“The storm knocked out the telephone, sweetheart.”

“Pow,” said Jody.

Annabelle, wondering if a child that young was smart enough to make a joke like that, laughed and hugged her. When Jody laughed, too, Annabelle realized, with no small wonder, that Jody had heard “knocked out” and put it together with “pow,” all the while knowing that’s not what it meant.

“You are a smart little girl,” she told her.

It gave her an idea: maybe she could “knock out” Laurie’s bad idea of going to Colorado by herself-supposedly by herself-by getting Belle to go, too. After all, Belle might be jealous and resent the expensive treat for her sister-in-law, and Laurie had already talked about inviting a friend. She and Belle weren’t all that close, but they were friends in the way that people who had gone all through school together in low population counties were.

Yes, Belle definitely deserved a short trip to Colorado.

Glad of a solution, Annabelle hurried to get some laundry done.

She occupied Jody with sorting whites from colors.

Annabelle picked up a pair of Bobby’s work jeans and started going through the pockets. She found three pockets clean, but he had missed clearing out his back left pocket. She pulled out a wad of stuff: a feed store receipt, an AA battery, a piece of wintergreen gum, which she unwrapped and stuck into her mouth, his (now useless) K-State student ID card, and a small photograph of his sister-in-law and his niece.

Surprised to find such a sentimental thing in his pocket, Annabelle smiled at the discovery.

“Look, Jody.”

The little girl hopped up and came over to see.

“Is that baby me?”

“It sure is. That’s you and your mommy.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“From your uncle Bobby’s pants pocket.”

“What was it doing in there?”

“He wants to keep you close to him.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He’s proud of you. You’re his only niece.”

Annabelle had no idea if any of that was true, but she liked the sound of it, and judging from the way Jody’s eyes were shining, so did his niece.

“I love Uncle Bobby.”

“Well, he loves you, too.”

“Mommy’s pretty.”

“Yes, she is.”

Bobby was better with children than he was with grown-ups, Annabelle thought. Or at least he was better with this one child. He was willing to pick her up and swing her when Laurie asked him to, and not opposed to walking out to the barn with her to visit the cats. She suspected that Laurie only wanted to get Jody out of her hair when she made those requests, but that didn’t take anything away from Bobby’s willingness to fulfill them. It seemed to make him almost as happy as it made Jody.

Annabelle felt delighted to think that her most difficult son wanted to keep a picture of his niece in his pocket. It was a small thing, and she knew she might be giving it too much weight, but she couldn’t help what it made her feel. It gave her hope for Bobby, who could be lazy and sarcastic and sometimes even a little mean. She laid the photo carefully on top of the dryer and told herself to remember to tell Hugh about it. Maybe it would soften him a little bit, and then maybe Bobby would respond to his father’s softening…

The only thing you should soften by pounding is steak, Annabelle thought. Children were not cuts of beef, and parents shouldn’t be meat mallets.

There was a ferocious crash of lightning, and the basement laundry room went dark.

“Grandma, what happened?”

“We’ve lost power, honey. Here, take my hand. We’ll find candles.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Then we’ll find a flashlight, candles, and something good to eat.”

Feeling grateful for her gas stove, Annabelle made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for the two of them, and followed that with a special treat of hot fudge sundaes. “May as well use up the ice cream before it melts.” She lit kerosene lanterns, put one on her reading table, and after dinner took her granddaughter onto her lap and read to her, in the flickering light, from Make Way for Ducklings, a tattered copy that was now on its third generation of handling and love.

Outside, the storm battered the house.

Inside, they were cozier than any pioneer women could have been.

As she turned a page and Jody snuggled against her, Annabelle thought, I’m the luckiest woman in the world.

AT THE ROSE MOTEL, Hugh Senior peeled down to his skivvies and crawled between the thin white sheets of the lumpy motel bed, for lack of anything else to do. There wasn’t any light to read by, except a flashlight, and the television was out, and it was raining too hard to go anywhere, even over to Bailey’s Bar & Grill for supper. He would have loved a couple of big fat pork chops with a baked potato and some green beans, but his stomach was just going to have to grumble because it wasn’t getting fed anytime soon. Unlike the motel, Bailey’s place would have electric generators going, so they’d still be serving, but that didn’t do him any good if he couldn’t get there. He wasn’t hungry enough to pay the price of getting soaked to the skin when he didn’t have a change of clothes, and he’d stupidly left his rain slicker in his truck. He thought about forcing his way through the downpour anyway, and driving over to the grill, but decided that he’d had about enough of his own kids for one day. He knew they were at Bailey’s because when he’d driven past he saw Bobby’s truck and Meryl’s. A phone call to Bailey himself had filled in the blanks: his two younger sons, his daughter, and his daughter-in-law; they’d take care of themselves and each other.

Truth to tell, they’d probably had enough of him, too.

He ran his hands over the sheets-so cheap and rough compared to the soft, good-smelling ones that Annabelle used on their bed at home-and wished she was there with him to complain about them.

“At these prices, you’d think they could afford decent sheets,” she’d say.

In truth, at the prices the local motels charged, they probably couldn’t afford anything but old towels and sheets, but his wife was careful about money, which was one of the things he loved about her-as opposed to some other wives he could think of, including one in his own family.

He liked staying in hotels and motels with Annabelle-well, nice ones, at least-especially now that the kids were grown and got their own rooms. And, frugal or not, Annabelle loved room service. She would never get that at the Rose Motel, but she could have awakened to fresh coffee made in the room by her very own husband.

Hugh Senior crossed his arms behind his head on the pillow and smiled at the ceiling. His kids drove him crazy half the time, the ranches were heavy responsibility and hard work almost all of the time, there were various problems that he’d just as soon he didn’t have to deal with, but overall, life was pretty good…

Especially now that the Billy Crosby problem was solved.

Any second thoughts he’d had were gone.

We’ll be fine, if we don’t lose any cattle in this storm, he thought.

He felt a bubble of laughter in his chest, knowing what Annabelle would have said if she’d heard him think that: “You’re just an old farmer,” she’d say, “always happy to find the cloud in the silver lining,” and then she’d put her arms around him and kiss him.

In his imagination, he kissed her back.

He wasn’t through thinking, though.

He was convinced-again-that he’d done the right thing about Billy: get him arrested, put him in jail. A lot of things got tolerated or overlooked in small towns because people had to live together, but this wasn’t going to be one of them.

Satisfied with his own intentions, Hugh Senior closed his eyes.

Outside, lightning crashed as if the end of the world had come.

Exhausted from the day of stress and hard work, Hugh Senior slept through most of it.

TWO DOORS DOWN from his father, Bobby ran in from the rain.