Holly was coming over today to finalize the flowers for tomorrow’s Candlelight Walk, and the thought alone made me feel like a teenager waiting for prom. Not that I’d actually gone to prom.
We’d texted all day yesterday—nothing profound, just back-and-forth banter about Christmas movies and her horror at discovering I’d never made a gingerbread house—but every notification had made my pulse spike.
I stretched in bed, feeling the contentment of a good night’s sleep and the promise of?—
Wait.
My breath fogged in front of my face.
I sat up, the blankets falling away, and immediately understood why I could see my own breathing. My bedroom wasfreezing. Not just chilly—actually, legitimately cold in a way that shouldn’t be possible with a brand new, state-of-the-art HVAC system.
I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and pulled up my home automation app. The interface immediately displayed an error message indicating it couldn’t connect to the network.
Shit. My internet was out.
I shoved my phone into the pocket of my flannel sleep pants, threw a sweatshirt on over my t-shirt, and padded across the room to the closest window. When I pulled open the curtains, my stomach dropped.
The world looked like it had been dipped in glass.
Ice coated everything—the trees, the lawn, the street, the power lines that sagged under the weight. The morning sun, just starting to rise, caught the ice, turning the entire landscape into a blinding, crystalline nightmare. It was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
Nate
Power’s out all over town.
Total nightmare.
Trees down on Harborview and Main.
Stay off the roads.
Me
Shit. How bad is it out there for you guys?
Nate
We’ve got accidents all over.
Fire department’s stretched thin.
This is an all-hands situation.
Seriously, man, stay home.
Roads are fucking skating rinks.
Me
Will do. Stay safe.
I pocketed my phone and headed downstairs, my mind already running through contingencies. The house had a fireplace in practically every room—kind of had to when wood was the only source of heat in the mid-1700s. If I could get the ones in the living room and dining room going, I could at least keep the main floor warm. I’d worry about the bedrooms later.
I could see my breath with every exhale as I moved through the house to gather up kindling and logs from the woodpile I kept stocked in the mudroom.
Within twenty minutes, I had two fires crackling, and the chill was already starting to ease.
