“Most of the time,” TJ allowed. “Though for some reason it’s harder to talk about her when it snows. It always feels wrong, somehow.”
“I know the feeling. But it’s okay. If you and I can’t understand each other, who could?”
He didn’t quite manage to smile, but nodded and turned his light back to the electrical panel.
Allie had first met TJ at a memorial for those killed or lost in that blizzard on the one-year anniversary of the storm. At that point, he and his wife, Ella, had been married less than a month and already had a little girl at home. Many years later, at a parent-teacher conference, Ella had lightheartedly revealed that their daughter, Grace, had been conceived during that storm.
So at least one good thing came out of it, TJ had said.
The couple had exchanged an ugly sort of look, then. One she had seen all too often in her years as a teacher. That particular look never boded well for marriages. Allie had thought then and still believed that it would be a shame if the Farrellys’ relationship hit the skids. Pint-size Grace—copper-eyed and tiny and always buzzing with positive energy—had two parents who obviously loved her very much. A separation or divorce would dim or destroy the little girl’s smile, and it saddened Allie to think of it. The Farrellys were a nice family, but over the past few years she and the rest of the staff at the Trumbull School had seen a lot of nice families buckle under the stresses of the times.
Allie knew a little something about the ruination of nice families. After the death of her husband she had thought she would never find happiness again, and then she’d met Niko Ristani and she had allowed herself to believe, had built a little nest in her heart for hope to grow and take flight. The storm had taken all that away from her, had killed her Isaac and had swallowed Niko up, never to be seen again. How a grown man could vanish from the face of the Earth in the twenty-first century boggled her mind, but it had happened. And Niko wasn’t the only one.
Something popped on the electrical panel and TJ swore, jumping back. Thin tendrils of black smoke rose behind one of the breakers with a sizzling, snapping sound.
“Oh no!” she said, focusing her flashlight on the panel for a moment before TJ’s body blocked the beam.
“Son of a bitch.” He growled, throwing switches and shining his own flash across the board. “You have a fire extinguisher?”
“Under the kitchen sink.”
“Get it!”
Allie ran, her mind awhirl with fear of her house burning down, wondering if she would have time to fetch the photo albums on the floor of her bedroom closet, the only things in the house she thought could not live without. All those pictures of Isaac and Jake when they were young—the only pictures there would ever be of Isaac. Losing those … She couldn’t even conceive of it.
Moments later she hustled back down into the cellar, her flashlight beam bouncing on the steps before her, with no recollection at all of actually fetching the fire extinguisher.
“I’ve got—”
“We’re good,” TJ interrupted.
Allie stood at the bottom of the cellar steps, her heart thumping in her chest. She watched him for a second as he used his flashlight to examine the wiring that went into and came out of the electrical box.
“My house isn’t burning down?” she said.
“Not at the moment. At least I don’t think so,” he said, turning toward her. “But I can’t promise it won’t. I guess you know the wiring in this house is pretty ancient. Truth is, you need to get all the wiring replaced. What’s here is not really meant to meet modern needs and even if it could, the breakers can’t meet the strain.”
Her heart sank further with every word and she felt a little sick. “I can’t afford all that.”
“You might have to figure out a way, Allie. I’m sorry. Could be it won’t cost as much as you think it will, but look—that’s a conversation for another day. Right now we need to get your electricity running and that’s something I can do. The main breaker is totally fried, which is why the whole house was affected. I can replace that and the damaged wiring—I’ve got everything I need in the truck—and be out of here in a couple of hours, max. It won’t solve your problems long term but at least it’ll give you light and heat for tonight.”
The mention of heat made her blink. Allie wore a thick, green wool sweater with a little hood and deep pockets. When it had begun to get cold she had slipped it on, assuming that the heat wouldn’t be off for very long. But if TJ hadn’t been able to fix it, she would have had to find somewhere else to spend the night, and she really had nowhere to go. It wasn’t that she had no friends—her friends Mark and Charles would have let her sleep at their place, and her best teacher-friend, Phoebe Ridgley, would have loved the chance at a girls’ night—but Allie didn’t like to sleep away from home. And she didn’t like going out in a storm.
TJ was right: somehow she was going to have to put together the money to rewire the house. But at least she didn’t have to figure it all out today.
“Thanks so much,” she said, hoping he felt her sincerity. “I’m so grateful that you were willing to come out on a Saturday. What a lifesaver.”
“My pleasure,” he said, hiking up his belt as he approached, then passed her and started up the stairs. “It’s what I do.”
Allie heard the defeated edge to his voice, a tinge of sadness. Over the years since they had first met, she had been fortunate enough to see him perform at The Vault several times and thought he had a wonderful singing voice and a lovely way with the guitar.
“If you mean rescuing no-longer-quite-damsels in distress, then okay,” she replied. “But I hope you’re not giving up the music.”
TJ stopped on the steps, bent slightly to crane back down toward her. “If we can’t get customers into the restaurant, there’s no money to pay either of us. Waiters and cooks come first. I’ve got to make money elsewhere, but in this economy, even being an electrician isn’t pulling in the income it used to.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said quietly.
He chuckled darkly. “Me too. But don’t be sorry you called. I can use the work. And anyway, Ella closed the restaurant for the storm. We don’t share space very well these days, so I’m just grateful to be out of the house.”
TJ hustled up the stairs. Allie stood in the dim basement, flashlight hanging at her side, searching for some words that might bring him comfort. For long minutes she waited while he fetched what he needed from his truck, and by the time he returned she still had not been able to think of anything she might say that could help him. For a couple of minutes she watched him work and then she excused herself to go back upstairs, intending to get stuck back in the book she was reading.
Whatever solace TJ Farrelly sought, he would have to find it on his own. She had racked her brain until she had realized the truth: she had none to give.
Late that afternoon TJ drove home with his hands so tight on the wheel that his knuckles hurt. He never shied away from going out in a storm, never let inclement weather keep him from his destination. Not since the night he’d left his mother home alone after he’d promised to see her through the blizzard. He had never learned what it was that had made her wander out into the night and had learned to live with the fact that he’d never know, but he still had nightmares about the morning the police had brought him to the morgue to identify her body. The corpse had been wide-eyed and rigid and bleached pale by the nine days that had passed before an old woman who worked at Saint James rectory had seen his mother’s arm sticking out of the melting snowbank that had been plowed up against the side of the building.
TJ would rather end up in a snowbank himself than let the weather keep him away from people who were waiting for him—people he loved. And he did still love Ella, no matter how tense things had become. No matter that they sometimes snapped at each other when they spoke, as if they were angry at the words leaving their lips instead of the way their life together had begun to fray.
Fra
y, he thought now, reaching out to turn the windshield wipers up to high. We’ve been fraying for years. This isn’t fraying, it’s unraveling.
The wipers thumped their insistent rhythm, not clearing as much of the glass as he wanted. Rolling down the window, he reached out and bent forward as he drove, digging his fingers into the now-slushy buildup at the edge of the wipers’ span, scraping it away. Headlights loomed ahead and he sat up straighter, raising the window as he nudged the car to the right to give a wide berth to the plow headed in the other direction.
As he hit the button to raise the window he realized that the darkness of the storm had given way to nightfall. At this time of year, evening didn’t even have the courtesy to wait for afternoon to end before moving in, but with a thick blanket of storm like this, the day never properly arrived. Now it was over before it had really begun.
He turned his truck onto Calewood Drive, snow slushing around the tires, and came in view of his home. Once upon a time the warm yellow light of the lamppost would have gladdened his heart but tonight the sight weighed him down. It hardly ever felt like home to him anymore. Instead it was a boxing ring, frozen in the held-breath moment before either of the fighters had thrown their first punch. And when that punch came … man, he knew it was going to be a doozy.
Pulling into the driveway, he killed the engine and climbed out of the truck. He hadn’t made it halfway up the front walk before the front door opened, the light from within silhouetting his daughter, Grace, who stood with one hand on her hip. With her slender build, long legs, and wavy brown hair, she looked like a miniature version of her mother.
“Get in here, mister!” the eleven-year-old playfully demanded. “This beef stew I made isn’t gonna eat itself.”
“I don’t know about that,” TJ said as he mounted the front steps. “You never know with monster beef.”
Grace backed up to let him in, frowning. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Sure it does,” he said, stamping the snow off his boots, taking in the familiar messy sprawl of the living room and the rich aromas of cooking stew. “Monster beef could come back to life. The little bits could attack each other right in the pot.”
His little girl rolled her eyes. “Not only does that not make sense, it’s really gross.”
“I’m a guy,” TJ said, unlacing his boots and pulling them off. “Guys are gross.”
“That’s for sure,” Grace agreed.
She began to giggle as he scooped her up and dropped her on the sofa, nuzzling and biting her belly and then, as she tried to free herself, locking his teeth on her forearm in true monster fashion. As a baby, Grace had cried every time they put her into her car seat, making any road trip a fresh descent into parental hell. That had ceased as soon as she grew old enough to talk and be distracted in the car, and otherwise she had been almost uncannily well behaved, so sweet and good-natured and polite that other parents always begged for their secret. Nobody ever wanted to believe their answer, which was that they had simply been lucky.
Now Grace was eleven and things were starting to change, not just her body but her relationships with her parents, too. Grace had grown old enough to challenge them, to push their buttons for no reason other than to discover the results of having pushed them. She had started to pay more attention to the way she dressed and the way she wore her hair. The whole thing unsettled the hell out of TJ. His pride in her seemed constantly at odds with his desire not to lose the purity of the relationship they’d had all her life up till now. They had a little while still, he thought, before the real battles over boys and makeup and dating would begin, but he knew that time with his little girl was fleeting, so he tried to make the most of it.
Of late it had been growing more difficult. Grace felt the tension between her parents and it created a distance that TJ wanted very badly to bridge. When he and Grace were alone, they could just be Dad and Gracie again, and he knew the same must be true of Grace and Ella. But when the three of them were together there was a kind of stiffness to their interactions, a wary uncertainty that TJ hated.
Maybe that’s the secret, he thought. No more family.
Growling, he pulled Grace’s arms away from her body and saw that the struggle had bared her abdomen. With a laugh he ducked in and began to blow raspberries on her belly. Grace squealed and tried to twist free, her right knee catching him under the chin. His jaws clacked together and he fell back off the couch, landing on his butt. He sat with one hand on his chin like a boxer unsure as to how he’d ended up on the mat. His jaw throbbed and he gave a low moan.
Grace tried to stifle her giggles out of deference to his pain but when he glanced up at her he couldn’t help giving a small laugh, which got her giggling even worse and then they were both laughing.
Out of the corner of his eye, TJ saw Ella step into the room, her dark, lustrous hair drawn back into a ponytail. She wore an open, indulgent smile full of such love that he wanted to cry for all the days they’d wasted on petty hurts and harsh words.
“All right, you goofballs, come and eat,” Ella said. She pointed at TJ. “Wash your hands first.”
“I think my jaw is broken,” TJ said, faking a muffled drawl.
“Serves you right, horsing around like that. She’s too big to be wrestling with you,” Ella chided him, but he could see she didn’t mean it.
“Not my little girl.”
TJ rose and passed the sofa, headed for the bathroom. He picked up a cushion and whacked Grace with it, inducing another fit of giggles.
“No fair!” Grace yelled. “No cookies for you.”
TJ froze, then slowly turned to look at Ella. “There are cookies?”
“Mom’s making them,” Grace said. “She promised.”
“You know Gracie likes me to bake when it snows,” Ella said.
TJ gave her a hesitant smile. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out, and perhaps that was for the best. In that moment, with the wind rattling the windows in their frames and the snow swirling beyond the glass, their little family unit remained intact. It felt as if they had somehow been transported back to a time before they had let their lives fall into a pattern of discontent and recrimination.
“What?” Ella asked, searching his face, not entirely trusting his smile.
“Just thank you,” he replied. “That’s all.”
For once, her smile seemed to reach her milk-chocolate eyes, but her expression quickly turned serious. She nodded, acknowledging all the things that TJ wasn’t saying … all the things neither of them would say tonight. A moment had arrived that was full of potential, and neither of them would ruin it.
“You’re welcome,” she said, turning away. “Now come on. Wash your hands so we can eat!”
Grace leaped from the sofa. “I call first dibs on cookies!”
“We haven’t even had the stew yet,” TJ reminded her.
Grace rolled her eyes and waved away this observation. “Psshht,” she said. “You can have first dibs on stew.”
TJ laughed and shook his head as he exited the room. While he was in the bathroom washing his hands he heard bowls and silverware clinking and cabinets opening and closing as Ella and Grace set the table.
Shutting off the tap, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He wore his blond hair a bit shorter these days and perhaps his face had thinned, and there were circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there even a few years earlier, but he had grown accustomed to seeing a sort of forlorn quality to his eyes that seemed absent at the moment.
He exhaled, feeling the stress easing out of him.
“Come on, Daddy,” Grace called from the kitchen. “You can’t have cookies if you don’t eat your stew.”
TJ smiled at his reflection in the mirror.
It was going to be a good night.
Jake Schapiro stepped back into his family room, drying his hands with a dish towel.
“It’s been a while since I made dinner for someone,” he said.
&nb
sp; Harley Talbot sat cross-legged on the carpet with Jake’s photography portfolio open on his lap. The normally unwieldy portfolio looked like little more than a notebook in the hands of the gigantic cop.
One eyebrow arched, Harley regarded Jake sincerely. “Just so we’re clear, I don’t fool around on a first date.”
Jake threw the dish towel at him. “You’re not my type.”
Harley caught the towel before it hit him and tossed it onto the coffee table. “Seriously, man, what is your type? Every time we hang out, you ask me about who I’ve been seeing but you never have an answer yourself. Are you really that boring?”
“That’s why I made friends with you, Harl. I wanted to live vicariously through your love life.”
“Damn, but you are the king of evasive answers.” Harley tapped the open portfolio with one huge finger. “You got talent, man. Between the crime-scene stuff, your photo blog, and taking pictures for the Gazette, you’ve got like three jobs. These pictures you take for yourself … they’re beautiful. I don’t claim to be some kind of art critic, but these storm photos are pretty unique. And you know your way around a kitchen, which women love. So what’s the deal?”
Jake stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You liked the chicken, huh?”
“Shit yeah,” Harley said, grabbing his Sam Adams from the coffee table and taking a swig. “I don’t know how you cook it without burning that Parmesan crust right off, and the risotto was like eating a little piece of heaven—”
Jake laughed. “Oh my god, you did not just say that. How do you ever get women to pay attention to you for more than five minutes?”
Harley leaned back against the couch and took another swig of beer. “Come on, man. Just look at me.”
“Well, maybe that’s it,” Jake said. “I don’t look like you.”
“Granted, you’re kind of skinny, but you have your nerdy charm.”
“Hey, now. I’m not a nerd, man. Hipster, maybe.”
“Fine,” Harley said. “Hipster charm.”
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