am a facilitator of food and firewood. And I didn’t say I wouldn’t help. I’m just suggesting that what you request may be impossible.”

“You’re not even going to try!” I started to stomp out of that cold little room.

“Charlie, don’t go away mad. I’ll transmit the request, okay? See what happens. But maybe we’re worried about nothing. Maybe the power will be restored soon, and the roads will get plowed, and your mother can drive down to Concord and fill her own prescription. Nineteen days, why not? Plenty of time. There’s always hope.”

That hit me like a shock, for some reason. A shock of hope. “Is that what it says on the emergency radio? That it’ll be over soon?”

He hesitated, glancing away from me. “Um, no. Not exactly. The situation, well, there’s an ongoing evaluation of the situation, and, ah, bottom line, no one can say when power will be restored. We’ve, ah, been advised to get through the winter as best we can, on our own for the time being. One day at a time, Charlie.”

One day at a time. Which wasn’t very many if all you had was nineteen of them.