Christmas Blackout. Maggie K. Black

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      “Always. I also rake my own leaves in the fall and mow my own lawn in the summer.”

      “Well, how about I plow the driveway and hill, while you call the police?”

      She opened the kitchen door, pulled a key chain off the wall and tossed it to him. “Thanks. I’m also going to call my uncle and aunt, and the mechanic about your truck.”

      “Great. Tell him I have insurance but I’m happy to pay out of pocket if that speeds things up. Anything I can do to get out of here faster.”

      “Will do.” She walked into the kitchen.

      Benjamin opened the garage door and stared out at the dark, snowy night. What was it with Piper? There was this weird tension between them that he couldn’t get his head around.

      He’d told himself that when the time came to leave Canada, he’d do his best to make peace with everyone he left behind. But how could he make peace with Piper if he didn’t even know what he’d done wrong?

      * * *

      The steady clacking sound of fingers on a typewriter echoed through The Downs, like some kind of robust combination of music and water torture. Tobias Kasper wrote books on tactical warfare and was the kind of guest who treated the entirety of The Downs as an extension of his suite. Right now, the short, rotund middle-aged man sat in the middle of the living room, sporting a paisley bow tie and the kind of vest that some people called a waistcoat. He was pounding the keys of a machine that had to be at least sixty years old.

      Piper nodded to him politely and closed the kitchen door. The Downs’s galley kitchen was much smaller than she would’ve liked, while the living room was huge, with an old brick fireplace and a huge wooden staircase leading to a sweeping second-floor balcony. When it came time to renovate, they’d be knocking down the wall between the two rooms. But right now, she was thankful for something to muffle the noise.

      Her nerves were frayed enough as it was. She’d thought her heart was going to leap into her throat when Benjamin asked if he could take a suite for the night, and it finally hit her that he’d be staying around a little while longer. Benjamin had absolutely no idea the effect he had on her. And he was never going to know.

      The phone began to ring. Piper was about to let it ring through to the answering machine, when her gaze caught the name on the display: Silver Halls Retirement Home. She grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

      “Piper, honey?” It was Aunt Cass.

      Piper smiled. “Hi, Aunt Cass. I see you finally managed to get a turn on the landline phone.”

      Laughter trickled down the line. “I was about to use my cell phone. But your uncle started going on about saving minutes and I didn’t know if you’d gotten my text.”

      Piper’s sparkling, vibrant, sixty-three year old aunt was nine years younger than Piper’s uncle, and so very young at heart. Aunt Cass hadn’t wanted to do anything even close to retire when persistent, unexplained numbness in her legs and then her arms forced her and Uncle Des to move out of The Downs into the only available rental place in town where everything was accessible on the ground floor.

      “I’ve got an appointment for more tests at the hospital in Niagara Falls on January 12,” her aunt informed her.

      Piper grabbed a pen and wrote it on the calendar. “No problem. I’ll be able to drive you.”

      What kind of health problems? Benjamin had asked the question so casually, as if the answer was as simple as a sprained ankle or chicken pox. It had taken everything inside her not to groan, “We don’t know! That’s the problem!” She wasn’t even sure when her aunt’s limbs first stopped cooperating with her brain, like a frustrated marionette with intermittent strings. But after sudden numbness in her legs sent Aunt Cass tumbling down the stairs into the living room last summer, a broken arm and nasty bruises had woken them all up to the reality that their lives were going to change. Since then it had been a string of doctors, tests and possible diagnoses like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease. And prayers. Lots of prayers.

      Piper ran her hand along her neck. It was tender. Now she was about to tell them something that would make life even more complicated than it already was. “Now, Aunt Cass, please don’t worry, but I was just...accosted by a trespasser down by the barn.”

      “Desmond! Get your coat!”

      “No, wait! It’s okay.” Piper waved her aunt down, even though she couldn’t see her through the phone. “He’s gone and I’m fine! I am going to call the police and file a report, but he was just looking for Charlotte Finn.”

      “The sad, blonde girl who liked puzzle books?”

      Trust her aunt to remember Charlotte as the girl who was sad and liked puzzles, as opposed to the one who’d smashed every single one of Aunt Cass’s cherished handmade nativity figures on the fireplace mantel. “Yes, her. I haven’t seen her or heard from her in years, and I told him so.”

      “Was it her young man?” Suddenly Uncle Des was on the line and Piper realized her aunt must be holding the phone up between them.

      “I don’t know,” Piper said. “I never met him.”

      “Tall. Big shoulders. Young lad.”

      “You met Alpha?” Piper blinked. “Six years since she robbed us and you never told me that!”

      “Didn’t know who the guy was. Just saw her smooching someone in the woods out my window one night when I was locking up. Told her to knock it off and come inside. He ran off and I never saw his face. I didn’t think it was anybody’s business. But I gave the police a description then and I’m happy to do so again now.”

      “You come by tomorrow and fill us in,” Aunt Cass said. “In the meantime, you might want to see if Dominic Bravo wants to rent a suite. You remember him? From youth group?”

      “Yeah, of course I do.” Dominic was a great guy. Sure, the former high school athlete was pretty quiet and shy, and floundered in school. But when Charlotte’s robbery rampage had included knocking Piper unconscious, Dominic had been the one who’d realized Piper was in trouble and had come to find her. “Didn’t even realize he was back in town.”

      “He’s back in town for a few weeks studying for the police academy. His grandmother says he’s staying with his sister and all her little ones right now, sleeping on their pullout couch.”

      “Good for him! My friend Benjamin is taking the final suite for tonight, but I’ll keep Dominic in mind. Speaking of which, I really must call the police now. I’ll come by and see you tomorrow.”

      She said her goodbyes and hung up the phone. When she heard a floorboard creak behind her, she turned. Tobias was standing in the doorway, leaning on his cane. As far as she could tell the cane was simply part of his eccentric style and fashion sense, as opposed to something he actually needed to walk.

      “I’m sorry,” he said, “I couldn’t help but overhear. You have a problem with intruders?”

      Piper stepped back. She hadn’t even thought through how she was going to tell Tobias and her other two guests about what had happened with Kodiak. “Yes, I was just about to СКАЧАТЬ