Christmas Blackout. Maggie K. Black

every bit as cold as the outside air. Harry slipped in ahead of them and curled up by the wall. Piper slipped out from under the cloak and let its full weight fall on Benjamin.

      “We never had a lot of money.” She set down the hockey stick and reached for a small battery-powered lamp hanging just inside the door. “So almost all the decorations she destroyed were homemade, mostly by me, including the nativity she broke into bits. A lot of the handmade garlands she ripped into pieces I’d made when I was five or six. The star on the top of the tree was something I’d made out of vintage newspaper when I was about eight, and I couldn’t even find it in the wreckage. It was all too mean and petty for words.”

      She ran her hand over her face. And I’m not even telling you the part about how she, or an accomplice, hit me over the head, knocked me out and locked me in the kindling box. Because even the memory of that makes me feel too pathetic and vulnerable for words.

      Holding out the lantern, she made her way over to the generator that sat in the corner, silent and cold. She bent down beside it, pushed the button and held it. It didn’t start.

      “I’m sorry. It must have been pretty hard to forgive her for all that.” Benjamin’s voice floated behind her in the darkness.

      Was it even possible to forgive someone who’d never come back to ask for forgiveness?

      She looked back up at Benjamin. “The generator’s not working. Any suggestions?”

      “If it’s a motor problem I might be able to fix it. I’ve tinkered around with a lot of boat motors and vehicle engines.” He moved passed her and knelt by her feet. He reached up, took her hand and moved the light over the generator. “Just hold that there, please, and don’t move.”

      Thick snow dotted his hair and beard. His eyes were gray-blue in the lamplight. Oddly, she hadn’t noticed the gray in them last summer. When he’d been standing outside waiting for her that last night on the dock by the pavilion, his eyes had seemed as dark and fathomless as the water spreading out behind him.

      “Don’t ever marry a sweetheart until you’ve both summered and wintered your romance...” Something Aunt Cass had said flickered in the back of her mind. It had been her aunt’s way of trying to explain in the gentlest way possible why Piper’s mother’s whirlwind marriages never seemed to work.

      But why was she remembering that now? She had no future with Benjamin. He wasn’t her sweetheart and this wasn’t a romance. He was just a friend and would be leaving as soon as his truck was repaired.

      Benjamin muttered something under his breath. He stood.

      “I’m sorry, Piper.” His hands brushed her shoulders. “But it looks like someone sabotaged your generator.”