Last Light (6 page)

Until now.

She hadn’t carried a key in years, so had no means of getting in. She trudged up the driveway. “Can we pull it up?”

“No way. If you could do that, any doofus out there could break into our house.”

“But there must be some way.”

“There is,” Jeff said. “It’s called a key. You remember what a key is, don’t you, Mom? It’s one of those things that you were always afraid I’d drop into the hands of a serial killer? Like Logan and Beth haven’t given the code out to all their friends.”

Kay decided not to bite. Jeff had a habit of picking fights with her when he was tired, hungry, and hot, but she had more important things to do than worry about who had their code. As soon as this crisis passed, she’d ream her kids, change the code, and threaten their lives if they ever so much as uttered it again.

“Don’t tell me we can’t get in!” Beth came up the steep driveway and threw herself down on the grass. “It’s a thousand degrees out here! I want to go in and get cool.”

“It’s not cool in there, Bozo,” Jeff said. “The air conditioner is out, too.”

Logan didn’t have the energy to join in the banter. He just went to the hose on the side of the house and turned on the water. A small stream trickled out. He took a drink, then turned back to Kay. “Is the water going out, too? I turned it on full blast.”

Kay grabbed the hose and tried the faucet again. He was right—full blast, but only a trickle. She twisted it off to save what was in the pipes. “Okay, nobody else use any water until we get in. Everybody spread out and check the windows to see if one’s unlocked.”

The kids did as they were told for once, and Kay prayed there would be one open, in spite of the fact that she rarely opened windows for fear of letting out the valuable air-conditioning. There was also the security issue. Two houses in the neighborhood had been broken into in the last three weeks. Both times, the burglar had gone in through an open window. She hadn’t allowed anyone to unlock their windows since.

She heard Jeff yelling from the backyard and ran around the house.

“My window’s open!” he shouted.

She looked up to the second-floor window and saw that it was open about six inches. “Thank goodness. Now if we could just get up there.”

“I can do it,” Jeff said. “All I have to do is climb the lattice on the side of the house where the roof is a little lower, then I can walk up onto the steeper roof and slide down to the landing below my window.”

Kay just stared at him. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

He grinned. “Nah. Just thought about it. You know, when I was grounded and stuff.”

She didn’t have time to deal with this, so she put it on her growing list of things to discuss later. “All right. Do it.”

They went around to the lattice, and she watched him climb it deftly, as if he’d had plenty of practice. No wonder a couple of the slats were broken. She’d thought the weather had worn them out.

As he maneuvered his way onto the roof, she wondered how many nights he’d sneaked out this way after she and Doug had gone to bed. She couldn’t wait to tell Doug when he got home. He would know what to do about this revelation.

Jeff disappeared through his bedroom window, then after a few moments, he opened the back door. “Yeah, I’m the hero!” He raised his hands in a victory wave. “No applause, please.”

“Don’t worry.” Beth pushed past him into the dark house.

Logan came in and went straight to the refrigerator.

“Honey, close that. We don’t want the food to go bad.”

“Mom, I’m dying of thirst, okay? I need a drink.”

Kay reached past him and pulled out the pitcher of tea and a six-pack of Cokes. The icemaker in the door was dripping as the ice melted, but she decided to leave it in the freezer in hopes it would keep the food from thawing.

She poured herself a glass of cold tea as the kids tore the six-pack apart. As she drank it down, she tried to think. The water . . . that was the next crisis to address. If the water was going out, then she needed to save what she could in case this lasted longer than a few hours.

She went to the bathroom off of the guest room and bent over the tub. Turning the faucet on, she watched, disheartened, as water trickled out.

This was ridiculous. Their water flow had nothing to do with electricity, did it? She thought back to that time her parents had been in a hurricane down in Florida. Their power was out for two weeks, and they’d been warned not to drink the water because it could be contaminated.

But at least it had run.

Maybe the power outage had affected the treatment plant, and it had stopped pumping it through the system, if they indeed pumped it to begin with. That had to be it, didn’t it?

She sat on the edge of the tub, watching the trickle as though she could help it along. At least water was coming. She didn’t know why she was collecting it, really, except somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered someone saying that it was helpful. Besides the obvious reasons, they’d need it to flush the toilets.

What a pain! It was the last thing she needed when Deni was home for just a few days before embarking on her new postcollege life. They had wedding details to see to, and tomorrow they were meeting with the florist and the cake decorator. They were having a tasting at the caterer the next day. A power outage didn’t fit into any of Kay’s plans.

She left the faucet running and went back into the kitchen. Logan was standing at the sink wetting a dish towel with a trickle of water.

“Logan, no! Don’t waste the water.” She rushed to the sink and turned it off.

“Sorry, Mom, but nobody’s told me the rules. I just wanted to wash my face.”

He’d gotten the dish towel sufficiently wet, so she took it from him and wet his face, red from the sun and blotchy from the heat.

“So what do we do now?” he asked her. “There’s nothing to do.”

“I don’t think that will kill us, do you?”

“It might,” he said.

She sighed. “I’m sure it’ll be over before we know it.”

“Can I go next door and play with Drew?”

Nine-year-old Drew and his little brother rode the bus home from school in the afternoons, then stayed alone until their parents got home from work. She doubted Judith had been able to get home from the hospital already, since it was about twenty miles away. And their father, a Birmingham attorney, never made it home before seven, even when things were running well.

“Good idea. Go over there and see if they’re all right. If they’re alone, bring them back here and they can stay with us until their parents get home. Tell them to leave their folks a note.”

Logan ran out, suddenly energized.

“Mom, nothing’s working,” Jeff said. “Even the stuff that doesn’t use electricity isn’t working. And the phones are still out. That really stinks. Mandy’s gonna think I stood her up. I was supposed to be there a half hour ago.”

“Well, you can’t go now. I need your help. We have to gather up all our candles while we still have some light, and look for our flashlights. And we need to start the generator to keep the refrigerator going. Everybody needs to help.”

She had the candles in a million places. Some were in the boxes in the storage room where she kept the Christmas decorations. Others were on the top shelf of her kitchen cabinets, and some lay lined up in the top drawer of the buffet in the dining room. Two candelabra were in her china cabinets, with half-burned candles from the last time she’d had guests over. She put at least one candle in every room.

Jeff came in from the garage with two flashlights he’d found. “These batteries are old. They’re not gonna last long. What about those Y2K kerosene lamps we had?”

Kay tried to remember. She had bought four of them before the great Y2K scare, and never even took them out of their boxes. Where had she put them?

“I’ll have to find them. Do you know where they are?”

“In your closet,” Beth said. “Back behind the suitcases.”

She shot her a look. “And how do you know that?”

Beth grinned. “I was kind of looking for my birthday presents last month and I saw them.”

“Fooled you, huh? They weren’t in there.”

“Nope. They were in Daddy’s trunk.”

Kay set her hands on her hips and recalled her daughter’s ecstatic surprise when she’d opened her new camera cell phone. Had it been faked?

It hardly mattered now. Kay headed back to her room, found the boxes with two lamps each, and took them into the kitchen near the big bay window. She got Beth busy putting the lamps together, then led Jeff out to the garage to pull out the portable generator they’d bought before the Y2K scare. It had never been taken out of its box. She hoped she could figure out how to make it run.

Jeff unhooked the mechanism keeping the garage door locked, and raised the door, letting the light in. He got the generator out of the box, and they sat on the concrete floor, reading the instructions.

It ran on gas, so Kay found the lawn mower gas in a jug in the utility room and emptied it into the generator.

“So do you think Dad and Deni made it to town? That could have been their plane, you know.”

Kay thought of that smoke, and a knot formed in her throat. “We won’t think about that, okay? They said it was a small plane. I’m thinking like a little two-seater or something, not the kind of plane Dad and Deni would be on. They’re fine, okay? They have to be.”

Jeff didn’t look convinced.

“Besides, I talked to them when they boarded their flight, and it was on time. If they were on time, then they probably landed just before the power went out.”

“Wish we could find out for sure. How would we even know? They wouldn’t be able to get home if they were stranded at the airport.”

“They’ll figure out a way to get home.”

She looked for the next step on the instructions, and saw that it called for engine oil. “Great. It says to put engine oil in, but I don’t think we have any. Do you know where your dad might keep some?”

Jeff shook his head. “Sorry.”

She sighed. “I guess we’ll have to wait until he gets home. Maybe he’s got some stashed somewhere.”

As they went back inside, Logan dashed in through the back door, his friend Drew and his seven-year-old brother, Jeremy, on his heels. The two African American boys looked as if they’d been crying.

Kay went over and hugged each of them. “Hey, boys. Some adventure we’re having, huh?”

“Our mama isn’t home,” Jeremy said as tears welled up in his dark eyes. “And we couldn’t call her, and it’s dark in our house, and we’re not allowed to go outside until she gets home.”

“Just stay over here, guys. I’m sure it’ll be okay this once. They’ll be along eventually. Did you leave a note?”

Drew nodded. “Is it true the cars aren’t working?” The older boy was doing his best to look brave, but his wide eyes gave him away.

“Yes, it’s true. We walked home from Lakeview.”

“Then how will they get here?”

“Trust me. Your parents will get home somehow. They may have to walk, but they’re strong and healthy and they can do it. And if they don’t get here until tomorrow morning, you’ll stay here with us all night. Okay?”

Neither of them looked happy with that prospect.

“You guys go keep each other company, and forget about all this. Pretend you’re in
Little House on the Prairie
or something, before they even had electricity.”

“Yeah!” Thankfully, Logan caught the vision. “Let’s go play.”

As they shot out the door, Kay got up and went to stare out after them. “Don’t leave the yard, guys.”

Even as she said the words, she wondered if she should call them back in and keep them all sheltered, windows shut tight. But it was probably too late. Wouldn’t they all have been saturated with radiation on the way home, if it lingered in the air?

Again, she wanted to sit down and cry, but there was too much to do. It was time for supper, and the kids needed to eat. She had bread, thankfully, and the bologna couldn’t have gone bad yet. There were some chips in the pantry. Enough for a makeshift feast.

Since she had a plan, she decided to go change out of her sweat-drenched clothes and get off of her aching feet. She closed her bedroom door, and darkness swallowed her. Quickly, she opened the curtains and let dusk paint its gray hues on the room.