Christmas Blackout

by Maggie K. Black

  Gavin’s hands rose higher. “I don’t know anything about any of that!”

  Benjamin’s eyebrow rose.

  “Okay, yeah,” Gavin conceded. “I did threaten Piper with a knife right now and I did sort of trespass on the roof of her barn, and hit the chimney with a sledgehammer. But in my defense, I didn’t know her barn roof was so weak. And I didn’t touch her generator, or do any of those other things. And I only threatened her right now because I was getting so desperate and frustrated. I was hired by somebody to find something, okay?”

  “Hired to find what?” Benjamin demanded.

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Who hired you? Was it Alpha?”

  “I don’t know! Look, I’m kind of a subcontractor. Trisha hired me.” His whole body seemed to deflate and sink into the floor. “Trisha’s not really my wife. She’s definitely not a lawyer and she’s only twenty-two. She came into the legal clinic where I was working and offered me five hundred dollars to go away with her over Christmas.”

  Benjamin snorted. Gavin was claiming Trisha had paid him to come to The Downs with her and pretend to be her husband? “Really? That’s the story you’re going with now?”

  Benjamin reached for the phone again.

  “Wait! Look, I’m telling the truth!” Gavin yelled. “I met her a few months ago. She seemed to be in some kind of trouble with a really bad boyfriend and I’m a nice guy, so I found out her contact details and tried to keep in touch with her afterward. I kept texting and asking her out every now and then over the next few months, trying to build a rapport. She kept saying no and telling me to leave her alone. Then all of a sudden she offers me money to go away with her over Christmas and pretend to be her husband. Should’ve known it was too good to be true. I hadn’t even realized she was pregnant and she wouldn’t let me get anywhere near her. But I needed the money and thought she might’ve started liking me. But when we got here she basically just hid in the room and got me to do all kinds of stupid stuff for her.”

  Okay, that much Benjamin could believe. If Trisha had been looking to use someone—for whatever reason—Gavin might have seemed both arrogant and foolish enough to be a dupe.

  “Did Trisha have anyone else working for her?” Piper loosened her grip on Gavin. “Or was she working for anyone?”

  “I don’t know.” Gavin frowned and cradled his sore arm. “Her story kept changing. At first she told me she was here looking for a person. But then the person wasn’t here and suddenly she says we need to go through the Christmas decorations in the barn and take a look inside the barn chimney. And why the chimney? I don’t know. It was as if her connection with reality was totally slipping. Or maybe someone was just giving her really weird directions. She was texting someone a lot. All I know is I got tired of being her lackey and began to worry I was never going to see my money. Especially after you kicked us out. Falling through the barn was the last straw. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. Figured Piper might know what was going on.”

  As ridiculous as this sounded, it was also consistent with what he’d seen on Kodiak’s phone. So that made multiple people under Alpha’s command. Benjamin met Piper’s eyes.

  “I’m pretty sure Trisha was getting instructions from Alpha, too,” she said, “and that she’s scared witless of him.”

  Yeah, he could see that, too. But Uncle Des had seen Charlotte kissing a strong, young man. If neither Kodiak nor Gavin were Alpha, they were running out of suspects. The only other person he’d met in town who met that description was the mechanic.

  “Where is Trisha now?” Benjamin asked.

  “Where’s Benjamin’s truck and stuff?” Piper spoke almost at the same time.

  “I have no idea.” Gavin’s shoulders rose and fell. “After I climbed out of the barn, I told Trisha I was done. So she stole your truck and split, because it was my vehicle we’d come up in. No girl, no matter how cute, is worth that much trouble, am I right?” Gavin grinned, foolishly. “But I have her cell phone number and I really can’t afford any legal problems at this stage of my career. So, how about you help me figure out what she was looking for, and then help me find it, and I’ll cut you in for a share of the money to help you renovate this old dump. What do you say?”

  Piper’s eyes rolled. Benjamin just looked down at the phone and dialed.

  “911. What’s your emergency?”

  “Hi, this is Benjamin Duff calling from The Downs—”

  Gavin shouted. Benjamin turned, just in time to see the man lunge for Piper’s legs in an apparent last-minute attempt to escape justice. Piper swung, her elbow catching Gavin square in the jaw. He crumpled to the floor. Benjamin shook his head. The whole thing had taken less than a couple of seconds.

  “Hello?” The 911 operator was back in his ear.

  “There’s been a break-in. We need police and an ambulance. The intruder threatened the proprietor with a knife and clearly underestimated who he was dealing with.”

  * * *

  Gavin was taken away in an ambulance, all the while demanding loudly that the police go find and arrest Trisha instead, because everything was entirely her fault. The same flurry of police cars and people in uniform that had become all too common a sight at The Downs in the past two days came and left as quickly as a winter snow squall. By ten thirty, Piper and the dog had gone upstairs to her room, Dominic had settled into the large suite Tobias had vacated, and despite having a more than adequate four-poster bed on the second floor to himself, Benjamin once again found himself tossing and turning on the living-room couch.

  He couldn’t sleep.

  Snow buffeted gently against the towering windows. A thirty-five-foot ceiling vaulted high above his head.

  The expansive room twisted and turned at the edges into nooks, crannies and alcoves. He lost track trying to count the number of walls the room even had. No wonder people suspected The Downs had been used as a hidden speakeasy or some other criminal enterprise with illegal alcohol and dirty money. Everything about this house projected mystery, suspense and intrigue.

  He could also see why Piper’s uncle and aunt loved the place so much and hoped to live out their last days here.

  The fire was burning down to embers and the box of wood beside the fireplace was running low. He grabbed his coat and started for the woodpile out back. The grandfather clock chimed midnight. His footstep paused. He was down to eighteen hours to his sister’s wedding.

  Christmas Eve had arrived.

  Not that it showed in the space around him. The lights Piper had strung outside hadn’t come back to life since the power had gone out yesterday, and there wasn’t so much as a string of tinsel or a sprig of holly inside The Downs.

  He held out the battery-powered lantern in front of him as he walked. The track pants and T-shirt he’d borrowed from Dominic were a size too big, but the clothes were warm enough against the cold. Thick white snow fell down from the sky, brushing his skin and sticking to his beard.

  Lantern light ran over the large kindling box. It was about three feet tall and five feet long. The idea of anyone being cruel enough to lock Piper inside it burned through his veins like fire. No, he didn’t judge Piper for relegating Christmas Eve at The Downs to the now-damaged barn. If anything, he admired her all the more for taking on the community event in her aunt’s place. He couldn’t blame her for not filling her living room with memories of Christmas, either. It was as if someone else’s cruelty and malice had taken even the happy symbols of the holiday and smashed them to bits.

  He filled his arms with small branches and kindling. The remnants of the broken hockey stick from when Piper had fought off Blondie last night had been tossed on top of the woodpile. In fact, there was more than one broken hockey stick, a broken paddle and half a cross-country ski scattered among the logs and branches. He chuckled. Yeah, the Piper he’d g
one running, kayaking and sailing with that summer had been strong, daring and utterly fearless. But not always easy on either herself or her sports equipment.

  The dull ache he’d felt in his chest at the memory of Piper’s smile strengthened to pain. It was like hunger pangs for something that he couldn’t quite put a name to. He’d thought the pain was bad that hot summer night when Piper had said goodbye and walked out of the restaurant, and that swinging by to drop off Harry would somehow put it to rest. Instead, it had just kept growing stronger every moment they’d spent together.

  He turned his face to the sky and prayed aloud.

  “Lord, You’ve got to know how awesome Piper is. I trust that You want an amazing life for her, just as much as I do. It was incredible the way she took Gavin down. Right now everything inside my heart is aching to help her, save her...or even just to give her a reason to smile this Christmas. But I’ve never felt so helpless and I don’t know where to start.”

  His eyes slid over the tree line as a memory filled his mind. A year and a half ago, he’d picked up his reporter friend Jack from the police station on the island. This was long before Jack was his sister’s fiancé or had even admitted to himself how perfect he and Meg were together. Benjamin had been driving and drinking coffee. Jack had been ranting about how impossible his situation was, almost on the verge of falling apart. A serial killer was stalking Meg. Jack was in trouble with the police and about to lose his job. And Benjamin had turned to the reporter, told him some camping story about a nonexistent bear, and then said something like, “I didn’t ask what you can’t do. I asked what you’re gonna do.”

  Now here he was standing in a snowstorm, freezing his feet off, worrying about everything he couldn’t fix. To be fair there was whole lot he couldn’t do right now. But figuring out what he could still do wasn’t a bad place to start.

  He grabbed the broken hockey stick.

  * * *

  Piper woke with a start and stared into the darkness, unable to tell if she really had just heard a noise downstairs or if it had just been an echo of the nightmare she could barely remember. Silence filled her ears, interrupted only by the sound of Harry snoring at her feet. The clock read six thirty in the morning. It was Christmas Eve. The world was still pitch-black outside her window, but she might as well get up.

  Her mind urged her to start making plans about how she was going to salvage the Christmas Eve potluck now that she’d lost the barn. But that would have to wait until after some coffee. She threw on jeans and pulled on a hockey jersey. Her feet dragged across the floor. Harry didn’t even follow, just stretched out on the full length of her bed. Guess that meant that he wasn’t bothered by whatever she might have heard. She felt her way down the stairs in the darkness, pushed the door open and stepped out onto the second-floor landing.

  “Hang on! Don’t move.” Benjamin’s voice floated up to her through the darkness. “Just wait one second.”

  “Okay...” What was going on? She couldn’t see a thing.

  “All right,” he said. “This isn’t much, I know. But my goal was to come up with something totally different and unique, that you probably hadn’t ever seen in The Downs before. And seeing as I didn’t manage to get you a Christmas present, I wanted to leave you with something.”

  She heard the whirring of the windup flashlight. The outline of a tall Christmas tree slowly came to life in the gentle glow of white fairy lights. She walked down the stairs watching as the lights grew brighter. A tall, handmade wooden Christmas tree stood beside the fireplace. A long, worn board formed the trunk. Bits of wood, hockey sticks and pieces of a canoe paddle formed the branches. Intricate crisscrossing twigs formed the star on the top. Christmas lights weaved through and around makeshift branches, plugged into the power outlet of Benjamin’s windup flashlight.

  His eyes met hers, hopeful, questioning. “So, what do you think?”

  “It’s incredible.” She felt a smile tug at the corner of her lips. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’m glad you like it.” His eyes drew her in deeper. “I found a toolbox in the garage and pulled the wood from the woodpile. I know it’s not much and I figured if you didn’t like it, it would be easy enough to dismantle—”

  “Stop it.” She ran across the floor toward him. “You’re being hard on yourself and you don’t need to.” She slipped her arms around his waist and hugged him. “I love it. Thank you. It’s too beautiful for words.”

  “Well, you’re beautiful. After everything you’ve been through I wouldn’t blame you if you hated Christmas. I just wanted to leave you with something to hopefully help build a happy memory.” His arms encircled her shoulders, his fingers locking behind her back. The tree lights began to slowly dim again. “You’re the kindest, most caring, pluckiest person I’ve ever met. Someone came along and stepped all over your Christmas memories and you just rolled your shoulders back and carried on making sure the holiday was still special for other people. I just hope you know that I’d do whatever I could to make sure you had a really amazing Christmas.”

  Then don’t leave. Don’t go to Australia. Her cheek pressed against his chest as the words she didn’t dare let herself say filled her heart. Forget about your boat. Forget about sailing the world. Just stay here with me and help me run this old, boring bed-and-breakfast in the middle of nowhere. I know it’s selfish to even think of asking you to give up your dreams. Because you’re right about this not making me happy. I wish my aunt Cass wasn’t sick, that The Downs wasn’t broke and that I could just pack up and leave here, too. But I can’t. I’m needed here.

  So, I wish what made you happy was being here, in The Downs, with me.

  Because right now the only thing that makes me truly happy here is you.

  No, she wouldn’t say that. She’d never say anything even close to that. Because the only thing that hurt worse than the thought of Benjamin leaving was knowing she sent him off with a heavy heart. Whenever he managed to catch that plane, the last thing she wanted him carrying with him was the weight of knowing just how sad she’d be.

  She took in a deep breath and breathed him in. She memorized the feel of his arms around her shoulders and the scent of him filling her lungs. Her eyes closed. Then she felt his lips brush her forehead. His fingertips lifted up her chin right before she felt the sweetness and scruff of his lips finding hers.

  The kiss lingered, as naturally and tenderly as breath filling their lungs.

  Then Piper stepped back. Benjamin did, too.

  “How soon do you leave?” she asked.

  “Soon.” Benjamin ran his hand over his face. “Very soon.”

  She didn’t know which one of them had initiated the kiss or which one of them had stopped it. But maybe it didn’t matter. They were like two of the little magnet dogs she had as a child. They kept pulling together and pushing apart, the two of them trapped in an invisible orbit.

  The pale gray light of winter morning began to fill the windows above their head.

  “I want to make sure the bridge has been reopened and that you’re ready for your party tonight,” Benjamin said. “But I hope to leave by ten at the latest. Do you know what you’re going to do about tonight yet?”

  “No, not yet.” She dropped into a chair by the window and pulled a blanket over her knees. For a moment she just sat and let her eyes run over the intricate work he’d done on the makeshift Christmas tree. Benjamin crossed the floor, sat down on the carpet and leaned his broad shoulder against her legs.

  “Aunt Cass used to host Christmas Eve in this room when I was little. They’d push all the furniture back, set up a string of potluck dishes down the kitchen counter and let everyone come through and feed themselves. It was a big, happy, chaotic mess.” She glanced up. “People used to sit on the second-floor balcony with their feet dangling down. Sixteen-year-olds. Sixty-year-olds. It was a madho
use.”

  He looked up at her face. “Sounds amazing.”

  “Oh, it was. But it was hard, too, because I was an only child, and this was my home and I never liked having all these people galloping through my space. I’m hardly an extrovert like Aunt Cass. Sometimes I wonder if she moved the whole thing out to the barn because she suspected it would be easier on me that way.” She sighed. “I love knowing that I’m helping my uncle and aunt keep their home. I love knowing I’m part of something that’s done so much for this community. But I don’t love the chaos of it all.”

  “All tacking, no sailing?” Benjamin asked.

  “Lots of loudly heralding angels and banging drummer boys. No ‘Silent Night’.”

  Feet padded above them and she looked up to see Harry making his way down the staircase. Benjamin got up and disappeared into the kitchen. She heard him pouring kibble into the dog bowl, then he reemerged, a cup of coffee in each hand.

  “You know how we did all that wilderness stuff together this summer?” He handed her a cup. “Well, I don’t do all that with just anyone. Not for fun. Most people are either too shy or too loud. But you’ve got a really good combination of getting things done and knowing how to just exist in the moment and let a guy think.” He sat down beside her. “You’re the most comfortable person I’ve ever been around. I think you’d be awesome to go on a sailing voyage with. I’m going to miss you so much, Piper, you have no idea.”

  Her fingers slid through his. “I’m going to miss you, too.”

  “Hey! Good morning!” A loud, cheerful voice floated from above them. Dominic was standing on the second-story balcony. The wannabe cop strode down the stairs. “Do I smell coffee?”

  “Yes.” Piper stood quickly. “Benjamin was kind enough to make some.”

  “Awesome.” Dominic smiled broadly. “Whoa, that hockey tree is something else! Did Benjamin make that?”

  Piper ran her hands up and down her arms, trying to brush away the shivers Benjamin’s words had left on her skin. “Yes, he’s quite the craftsman.”