“No,” Effie said. “An embellishment, maybe. But she is what she is.”

Henry wanted to say he’d liked it, how open and frank she was—how she and Max both were—but he knew that what he liked about it was dangerous. “Man,” he said, “if anyone back home said that kind of thing—or did it, God forbid—they’d be tarred and feathered.”

“She’s of a different world,” Effie said. “That is a fact.”

After she won, they went upstairs to share a bath, and as soon as they’d settled into the water, the lights went out.

They held still a moment. “Did we do that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Rain struck the frosted window. They got out of the tub and dried off in the dark. Henry tried the hallway light, but it was no use. The electricity had gone out.

“Well, this is cute,” Effie said.

“Maybe it’s a circuit breaker or something. Do you know where it is?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

The temperature outside the bathroom had dropped, and a draft was coming up the stairwell from the den. Up in the attic room they felt around for their clothes and dressed, and went downstairs to look for candles. But to no avail. There wasn’t enough light to see into the closets and drawers, and the windows themselves were barely visible in the darkness. They stepped out onto the porch and looked toward Clara’s. Not a light anywhere, save for a faint glow in the distance, from the town center, probably. Even the streetlights down on Madison were out.

“I don’t know how I’m going to make supper,” Effie said.

“It’s probably a downed line somewhere,” Henry said. He knew nothing about how utilities worked. “They’re probably fixing it already.”

With nothing else to do, they went back inside and lay down on the sofa and pulled a quilt over them. Effie insisted they keep the windows open, and they listened to the wind and the rain.

A rapping at the door startled them from a doze, and the porch outside the windows was alight. The wind and rain had not abated. There was another rap, more insistent this time, and Effie said, “Who on earth?” and Henry got up to see who it was. In his confusion he thought it must be the police, come to arrest them for last night, and he was relieved to see that it was Max, holding a flashlight, drenched from head to foot.

“Would you believe this storm?” he said. “I had to wade upstream to get here.”

Henry welcomed him inside, and he stood dripping on the tiles in the foyer.

“Oh, Max, look at you,” Effie said, getting up from the sofa. “I’ll get you a towel.”

“There’s no need. I wasn’t sure I had the right house. Are you just sitting here in the dark?”