Chapter 18 Maggie
MAGGIE
After they had all clung to each other for a minute, Maggie hurried to close the door. She was wearing Charlie’s coat and nothing else, and her bare legs and feet were freezing. Even with the door closed, it wasn’t that much warmer inside.
“Why don’t you have a coat on, sweetheart?” Sam was asking Charlie.
“I gave it to Maggie, Dad. She doesn’t have anything else.”
Sam unslung the bag from his shoulder. “I can help with that.”
He chivalrously averted his eyes as Maggie hastily began to dress. “But Dad, how did you find us?” Charlie asked.
“I heard you calling me,” Sam said.
Maggie looked at Charlie, who looked as confused as she did, and then at Sam. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t either,” Sam said with a lopsided half-grin. “But I found you, didn’t I? Where are we?”
“I have no idea,” Maggie said. “We only got here a minute or two before you did. We’d just figured out how to get the door open. It was locked, but Charlie found an open window that we could reach through and unlock it. It looks like the owners are gone—”
She broke off when electric light flooded the foyer. Sam had turned on the wall switch.
“I wasn’t sure if that would work,” Sam said. “Guess we have electricity.”
They looked around. The house was clearly under construction; the walls were unpainted drywall, the ceiling light was a naked bulb, and there was a half-finished wall with visible studs letting them see through into a dark, shadowy space beyond.
“Creepy,” Charlie pronounced.
“If there’s electricity, there might be heat,” Maggie said. “Let’s look for a thermostat.”
The thermostat was easy to find, but controlling it was harder; the house had a complex zone system, and Maggie struggled to figure it out. Charlie vanished to start exploring.
“How’s the heat?” Sam asked, moving closer to look at it.
“I think it was already on in part of the house; that’s what was messing me up. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it’ll be warming up in here shortly.” Which they all could use, she thought. Her teeth were chattering, and Sam was shivering from his excursion in the snow in spite of his heavy coat.
“Hey!” Charlie’s voice echoed through the unfinished interior walls. “Look what I found, you guys!”
They followed the sound of her voice through several cavernous empty rooms until they found Charlie sitting in front of a gas fireplace, boots off and feet stretched out to the flames.
“Oh,” Maggie said rapturously. She crouched in front of it and held her hands out. The warmth was wonderful.
“I just fiddled with it, and it came on,” Charlie explained. “Isn’t this place amazing? Look how huge this room is.”
She was right; the room was enormous, with high ceilings. The windows looking out on the storm were mostly boarded up, the walls still bare sheetrock, but it was clear that this would be a stunning room when it was finished.
“This whole place is huge,” Maggie said. “There are at least two more floors above this one. We’ve holed up in a mansion, you guys.”
Sam snapped his fingers. “That’s it. I know where we are.
My partner’s sister-in-law, Joy, and her husband are building a place out here.
Rebuilding his old family home, something like that.
They aren’t working on it this winter because she had a baby, but I think that’s what this place is.
It’s Joy and Bar’s construction project. ”
“Will they mind us being here?” Charlie asked anxiously.
“Of course not,” Sam reassured her. “They wouldn’t want us to freeze in the storm. They’re nice people. It won’t bother them a bit.”
After she stopped shivering, Maggie wandered away from the fire a little way and found a huge open-plan kitchen adjoining the room they were in, which she supposed was a living room or lounge.
The kitchen was more finished than other parts of the house; the major appliances were in already, and with the electricity working, it looked like the stove’s ultra-modern induction top also worked.
Which was no use if they had nothing to cook on it, she supposed.
But they might be able to melt snow if they needed to.
She paused, looking up. Gusts of wind periodically shook the house, so it was hard to identify individual sounds. But she thought she’d heard something upstairs.
“What’d you find?” Sam asked, coming up behind her. He sounded much better, less shivery and shaken.
“Just looking around to see what our assets are.” She opened the cabinets, all of which were empty. “I don’t suppose you brought food?”
“I’ve got a bag of emergency gear from the snowmobile. It might have something, MREs or granola bars.”
“Let’s look through that when we’ve warmed up.” Maggie paused again at the sound of a distinctive thump that might have been a loose board banging in the wind—but might not have been.
Sam caught her alarm immediately. “What?”
Maggie put her finger to her lips and moved a little closer.
“Okay, so I told you how we got in when we got here,” she said quietly.
“The door was locked, but there’s a window right next to it that we could reach through and open it.
You notice how the windows are mostly boarded up, but some of them aren’t, and that one looked like the board had been pried up at some point.
I didn’t really think about it then, because we were mostly worried about getting out of the cold, and then you showed up and we had other things to think about. But now I’m thinking about it again.”
“You think someone broke into Joy and Bar’s house?” He winced. “I mean, other than us.”
“I think someone broke in and is still here,” she whispered. “Remember I said I had trouble getting the heat turned on, and part of that was because it was on already in one of the zones of the house. Upstairs.”
As if on cue, a sudden burst of rattling that was definitely a loose board, coming from right outside the kitchen wall, made them both jump. Maggie burst into nervous laughter.
“Okay, what the heck are you two doing in here?” Charlie asked, appearing around the corner from the living room. Then she skidded to a stop and put her hand over her eyes. “Never mind, I definitely do not want to know.”
“Don’t clutch your pearls, Granny,” Sam laughed. “We’re not doing anything. Just talking.” He put an arm around his daughter’s shoulders, then leaned close and whispered in her ear. Maggie couldn’t hear him, but she guessed the gist of it from the widening of Charlie’s eyes.
Charlie and Sam closed up with Maggie, and Charlie whispered, “What are we going to do?”
“I think we should find out who else is here,” Maggie whispered back. “If we don’t know who we’re dealing with, we’re going to be nervous all night.”
“What if they’re dangerous?” Charlie whispered. “What if they’re on drugs or something?”
“Then it’s better to know now, don’t you think?”
“I’ll go upstairs and look around,” Sam began, only to be whispered down by a combined chorus of his daughter and Maggie.
“Not alone!”
“Not without me, Dad!”
“All right, Maggie and I will—”
“I’m not staying here with possible drug dealers in the house,” Charlie whisper-demanded, folding her arms.
“They’re not .... okay, yes, let’s go up and see if we can find them. Charlie, stay behind us.”
“I don’t think we should whisper anymore,” Maggie said in a normal voice. “We’re not doing anything wrong. And honestly, if someone else is sheltering from the storm the same as we are, neither are they.”
“Right,” Sam said. He laughed under his breath. “Look, if anyone else is here, we’re fine sharing the space.”
“We just want to meet you!” Charlie said.
“Okay, now we might all be coming across as overly friendly freaks,” Maggie said. “Can anyone figure out where the stairs are in this place?”
They found the stairs on the other side of the living room, and cautiously went upstairs.
It was less finished up here, a large open space with interior walls, some of them nothing more than the framing studs, and sawhorses and piles of construction supplies.
Sam flicked on the light, and as light washed through the space, there was a sudden flurry of noise and thumping from somewhere out of sight.
“Don’t be scared!” Charlie called. “We’re friendly!”
No one came out, but there were no more noises. Motioning the other two behind him, Sam crossed the floor cautiously, with Charlie so close she was almost bumping into him and Maggie bringing up the rear.
The noise seemed to have come from an empty, doorless room, perhaps a bedroom. “Hey, we’re coming in,” Sam said. “We’re not enemies. We’re just ordinary people getting out of the storm. But we’d like to talk to you.”
With that, he reached inside and turned on the light.
“Please don’t hurt me!”
The person cowering in front of them was a young woman in an oversized sweater and boots. She had pink and blue hair, and she’d put her hands in front of her face. Maggie’s chest instantly crumbled in compassion.
“It’s okay. Don’t be scared. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re refugees from the storm, too.”
The young woman cautiously took her hands away from her face. “Who are you?”
Looking around, Maggie saw signs that someone had been living here for a little while. There was a sleeping bag and a pack, and next to it—
“Ohhhh,” she breathed. She took a few steps over, leaned forward, and pulled festive red and green plastic away from a basket with some pears, apples, and other fruit. The basket had been half emptied. “You’re our charity auction thief.”
All the items were here. The snack basket was also partly empty, and the towels and soap had clearly been used. Maggie would have felt more smug about being completely right if she hadn’t simply felt bad for the poor girl, who was now looking even more frightened.