Page 25 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

The twins are camped at their usual corner table when Jenna comes through the door at half past three, stamping snow off her boots, cheeks already gone pink from the ten feet between her car and the entrance.

"It's getting bad out there," she says, unwinding a scarf that's collected its own small drift. "Pack up, you two. We need to beat this home."

"Ten more minutes," Eli says, not looking up from his worksheet. "I'm winning against Josie."

"You're not winning against me," Josie says. "You're losing slower."

"That's the same thing as winning."

"Now," Jenna says, in a tone that ends the debate before it starts, and both of them start gathering crayons and papers with the particular speed kids reserve for the one voice they know not to argue with.

I walk her to the door out of habit more than anything, and I'm still standing in the doorway when she tries to back her car out of the lot and it doesn't move, tires spinning uselessly in snow that's already deeper than it has any business being this early in the storm.

"Rafe." She's got the window cracked, snow already collecting on the sill. "A little help."

I push. She reverses. Nothing happens except the smell of burning rubber and a spray of slush that catches me across both knees. I try again from a different angle, boots sliding on ice I can't get purchase on, and the car settles another inch deeper instead of coming free.

"It's not going anywhere," I tell her, straightening up, snow already melting cold down the back of my collar. "Not without a tow, and nobody's towing anything in this until it lets up."

"So what do I do?"

I don't have an immediate answer, and I don't love that I don't have one. Then the lights in the taproom flicker once, twice, and go dark, the hum of the coolers cutting out mid-cycle and leaving a silence that feels bigger than it should.

"That answers that," Gunny says from the doorway, phone already at his ear. "Power's out clear across the valley. I just called Dot to see if she's got room, and she says she's already got six people and a dog on her living room floor."

"What about the shelter at the school?"

"Roads to the school closed twenty minutes ago. County's saying stay where you are." Gunny looks between me and Jenna and the two kids now standing in the doorway with their backpacks, and something in his face says he's already arrived at the same conclusion I have and is waiting for me to say it out loud.

There's exactly one building in reach with heat and light that doesn't depend on the grid, and it's the one I've never once had to think about sharing.

"The loft's got a generator," I say. "Runs the whole upstairs. You'd be warm."

Jenna looks up at the building like she's only now noticing it has a second floor. "Are you sure?"

"I wouldn't offer if I wasn't."

"Okay." She says it simply, no argument in it, and something in my chest unclenches that I didn't know had been clenched.

The stairs up to the loft are narrow. I go first with a lantern, Eli and Josie close behind arguing in whispers about who gets to pet Biscuit first, Jenna last with both hands full of backpacks and a look on her face like she's bracing for something. I open the door at the top and step back to let them through, and suddenly I notice the room the way I never do when it's just me, every bare wall and empty shelf like I'm seeing it for the first time in years.

Nobody's stood in this room but me, Gunny, and a dog who doesn't judge furniture. It shows.

"Oh," Josie says, looking around at the narrow bed, the single armchair, the desk with nothing on it but a laptop and a glass holding one very dead dandelion. "It's very tidy."

"It's very empty," Eli corrects her, not unkindly, already crouching to greet Biscuit, who's roused himself off his blanket by the window to inspect the new arrivals with mild, dignified interest.

The dandelion migrated up here weeks ago, off the office desk and onto a shelf nobody but me ever sees, because throwing out a dead weed felt harder than it should have and leaving it downstairs where Gunny might finally ask about it felt harder still. I don't explain any of that. I just watch Josie's eyes catch on it and hope she doesn't ask either.

"I don't need much," I say. It's true, and also not the whole answer. Jenna's eyes move once around the room in a slow arc that I feel more than watch, taking in the bare walls, the single mug on the drying rack, the complete absence of anything that would tell a stranger who lives here.

Her gaze catches on the shelf above the desk, on the one thing in the whole room that isn't strictly functional, a photograph turned face down against the wood. I see her notice it. I see her decide not to ask. I cross the room before I've fully decided to and turn it another quarter inch further from her, a motion so small I could almost convince myself I didn't do it on purpose.

"Cocoa," I say instead, because it's easier than the alternative. "I've got a propane burner and enough powder mix to get us through the apocalypse."

"That's oddly specific."

"I plan for things."