Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 05 - A 380 Degree View (16 page)

Chapter
Sixteen

Patrick stopped as if we hit him with snowballs, not just simple information. 

“Stuck?”  He repeated into the dark.

Prue flipped on two battery powered lanterns, on hand for just such a contingency. I trip over at least one of those things every summer. Now I will no longer complain.

She flipped them on and bathed the room in dim yellow light – not flattering to any comple
xion.  I took one of the lights and handed it to Patrick. 

“
Stuck, as in no one gets out, and no one gets in.”

Carrie carefully approached Patrick from behind. Her ring glinted even in the low light.

“In times like this, it’s best to just go to bed.”  She offered quietly.

Patrick wrinkled his handsome face, then
just as quickly, relaxed. “It seems I have little choice.”  He studied me for a second.  “Did you plan this?”

Ben
laughed. 

I would very much like
to run the world as it should be run. But I did not manage to create a snowstorm all by myself.  But it was a pretty great idea.

Carrie slipped her hand carefully into Patrick’s.  “Come on, I know the way.”

He followed her and the light disappeared as they made their way upstairs.

“Now that was romantic
.”  Ben said with approval.  “I’ll get our stuff.” 

He took the second
lantern and plunged my grandmother and me into darkness

              “You should marry that boy.” Prue called out of the dark.

              “Because he’s a Stanford man?” 

“That certainly helps.” Prue acknowledged. “But I’ve never seen you this in love, you get upset if he looks at you cross-eyed.”

“Do not.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Okay.  Okay.” I glanced outside searching for the wavering of Ben’s lamp.  Brick and Raul had hunkered down in the guesthouse as soon as the weather turned.  Pat had called but knew the house was full of helpers, so there was no need to come up the street. 

“So you’ll marry him? Have the wedding here. In June, that’s enough time.  Pat and Mike can help.”

“Not this June.” I gestured upstairs even though Prue couldn’t see me. “She comes first, her wedding is the first week of October and then we’ll go from there.”

The lantern illuminated the kitchen as Ben struggled for the door. I leapt up and opened it.  Ben wanted to cohabitate, as an advancement towards the abstract and far in the future idea of marriage. He had not agreed to a wedding, we had not discussed a honeymoon, we did not have a ring.  And since those were more or less hard facts, I didn’t think it was wise to engage a caterer quite yet. 

Sarah loved the snow. She was well prepared for anything.  She piled extra quilts in the living and stocked the freestanding stove with pellets against a power failure. The pellet stove was ugly but it kept the place warm. She stoked the fire, and covered grandma and grandpa with the thick down quilts she bought at Costco a few years ago.

“You’re good to us.” Grandpa murmured. “Everyone who listens to Lucky is good.”

“You are very lucky I’m here.”  Sarah said briskly. Every once in a while she said it out loud, but knew they weren’t listening and couldn’t really hear her even if they were.

She kissed their heads with dry lips and hurried upstairs. Some evenings she was able to stay awake long enough to enjoy an hour or two of privacy. She kept a battery-fueled lamp in her bedroom and planned to read into the night.

The light still glowed strong when she woke hours later.  She glanced at the clock; it was black. She listened.  Absent power, the house didn’t hum with the accustomed background noise. She only noticed how noisy her life was when all that ambient sound went missing.  No refrigerator motor, no electric heater, no TV, no hum of the digital clock.  The streets were silent; there was not even the usual low level humming from the streetlights.

The silence grew around her.

She listened for a second longer, then tossed off her covers. The satin quilt cover made a huge noisy scratching sound in the silence of her room.

She picked up the lamp and
quickly padded downstairs.

The pellet stove was dark, no glowing embers.  The room was chilly but not freezing, she was thankful for that. The stove hadn’t been out for very long. She automatically stoked the stove and re-lit it.  She turned to her grandmother to adjust the quilt, but then quite suddenly realized how silent the room really was. It was the complete lack of sound that woke her. The snow muffled all the sounds outside, like insulation.  She lifted her lamp higher and carefully placed a hand over her grandmother’s slack mouth, and felt no breath.             

She did the same with her grandfather, no breath, no sound.

The stove clicked as the metal warmed up again.

“It’s too late.”  Sarah said out loud.

She moved towards the phone, but the hand-held was dead.  No charge on the set.

Sarah did not own a cell phone. There was little point. Her grandparents always knew exactly where she was and what she was doing. The gossip in town was more effective than a GPS chip. Sarah pulled her robe closer around her throat. There was nothing she could do at this hour in the morning.

She slowly climbed the stairs back to her own bed, now cold.

Sarah woke to the snow.  She allowed a sigh to escape as she regarded the empty street, decorated with wet, April snowfall.  Did she want it to all change? It would change, she knew. A flood of activity was banked up, ready for her to say the word and the dam would burst and  activities and expectations would engulf her and carry her into her new future. She wished she had some idea what she would do when she hit land. 

She glanced at the clock, still black.  She was unable to remember what was scattered around her small apartment: a tiny kitchen she did not use; a living room decorated with a love seat and a television for the odd nights when she didn’t drop to sleep as soon as she climbed up to her rooms. A phone, that’s what she was thinking of, a phone. She rose stiffly and dragged the heavy, slippery quilt from her bed. She wrapped it around her shoulders; it trailed behind her like a colorful train.

She picked up the handset of the avocado green princess phone sturdily connected to the wall.  She dialed in the first memorized number that came to mind.  

Scott watched the snow fall from the library windows, it was early morning again. He was quite the morning person now.  The light was a gentle white color a bright wash over all the empty shelves and old flooring in the former children’s area.

He flipped on the lights but the white light didn’t change.  He flipped the switch back and forth like a meditation. Ah, the power outage ploy.  He had only visited Claim Jump in the summer months so he never experienced this kind of weather, but he had heard the stories from his dad.

Scott turned and trooped back down the stairs and regarded his little car.  Sporty, red, low to the ground,
the car would be perfect if he was still living in LA or in Dubai.  An inch of snow covered the car making it look very picturesque.  He kicked the tires. As pretty as it was, it would not get up the hill to where Sarah was surely stranded with her grandparents.

He turned up his collar and trudged carefully down the slushy sidewalk of
Main Street.  He’d walk to her. At least the walk wasn’t all uphill. He glanced around the stores as he walked. It was too early for even the tiny grocery store to be open.  Did they open with the electricity out?

There didn’t seem to be that much snow, not enough to cause a power failure. But the consistency was, he noticed, more slushy and heavier than the powder at Tahoe.   Maybe it only takes a couple feet of this weighty snow to pull down the power lines. 

Sarah’s house was not very far.  Scott turned into Grove Street. The narrow street was choked with cars and snow. The small driveway was just large enough to host an old brown Oldsmobile.  The car was covered in three inches of snow.

He glanced at his phone; it was barely seven o’clock. Were there rules about early calls? Was he crazy to think that she’d even be up?  What about those grandparents?  He hadn’t heard much about them. Sarah always deftly turned their conversation away from her and back to him and his travels with his dad. To Sarah, Scott’s peripatetic lifestyle was romantic, interesting and far more elevated than he deserved. It was not of his doing.  Very little in his life was of his doing.

But he was doing this.

He banged the doorknocker.

Sarah jerked the door open, the knocker swung and banged for one final time.

“You came!  I just called. There was no answer. Then I couldn’t remember if the phone at the library was connected to the wall or if it was a handset and if the charge had gone out. You can call out of course but what if the other phones can get it?  And how would you know if someone is calling?  I couldn’t even leave a message. I’m so glad you’re here.”  She backed up and he stepped out of the chilly air.

“Are you okay?” He stomped his boots on the mat, water puddled around his feet. 

Sarah looked terrible, her blond hair was matted and messed. A ripped sweatshirt that should have been be tossed in the trash years ago hung from her narrow shoulders. Under the threadbare sweatshirt, she wore a yellow tee shirt with a neckline that was stretched and thinned. Her sweatpants were stained, and she shuffled down the hall in socks three times too big. If he didn’t know better, he’d say this is what a person looks like after surviving a real tornado, class four hurricane, or an earthquake, not just a night without electricity.

She must have noticed his expression. She deliberately ran her hand through the tangle of her hair and made a gesture towards straightening her sweatshirt.

“I really didn’t sleep.” A long stairway rose up to the right. To the left, a narrow wall separated the entryway from the living room. Since he had viewed a number of homes in the area, he knew that originally there was no wall dividing the front door from the main living room. The whole room welcomed the guest at the front door.

This home had been divided into apartments.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake your grandparents.” He lowered his voice.  From what he gleaned from her and her nervousness when she spoke of her guardians, they weren’t the most forgiving or flexible of people. Yesterday, he delivered her back to her house just five minutes late.  It was because of the increasing snow, so not her fault, but she was frantic none-the-less.   He didn’t want to get her in trouble again.

“I wanted to see if you needed help, you know, because of the electricity.”  He finished awkwardly.

She wrung her hands and stared at the closed door. 

              “My grandparents died last night.” She blurted out.

He took a step back.  “Both of them?  Oh my God, Sarah, I’m so sorry, what can I do?”

That was the right thing to say.  She brightened a bit.

“Do you have your cell phone?  Does it have a charge?”

“Do you have reception?” He was learning about the foothills.  He pulled out his phone and squinted at the tiny bars. He was good to go.

“Who do I call?”

“Suzanne Chatterhill.” She rattled off the number from memory and he dutifully punched in the numbers.  He handed the phone to Sarah so she could do the negotiating. He wasn’t quite brave enough to take on Mrs. Chatterhill so early in the day.

I woke to the sound of the ringing phone; no ring tone can replicate the sound of a real phone rattling off in an empty kitchen. Or not empty, the phone stopped on the third ring.  Prue was up?  I groaned and rolled over and grabbed Ben’s phone, seven fifteen.  Rather early for a social call, but sometimes the calls in Claim Jump were not social.

I strugg
led out of bed, leaving Ben where he was. He smiled in his sleep and rolled into my abandoned spot. Now he could rest comfortably.

I pulled on what was handy and staggered downstairs.  It was only when I reached the dim kitchen that I realized there still was no electricity.

Shit.

“No, no, you’re right to leave them there. The coroner can take them.  Do they have insurance?  Plot picked out?  Ah, good.”

Prue limped to the calendar hanging on her now silent refrigerator.  “Tomorrow?  Are you sure that’s not too soon?  Oh, they have an opening.   Of course.”

She listened for a minute and nodded to me with a finger on her lips.  “I’ll bring the deviled eggs.  No trouble.”

Prue gestured to a cabinet and I pulled out a classic two-cup espresso maker, Italian, lifesaving.

“I told you, the gas still works.”  She flipped on the stove to demonstrate.  I packed in espresso, filled the base of the coffee maker with freezing cold water and prayed to the Starbucks gods to forgive me.

“Who was that at such an ungodly hour in the morning?”

“Suzanne Chatterhill of course.  The Millers passed away last night.”

“Because of the cold?”