***
The wind that fought me as I walked home turned out to be an early herald of a blizzard, which blew up out of nowhere and into the startled village later that evening. I swore a lot about this.
It wasn't just a constant snowfall, which we'd already had a few times that winter, but a full-blown storm, the kind that sends down power lines and breaks windows if the wind blows the wrong way. It caught us all by surprise. The schools closed and business came to a standstill. When I looked out the upstairs window, in the rare moments the snow didn't block out everything, the street below looked like a ghost town.
The first day of the storm, I kept a fire going downstairs and the lights on, though I knew it would be insane for anyone to try and push through the weather just to get to the bookshop. On the other hand, if someone did try to go out in this and got stuck, they might conceivably see the light and find safe haven. All of Low Ferry left its doors unlocked in a storm like that, just in case. I kept myself busy, cleaning and taking inventory, for a while.
The second day, I started to worry.
Most of the people in the village had weathered storms as bad as this one, or worse, in the past few years. My very first winter in the village it had been so cold that my doors had frozen shut and Paula had been forced to come rescue me, skidding her way over the thick sheets of ice on the street with a blowtorch in one hand and an ice pick in the other. Jacob lost half his chickens that year when they froze solid in the hen-house.
But Lucas hadn't. If he'd been raised in Chicago he'd know a little bit about harsh winters, but not the kind Low Ferry dished out and not the kind you could face outside of town in a shoddily-built cottage on a windswept hillside.
Perhaps I overdramatized it a little.
Still, I worried about him. Knowing that I couldn't do anything even after the storm blew itself out, until the plow came through (if the plow could get through) didn't help at all. At least I knew that even Lucas, with his incomplete grasp of how to cope with rough weather, would know not to go out in this, and stay home until help came to him. We'd lost people before when they'd gotten turned around in a blizzard while trying to go the ten feet from their front door to their mailbox.
On the other hand...well, it was a relief that we couldn't speak. The awkwardness bound to follow the fight – or I suppose it was more of a lecture, given how little he fought back – had been postponed by the storm. I wouldn't have to think about what I'd said too much, or be ashamed of it. I couldn't help but think Lucas would see the blizzard as a welcome intervention as well.
On the second day of the storm I had no power, but I did have customers. There was a momentary lull in the afternoon, with another huge cloud already ballooning on the horizon, and people scrambled to get out of the house – to the grocery store and the hardware store, to the cafe for a hot meal and to my place to see if I had any news to share. Some had found themselves caught by the storm and spent the night at the hotel or on cots in the cafe, their cars immobilized on the main street. They came and went, hanging gloves and hats by the fire to dry, asking me if I'd seen this person or if I'd pass on a message to that one of they came by. The last customer left ten minutes before the wind picked up again.
I was quite content to remain in the shop, sleeping near the hearth that night so that I could feed the fire and not be bothered with restarting it. I had long since hung my Dottore mask above the fireplace, and it gazed down on me with foolish benevolence as I slept. Lucas used to say that seeing a mask on a wall could frighten people, but to me it wasn't exactly a mask. It was a sculpture an artist had given to me, and it had something of him in it – in a strictly non-literal sense it was halfway to being a photograph. It held the same general function, anyway.
On the morning of the third day of the storm, with the snow still pelting down, Charles came into the shop and stomped the snow off his boots into the puddle of melting ice on my welcome mat.
"Hi," he said. "Got any batteries?"
I lifted my eyebrows. "Get lost on the way to the hardware store, did you?"
"No," he scowled. "They're at ground level. It's all snowed over. Looked outside lately?"
"Paula must be stuck at home, or she'd have the blowtorch out," I said, rummaging in my desk.
"She does love her blowtorch," he agreed.
"What kind of batteries do you need?"
"For the thing," he said, and I paused.
"The thing," I repeated.
"You know, the little thing that tells you where to go."
"A street sign?" I hazarded.
"No, the little hand thing," he said, and took a GPS locator out of his pocket.
"Ah, of course, the little hand thing," I said, accepting it and prying the back off. "Double-As, got it. What are you doing out in this mess, anyway?"
"I was out northwest, checking on folk. Making sure everyone had firewood, food, that kind of thing. Wife gave me that for an early Christmas. Pretty handy, in all this."
"I can imagine it would be," I said, prying out the dead batteries and replacing them from a package in my desk drawer. "Anyone in trouble yet? You need anything?"
He glanced around at the bookshelves.
"Okay, well, I take your point, but don't sass the man who gave you batteries," I said.
"Nobody's in trouble as far as I know – what do you hear?" he asked.
"Not trouble, just delay." I hesitated. "I don't suppose you've seen Lucas around."