Page 34 of Piece By Piece

It was almost six o’clock when Grant came through the front door.

He was carrying a folder of clue card drafts and two containers of soup from the deli.

“I thought maybe we could finalize the order of the clues tonight,” he said, putting the soup on the counter. “The deli’s closing early because of the weather.”

“Is it supposed to get really bad?”

“The woman at the deli said, and I’m quoting, ‘Honey, batten down.’”

Liza glanced at the windows.

The sky had gone from gray to more of a bruised purple, and the live oaks on the square were bending sideways.

The fairy lights between the shops were swinging wildly, and she doubted they would survive.

“We should probably take those down,” she said.

“It’s too late. They’re either going to survive or they’re not.”

“Yikes, that feels like a metaphor.”

“It’s just lights.”

They sat at a table near the reading nook and spread out the clue cards.

Rain started tapping against the window, light at first and then heavier.

Within about twenty minutes, there was a full downpour, the kind that turned the world outside the glass into a watercolor painting.

Thunder rolled across the island.

The lights in the bookstore flickered.

Then they went out.

The darkness was instant.

Liza’s hand shot out and grabbed the edge of the table.

“Well?”

“Well,” Grant agreed dryly.

She fumbled around for her phone and turned on the flashlight. It cut through the dark and landed on Grant’s face, making him squint.

“Sorry.” She turned it toward the ceiling. “Dixie left a flashlight somewhere, and I think there might be candles in the back room. I’ll go check.”

He was up and gone before she could argue, moving through the dark bookstore like someone perfectly at home in the dark.

She heard him open a cabinet, rummage around, and then return with a flashlight in one hand and a box of emergency candles in the other.

“Found matches, too.” He held up a book of matches from some restaurant in Savannah.

They set up three candles on the table and one on the counter. The flames created a warm glow across the bookshelves, and the store transformed.

During the daytime, it was Dixie’s cheerful, cluttered kingdom.

But by candlelight, it was something else.