Chapter 16
The lights went out at 8:15 p.m.
Darkness came instantly, and then the low hum of the backup generator pulling on somewhere beneath the house and bringing back only what it considered essential.
The refrigerator. The security system. The heating was barely working.
Everything else stayed dark.
My laptop screen went black right in the middle of my sentence. And I thought about what I was going to do with an evening that had just lost all its structure.
I sat at my desk in the dark for a moment.
Then I found my phone torch and went looking for candles.
Adrian had the same idea. We met in the main sitting room coming from opposite ends of the house. He had already lit a candle. I had found three in the kitchen and lit them on the way.
Our gazes met.
“It’s a basic generat
