CHAPTER 22 WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT
The ice storm arrived four days before Christmas.
By late afternoon, tree branches glittered beneath a hard shell. Roads closed. Businesses shut early.
Clara sent Beth home at three.
Maggie closed the bakery at four.
Eli arrived at four-fifteen with groceries, flashlights, and enough firewood to supply a cabin.
“You know the apartment does not have a fireplace.”
“The reading room does.”
“It has an old decorative fireplace.”
“Not anymore.”
Clara stared.
“You repaired it?”
“October.”
“When?”
“You were in Charlotte.”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“I just did.”
The power failed at five.
By six, the Book Nook glowed with candles and the reading-room fire.
Clara and Eli ate soup from Maggie’s bakery kitchen heated on a camping stove.
At seven, someone knocked on the door.
Walter Dean stood outside.
His apartment building had lost heat.
Clara brought him in.
At seven-thirty, Mrs. Garland arrived with two neighbors.
At eight, Reverend Hale brought an elderly couple whose furnace had stopped.
By nine, fourteen people occupied the reading room.
Eli fetched blankets from his house while Clara made coffee on the camping stove.
Noah and Anna arrived because a tree blocked the road to Anna’s neighborhood.
The Book Nook became a shelter.
Clara looked around the firelit room.
June would have known exactly what to do.
Clara did not.
So she did the next thing.
Blankets.
Hot drinks.
Chairs.
Phone chargers connected to Eli’s portable battery packs.
A list of who needed medication.
A call to the county emergency line.
At ten, Reverend Hale suggested prayer.
Everyone gathered quietly.
He thanked God for shelter, neighbors, and protection, and asked for those working on the roads and power lines to be kept safe.
Afterward, Noah asked for a story.
Clara looked at the shelves.
“Which one?”
“The Christmas one.”
So she read Luke again by firelight.
Adults listened too.
When she reached the words about good tidings of great joy, Clara’s voice caught.
She thought about Aunt June.
About the ledger.
About a bookstore that had spent forty years becoming useful enough to matter on a night when nobody was buying anything.
At midnight, power returned to part of downtown.
The Book Nook remained dark.
Nobody complained.
People slept in chairs, on the rug, and upstairs.
Clara sat near the fire beside Eli.
“You okay?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“Tired?”
“Beyond language.”
He smiled.
Clara watched Noah asleep beneath the new moon.
“This is what June meant.”
“What?”
“About value not being contained within walls.”
Eli nodded.
“I kept thinking I had to justify the shop with sales.”
“You do need sales.”
“I know.”
“But not only sales.”
“Exactly.”
She rested her head on his shoulder.
The lights came back at two-seventeen in the morning.
People cheered softly so they would not wake the children.
Clara laughed.
Outside, ice shone beneath the streetlamps.
Inside, the Book Nook was warm.