On Christmas night, he finally indulged himself. It had been a hard month since his return. He drank most of a bottle of fine old red wine he had found in the wine cellar, polished it off with two brandies, and went to bed. And he felt better for it, despite the hangover he had the next day. He was glad that the holidays were almost over. He spent New Year's Eve at his desk, going over papers that his attorney was going to file in probate court after the first of the year. He worked for hours, as he listened to a driving rain battering his windows, and he could hear the wind whistling through the trees. It was midnight when he finally got up and glanced outside, and saw that the slimmer trees were being pressed almost level to the ground with the gale force of the wind. He didn't bother to turn the television on, but if he had, he would have discovered that it was the fiercest storm to hit northern California in more than a century, and there were power lines down all over Marin County and the East and South Bay.
He was in bed and sound asleep in the dark house, when he heard a tremendous crash outside, followed almost as quickly by two more. He got up and glanced out the window again, and saw that the biggest tree in his garden had fallen over. He went outside in his pajamas and a slicker to look at it in amazement, and saw instantly that it had sheared off a corner of the roof when it fell. And when he walked back into the house and stood in his living room, there was a gaping hole open to the sky, as the rain poured in. He needed a tarp to cover it, but didn't have one. All he could do for the moment was move the furniture out of the way so it wouldn't be ruined by the rain. He had been unable to determine what the other two crashes had been. The rest of the trees around the house were swaying violently in the wind, but none of the others had fallen, and the rest of the house appeared to be undamaged, until morning.
He had been unable to sleep for the rest of the night, as he listened to the storm raging around him, and it was still raining the next morning, when he got up at first light, he put on boots and his slicker again, and took a walk around the house to survey the damage. The hole in the roof was ugly, several of the shutters had been torn off, and two big windows were broken. There was glass and debris everywhere, and the garage had been severely damaged and was flooding. By sheer luck, he had put all the boxes to store on long wooden tables, so none of their papers and mementos had been destroyed. But he spent the rest of the morning moving them into his kitchen. The living room looked like a disaster area. He had moved the rugs and furniture in the middle of the night, and set down tubs and towels to catch the rainwater coming in through the hole in the ceiling. It was a part of the living room that protruded beyond the rest of the frame of the house, and there was a branch coming through it, and some of the fine old paneling had splintered from the impact. He learned from the newspaper that morning that at least a dozen people had been killed, mostly by fallen power lines, or trees, and hundreds had been injured around the state. Thousands were temporarily homeless and huddled in school gymnasiums as lowlands flooded. It was a storm of mammoth proportions.
And as he made one more trip from the garage to the kitchen, carrying a large box, he saw what must have caused the second and third crashes the night before. Two trees had fallen in his neighbor's garden. They were smaller than the one he had lost, but had nonetheless done considerable damage when they fell. There was a small woman with dark hair, looking mournful and dismayed as she assessed the destruction, and she happened to glance up at Quinn as he walked past her.
“Mine came right through the roof at four o'clock this morning,” he said cautiously. “I heard two more crashes, it must have been your trees going down,” he observed, and the woman nodded. And none of them were small trees, it was very impressive. “How bad is the damage?”
“I'm not sure yet. It looks pretty nasty. The house is leaking like a sieve, and I've got Niagara Falls in my kitchen.” She looked frightened and worried. Quinn didn't even know her name, he knew the house had sold just after Jane died, but he had never met the family who bought it, and had never been interested in who they were, and still wasn't. But he felt sorry for her. She seemed to be dealing with it on her own, and it made him think of Jane, who had handled anything and everything, and every possible crisis and disaster on her own, in his absence. He assumed this woman's husband was of the same breed as he had been, a man with a job that took him far from home on New Year's. At least half of the New Year's Eves of their marriage Quinn had spent alone in other countries in hotel rooms. And obviously, this woman's husband was no different.
“I've got some spare buckets, if you need them,” Quinn offered helpfully. There wasn't much else they could do on New Year's Day, and it was easy to figure out that every contractor in the state would have his hands full by Monday morning.
“I need a roofer. I just moved in, in August, and they said the roof was sound. I'd love to send them a picture of the kitchen. It looks like someone turned on the shower.” The storm had also broken nearly half her windows. The house was even more exposed than Quinn's was, and less solidly constructed. It had changed hands several times in the past dozen years, and Quinn paid no attention to who lived there, although Jane always made some small effort to welcome new neighbors. But he had never seen this one, or her husband, even in passing. She had a faintly desperate look as she tried to clear away some branches. It was still pouring rain and the wind was still ferocious, though not quite as vicious as it had been in the early hours of the morning. The damage looked like what he'd seen in the aftermath of hurricanes in the Caribbean, or typhoons in India. It was definitely not what one expected to experience in San Francisco.
“I'm going to call the fire department and get them to put a tarp on the roof. Do you want them to take a look at yours too?” he offered. It seemed to be the least he could do, and she nodded gratefully, looking wet and distracted. The damage all around them was upsetting, and all up and down the street, people were doing what they could to clear away fallen trees, pick up debris, and tie down what they could to minimize further damage, as the storm continued raging.
“I'm not sure a tarp will make much difference,” she said, looking unhappy and confused. She had never had to handle a situation like this. Nor had Quinn, and he somehow felt that Jane would have been far more efficient than he was. But he had to manage on his own now.
“They'll tell you what you need. I'll ask them to bring several tarps, just in case.” And as an afterthought, he remembered his manners. “Sorry,” he said, reaching a wet hand over a low hedge, as he juggled a box in his left arm, “I'm Quinn Thompson.”
“Maggie Dartman,” she said, shaking his hand firmly. She was small, and had tiny, graceful hands, but her handshake was strong. She had long dark hair that hung down her back in a braid, and her hair was matted against her head in the driving rain. She was wearing jeans and a parka, and looked soaked to the skin, and he couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was very pale, and had big green eyes that looked anything but happy. He couldn't blame her, he wasn't pleased with the damage to his house either.
“Bad luck your husband's not around,” he said sympathetically, making an easy assumption. She looked to be in her late thirties or early forties, and there were no children afoot, which made him wonder if she was even younger, and hadn't started a family yet. These days everyone got started older. She looked at him oddly when he mentioned her husband, started to say something, and then didn't. And a moment later, Quinn left to call the fire department. They had had hundreds of calls like his, and said they would be over in an hour or two to cover the hole in his roof. He dutifully mentioned his neighbor, and told her the fire department would be over to help, when he went back to get the last box in the garage, and saw her dragging a branch out of her driveway.