Changes of Heart (16 page)

Rough, clutching hands poked and grabbed at Maggie, and instinctively, she tried to fight them off. A sharp slap registered on her cheek and in her mind, and then Danny Pulver’s face was inches away from hers—and Ian Lane was fumbling at the release of her seat belt. Danny hollered into her ear, “The house—we’ve gotta get to the house. Now! Come on, Maggie!”

The seat belt whirled into its retractor, and the two men tugged Maggie from the driver’s seat into the full force of the wind. She stood between them, her arms linked with theirs, and they all leaned clumsily forward into the power of the storm.

The snow was a type that Maggie had never experienced. The flakes were small and crystalline and stung exposed flesh like wind-driven sand. There was a frightening density to the snow; it made them gasp for breath as if the very oxygen that sustained life had been dashed away by the snow and wind. During the strongest blasts the visibility was virtually inches and the churning snow seemed to dissolve
any concept of direction. The floodlight over the back door of the Morrison home offered only the faintest corona of light, and they trudged toward it like ships struggling through gigantic swells to a safe port.

At the moment the light went out, Maggie’s foot tangled with that of Ian and he fell, dragging her and Danny down with him, their arms welded together with the strength of panic and desperation.

The storm howled at their ludicrous attempts to get to their feet, taunting them with its strength. Maggie realized that their links to each other were their links to life itself. Their weight was what saved them from being flung about like chickens in a tornado, but they had another enemy now: directions were totally obscured by the whiteout. Maggie took a step along with Ian and then felt a wrenching at her other arm when Danny tried to set off on an opposite course.

One of the men—she thought it was Ian, but she couldn’t see his face, which was a foot away from her—pulled the other two together, heads close.

“This way—I’m sure it is! When we went down I kept facing the way we were going.”

“So did I—and you’re going away from the house!”

Maggie’s face was already numb from the subzero temperature and the wind. She no longer felt the scourging snow, and her feet in her Western boots were clumsy blocks of frozen wood.

“Look—wait—we gotta...”

“It’s this way. I’m sure of it, Dan. We...”

Danny’s voice—she could tell it was his because his face was touching her own—was strident now, and the words rasped from his throat at the top volume he could project. “... if I have to knock both of you down and drag you there, Ian! I mean it—I’ll...”

Ian’s voice, more of a screech than a shout, came from a few inches from Maggie’s face, but she could barely see him. “You’re wrong!”

The clanging of a bell was the most welcome sound Maggie had ever heard. The two notes, unmelodious but plainly audible, pealed rapidly. “Sarah’s bell!” Ian hollered. “Thank God.”

The trio lumbered toward the sound; Ian tripped over something and went to one knee, but the others remained upright and hauled him back to his feet. Clutching one another with aching arms, they passed the corner of the house, and blocked by the building, they felt the wind diminish slightly. Ten feet ahead they could barely see a figure in red cranking the lever on the antique bell. They stumbled to the figure, still not daring to release one another.

Tessa had her back to Maggie and the men. When they touched her she shrieked and spun to them, forcing words through her bloodless lips. “Here! Here—this way!”

The old-fashioned wooden door that opened like the flap of a box from its almost ground-level position had whirled off in the clutches of the storm. Tessa led her friends down the stone stairs.

The normal, year-round temperature in the basement was about fifty degrees. The missing door allowed the storm to
immediately drop the temperature to below twenty. The cellar was as dark as a crypt, with the wind whistling through like an express train—and to Maggie it was the most beautiful and welcoming place in the world. A cone of light appeared, and Sarah, holding a six-cell flashlight, rushed to them across the hard-packed dirt floor. She spoke quickly but calmly, in the tone of voice Maggie imagined she’d use during a crisis in the operating room.

“There’s a good fire in the fireplace and I’ve collected blankets. Let’s hurry now—we don’t want to give frostbite or hypothermia a chance. Hurry—you need heat.”

Maggie’s face, mere moments ago without sensation, now felt aflame, and her hands and arms trembled almost spastically. “Leave your coats here,” Sarah said as they entered the kitchen, “and then get to the fire. Don’t sit too close to it—your skin won’t be perceiving its heat for a time. Take off anything that’s wet and get your boots and socks off as soon as you can. Wiggle your toes. Hurry, now.”

The gentle flames of flickering candles spread light throughout the Morrison home. They seemed to be everywhere—standing in dinner plates, in formal silver candleholders, and on saucers. “The realtor told us about the storms and how the electricity goes out, so we bought a case of candles at the hardware store the day we moved in,” Sarah said in answer to the unasked question.

The fireplace of original stone in the living room was a thing of beauty, spreading its warmth throughout the room. Sarah had tugged a couch close to the flagstone apron, and a kettle of water boiled over the flames, suspended from
one of several hand-forged hooks that had been installed when the home was built well over a hundred and twenty years ago.

Maggie, Tessa, and Danny collapsed onto the couch, pulling quilts and blankets around themselves, Sarah tucking in loose edges. Ian remained standing, his face blotchy red as his circulation returned.

Sarah’s medical tone was gone and her words were now those of a mother and a friend. “I’m so glad that bell was so important to me when I first saw it.” She smiled. “Even Ellie said I was crazy when I told her how much it was going to cost to have it sandblasted and cleaned and how much the carpenter wanted to build the frame and rehang it.” She laughed. “Tessa and I don’t have any cowhands or workers in the field, and there are no raiding Indians. But I fell in love with the bell, and now I’m so happy that I did.”

“Kind of providential, no?” Ian said.

No one disagreed with him.

It was a feast of sorts, even if Sarah’s twenty-two-pound turkey remained in the electric oven, barely half cooked. Canned soup heated just fine over the fire in the fireplace, and crackers and peanut butter were perfect appetizers before the main course of tuna sandwiches on slightly stale white bread. Cold cuts, potato chips, Diet Pepsi, a large bag of salted-in-the-shell peanuts, a tin of anchovies, and most of a bag of Oreo cookies were strange fare for Thanksgiving
dinner, but the candlelit buffet had a certain charm all its own. And the black olives, fresh carrots, broccoli, and celery were, everyone agreed, excellent.

Tessa’s portable radio brought news from the outside into the Morrison home, but the news was grim. Through the hissing of static and over the relentless pounding of the storm and the rattling of windows, the announcer’s voice faded in and out.

“... since the storm of February 1916. Don’t bother with your cell phones, folks. The tower was knocked... roads impassable... no vehicular traffic of any kind... winds of seventy-five miles per... minus twenty-six degrees... expected for seventy hours... snowfall up to... National Weather Bureau... and stay where you are... we repeat...”

Danny, easing a log into the fireplace, glanced at the quickly diminishing pile of wood. Tessa followed his eyes. “We just had two cords delivered this week. We’re in good shape.”

Danny straightened from the fireplace and brushed his hands together over the flames. “Where’s it stacked?”

“On pallets under a tarp just outside the main basement door. It’s easy to get to—you hardly have to go outside.”

“Good,” Danny said. “The tarp’s probably long gone, but if the wood is stacked decently, it’ll be there.”

“Our diet won’t be fancy,” Sarah said, “but we have a ton of soups and other canned goods in the pantry, and there’s rice and noodles and spaghetti and all sorts of things. We have more pots and pans than Kmart, and we’ll cook in the
fireplace.” She paused for a moment. “One other thing—we can flush the toilet by dumping pails of melted snow into it. It’s not genteel, but it’ll be sanitary.”

“Will that work?” Tessa asked.

“Sure,” Danny answered. “It’s a kind of a gravity thing, actually. You need electricity to pump water to the toilet tank, but once the water is there and the toilet is flushed, it should work. I have the same system at my place.” He shook his head. “This thing came on without warning. Lots of cattle are going to die where they stand before it’s over.”

Tessa looked at Maggie with fear in her eyes. “The horses,” she said. “What about the horses?”

“Yeah,” Danny added. “I’ve got an awfully good dog in a mudroom with only a pan of water and his morning meal.”

Maggie forced a half smile onto her face. “The horses will be fine, Tessa,” she said, avoiding looking at Danny. He knew as well as she did what hungry, thirsty, storm-panicked horses could do to themselves in a closed barn.

A moment of uncomfortable silence hung over the room until Ian broke in. “Danny, how about if we haul some wood in? We might as well get that taken care of and make sure we have enough up here to get us through the night.”

Danny stood. “Good point. Let’s do it.”

“Are your things dry yet?” Sarah asked. “You don’t want to be working in damp clothes.”

“Real men—like veterinarians—don’t notice the elements. We strong like bool,” Danny added in a harsh, heavily accented voice.

“Ministers notice, though,” Ian said. “I could use a sweater under my coat if anyone has a spare one.”

“One thing we have is a ton of sweaters,” Tessa said. “As long as you’re not too particular about the fit, we can fix you up.”

“It’s not the fit I’m concerned with,” Ian said seriously, “but the color, and how it coordinates with what else I’m wearing.”

Maggie played along. “Good point,” she said dryly. “How’s this—the ladies will close their eyes, and Danny doesn’t much care, so you should be OK.”

A few minutes later the clunk and clatter of logs hitting the dirt floor of the old basement added a new sound to the racket of the storm. Danny and Ian worked hard and fast, not bothering to stack the lengths of wood in the frigid, doorless basement, since after being brought inside, the wood needed to be hauled up the stairs to the fireplace. If there was conversation between them it didn’t register upstairs. Maggie and Sarah sat on the couch, each lost in her own thoughts. A loud snap as a knot burst in the flames seemed to awaken both women from their introspection.

Tessa dropped an aluminum bowl onto the ceramic tile floor of the kitchen, and the sound rang through the house like a bell, as did the girl’s exasperated “Rats!”

Sarah moved a bit closer to Maggie. “You heard that ‘real men’ bit, didn’t you?”

“Just a joke,” Maggie answered in a low voice, barely louder than a whisper.

“Semi, Maggie—a semi-joke, at best.”

A long moment passed. “Yeah,” Maggie said. “I guess you’re right.”

“You know how those two feel about you, don’t you?” Sarah found Maggie’s eyes with her own. “Ian is less obvious than Danny is, of course. Ian runs deep, Maggie, and he’s protective of his heart, but the feelings are there. You can take my word on it—I don’t miss things like that. My point is that there are two very good and very different men interested in you.”

“I suppose so. It’s just that I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Not a terrible position for a young woman to be in,” Sarah said. “All in all, I mean—and after some time passes.” Maggie sighed but didn’t speak.

“Gonna be a long storm, no matter how long the weather lasts,” Sarah said.