Night Light (5 page)

As the mayor went on, Deni saw her little sister running toward the crowd. She was crying, and she searched the crowd frantically. Deni stood up and watched as the twelve-year-old spotted her parents and pushed through the people. “What’s wrong with Beth?”

Chris and Mark both looked in her direction.

Beth talked to her parents, and suddenly they rushed off toward home.

“Probably nothing,” Deni said, sitting back down. “She’s probably ratting out Logan for something.” She pushed Beth’s distraught face out of her mind and looked at her watch. When would they start distributing the mail?

When the noise died down again, the mayor answered a few questions, then stepped down from the truck bed. Hank Huckabee, the homeowner’s association president, took her place. As he began updating them about the plans to start a neighborhood school in mid-September, run by several of the teachers in Oak Hollow, and went over the progress on the well being dug by the men in the neighborhood, Deni’s eyes swept the crowd, searching for the postman who was supposed to have brought the mail. She saw a scrawny middle-aged woman in a postman’s uniform and a baseball cap. On the truck bed, several boxes were stacked. Could Craig’s letter be there?

Her foot jittered as she waited, wishing they’d get on with it. But there were too many questions.

Finally, Hank introduced Mrs. Lipscomb, the postmaster. She’d bound the letters according to address, so she called out each family one by one, in no particular order. Couldn’t she have put them in alphabetical order? Even if she’d sorted them by address, Deni’s family would be at the top of the heap.

Her heart raced as she waited…

Finally, the postmaster called, “The Brannings, at 220 Oakhurst.”

Deni flew out of her chair and almost knocked down several people as she made her way up. She took the bundle from the poor bedraggled woman and, still standing in front of the crowd, flipped through the letters.

There it was! She jerked it out, almost dropping the others. Tears rushed to her eyes as she went through the rest, hoping for a dozen more. There was one from her grandparents in Florida, another from the ones in Louisiana. Something from her dad’s head office in New York. A few other letters whose origin she didn’t recognize.

Nothing else from Craig.

But that was okay. She had one!

She held it to her heart as she went back to her seat. Chris and Mark looked as happy as she was. “I told you there’d be one from Craig.”

“Well, open it! Let’s see!” Chris cried.

“No, not here. I want to be alone when I read it.” She folded up her chair. “I’ll see you two later.”

Mark laughed. “Yeah, maybe when your feet touch earth again. I’m glad you got it, Deni. I hope it says everything it should say.”

She pushed through the crowd, hurried between the yards and through the open gate into their backyard. Racing up to the door, she burst in. Her parents were standing in the kitchen.

“Guess what!” she shouted.

“Our food’s been stolen!” Beth cried.

The wind whizzed out of Deni’s sails, and she stood there with the letters in her hands, gaping at her angry family.

six

“H
OW COULD THIS HAPPEN
?” K
AY SLAMMED THE PANTRY DOOR.
“How did they even get in? I locked the doors myself!”

Beth brooded at the kitchen table. “Jeff’s window is open. Maybe they came in that way.”

Kay let out a frustrated yell. “When that boy gets back here, he’d better have his hands full of food, or he’s going to face some consequences.”

Doug sat down and studied his daughter. “Do you think the boys were violent? Could Jeff be walking into trouble?”

“Well, they had a gun.”

Kay swung around.
“What?”

Deni came in and sat beside her sister. “You saw them?”

“Yes!” Kay shouted, sweeping her dark hair behind her ear. “They could have killed her! And now Jeff is facing two guys with a gun!”

“Not guys,” Beth said. “Boys. Logan’s age or younger.”

“So you weren’t exaggerating when you said they were kids,” Doug said.

“Doug, what are we going to do?”

He rested his face on his hands, then raked his fingers through his brown hair. “I don’t know, honey. Just let me think a minute.”

W
HILE HER DAD WAS THINKING
, D
ENI STOLE UPSTAIRS
. A
S UPSET
as she was about the food — and she
was
upset, since they barely had enough to fill their stomachs each day as it was — she didn’t want to wait another minute to read her letter.

She sat down on her bed and slid back against her pillows. Crossing her legs beneath her, she tore into the envelope. Her heart raced as she pulled the folded papers out.

Two pages? That was all, after all this time? When the post office had opened again three weeks ago, she’d sent him a stack of letters she’d been writing all along. Swallowing her disappointment, she started to read.

“Dear Deni,” it said. She had hoped for something more personal, like “My dearest Deni” or “Hi babe.” But this was fine. He was a lawyer, not a poet.

I’ve missed you so much.

Isn’t this power outage unbelievable? I was at the Senate Building when it all went out. You should have seen the havoc. At first there was a lot of confusion as people kept working with only window light. You know how it is. There’s not much rest for lawmakers, and Senator Crawford wasn’t all that bothered, until he picked up the phone and realized it was out too. Then he tried his cell phone. No dice. It was about then that we started thinking “terrorist attack.” So we gathered up our laptops and rushed out of the building, only to see the traffic stalled in the middle of Constitution Avenue. We were certain it was a terrorist attack, and before we knew it, rumors were flying about it being an electromagnetic pulse. And sure enough, when I tried to boot up my laptop, it was dead too.

She wished he wouldn’t give her a travelogue right off the bat. She had hoped for some declarations of love, some promises, some longing.

It was horrible. I had to walk home, fifteen miles, in my Gucci loafers. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Stranded in that townhouse and having to find water and food, with all the stores closed. You should see me. I’ve lost fifteen pounds. For the first few days I just walked around nibbling on Cheez-Its and drinking bottled water.

Then we learned it was a worldwide event, not just confined to the states. We really had our work cut out for us, trying to decide what to do about the banking system, law enforcement, communication, and Homeland Security. If you think I worked long hours before, you should see me now. I practically live in this building, because it’s so tough getting from one place to another without a car. I’ve found myself wishing I still had that 1967 Plymouth Belvedere my dad kept for twenty years. But even if I did have it, the government would be conscripting it. Senator Crawford was one of the lawmakers that introduced the legislation to do that.

If there were some way to get to you, I would.

She stopped reading.
If
there were some way? There
was
a way, and she knew because she had tried it a month into the stinking outage, and she’d almost gotten herself killed by the murdering maniac who’d offered her a ride in his horse-drawn wagon. When she’d finally managed to get a bike, she could have ridden on to D.C., but she’d chosen instead to head home to warn her family before the killer could get back there. She hadn’t had the courage to launch out again.

If he’d wanted to see her badly enough, he could have made it by bike in just a few days. He still could. The letter continued:

I guess our wedding isn’t going to come off like we planned. But if it’s meant to be, I guess we’ll wait for each other.

Her heart sank, and her jaw dropped. What was he saying? That he wasn’t even going to
try
to get to her? That the wedding date they’d set for October — just eight weeks away — wasn’t going to happen? No declarations of love, no sweet verbal caresses. Not even a sad romanticism. Just a matter-of-fact mention of their aborted wedding, and their future boiled down to an
I guess, if
.

Were they even still engaged?

She almost couldn’t read the last line through her tears.

I really miss you. Hope this will all be over soon and we can get together again.

“Get together,” like they were acquaintances hoping to do lunch. Did he even realize how cold that sounded? Or did he care?

As grief stole over her, she read the letter again, looking for something she had missed, something between the lines …

Did he still love her? He said he missed her, but it sure didn’t sound like it.

Her mother knocked on her door and leaned in. “Deni, somebody’ll have to go get water and start boiling it, since they took all we had. Your dad has a shift at the well, and I need to stay here in case Jeff comes home.”

Deni turned her wet face up to her mother. “Mom, I can’t go right now.”

Her mother saw her tears and came to her bed. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

Deni held up the letter.

“From Craig?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Kay took the letter. “What does it say?”

“Oh, just the basics. I’m fine, how are you, the weather’s great, how ’bout them Yankees …” She crumpled into tears.

Kay sat down on the bed and quickly read it. “It doesn’t say that. Well, look. Here he says he’s missed you.”

“Look at the travelogue, Mom. Ninety percent of the letter is his play-by-play of his own drama the day the outage happened. Did it not even occur to him that I was on a plane ten minutes before the Pulses started? That I could even be dead? No! He didn’t mention that at all.”

“Honey, I’m sure that occurred to him. But he’s a man. They don’t express themselves that well. That doesn’t mean they don’t feel it. Cut him some slack.”

She snatched the letter back. “Mom, he blew off our wedding!”

She knew she had her mother there. Even in all her optimism, she couldn’t soft-sell that one.

“Maybe that’s not what he meant. Maybe he has every intention of marrying you, but he’s just not sure it’ll happen on that very day. Things are complicated now. They’re not predictable.”

“Don’t defend him, Mom. There’s no way you can turn this business correspondence into a love letter.” She slammed her fist on the mattress. “The e-mails he used to send me were warmer than this. I’m losing him. I may have lost him already. There’s probably some senate intern who’s cooking for him and pampering him.”

“Deni, don’t let your mind go there. You’re making things up and making yourself miserable. Think of him as a man who doesn’t express himself well in letters. That doesn’t mean he’s not sick over your separation.”

Deni knew that wasn’t true. She folded up the letter and put it back in its envelope, then tossed it into the drawer in her night table. She pulled her shoes back on. Roughly smearing her tears, she said, “I’ll go get water. Just let me wash my face so no one will know I’ve been dumped.”

“You haven’t been dumped, Deni. You’re still engaged. It’s not like he asked for the ring back.”

“That’s because it’s worthless now. It wouldn’t do him any good.”

“You’re still engaged, Deni, until the man tells you he’s not going to marry you.”

“Or until I tell him I’m not going to marry
him
!” Deni didn’t want to talk about it anymore. She just went into the bathroom where her mother kept a bowl of water and washed the tears off her face.

K
AY WENT DOWN THE STAIRS AND ACROSS THE HOUSE TO HER
bedroom. Doug was changing into his work clothes. “That jerk!” she bit out.

“What jerk?”

“Craig Martin. He finally sent her a letter, and it broke her heart.”

Doug stopped before pulling his shirt over his head. “No way.”

“She’s up there crying. I’d love to get my hands on him.”

“What did it say?”

“It said that he didn’t see how the wedding would come off, but if it’s meant to be, they’ll wait for each other.”

Doug finished putting the shirt on. “That’s not so bad.”

“Yeah, well, he couched it between all this stuff about how hard the outage has been for him. After she almost got killed going after him — ”

“He didn’t know that when he wrote the letter.”

“Don’t defend him, Doug.”

He bent over to pull on his work boots. “I’m not defending him. Frankly, I don’t want to see her hurt, but if they break up, it won’t break my heart. I never liked him to begin with. He’s not good enough for her. Not by a long shot.”

Kay sank down onto the bed. “You’re right, but I don’t want her hurting. She’s been through enough. How much more can she take?” She let out a long breath. “How much more can
I
take?
Where
is Jeff?”

“He’s okay. He’s a tough kid. He’ll be back soon. Probably with our food.”

“He could get shot.”

“He won’t.”

She watched as he bent over and tied his boots. He had changed in the last few months. Her husband, whom she had believed was handsome before, had grown more attractive as the harsh sun and backbreaking labor did its work on him. She wished it had done the same for her, but she was a mess. She’d had to let her brown hair grow out, since she couldn’t style it without electricity, and the sun had deepened her wrinkles. No amount of moisturizer would be able to erase the damage.

Finally, Doug straightened. “Look, there’s no point in losing it before we know the situation. If he doesn’t come back soon,
then
we’ll panic. For now, let’s just have faith that God is taking care of him.”

She lay back flat on the bed and threw her arm over her eyes. “I’m tired, Doug. I try to be tough, but sometimes I just have to explode.”

“Yeah, me too.”

She moved her arm and looked at him. “So what do you think about this pulsar, or whatever it is?”

He thought for a moment. “It makes sense. I’m gonna swing by the library as soon as I get a minute and read up on it.”

“Do you think she’s right about the radiation not getting stronger? What if it moves closer to us? It started suddenly. Couldn’t it suddenly get worse?”