"Of course it is."
"I'll get it tomorrow. I'll go by Hal's after my route and go up in daylight with a decent light." He rubbed his face. "Jan. It's probably squirrels."
"Arliss said a fire."
"Arliss said he saw a light. I'll go up tomorrow."
He nailed the square of plywood over the scuttle hole in the garage that night, standing on the stepladder on top of the chest freezer while she held the flashlight, and she watched his face in the glow and thought he looked older than she'd ever seen him. When he was done he stood looking at the plywood a long time. Then he got down, and went to the side door, and wedged a kitchen chair under the knob, since the lock still didn't work.
He didn't say anything about it. Neither did she.
That night, Milo didn't wake her. He didn't come to bed at all. When Janet got up at three to use the bathroom, he was in the kitchen, sitting in front of the door to the garage, staring at it, perfectly upright and still, like a cat carved out of stone.
* * *
The cold came down on Friday like a lid.
By the time Janet drove home from the hospital at seven-thirty, the thermometer on the bank sign on Broad Street read 14 degrees, and the wind was coming hard out of the northwest, pushing her little Chevette sideways on the overpass. The radio said it would be six by morning. Wind chill twenty below.
Del's Citation was in the driveway, but there was no ladder tied to the roof.
"Hal wasn't home," he said, before she could ask. He was standing at the stove stirring a pot of Campbell's tomato soup, still in his uniform, his face windburned. "Him and Linda went to her sister's in Springfield for the weekend. The shed's padlocked. I'll call him tomorrow, or I'll just go buy a ladder at Sears. I'll go up first thing in the morning."
"Okay," she said.
They ate their soup and grilled cheese at the kitchen table without much talking, but it was a different kind of not-talking than before. Once, reaching for the salt, his hand brushed hers, and he left it there for a second, the backs of their knuckles touching. She didn't move hers away.
Milo didn't eat. He sat in front of the garage door the whole time, and when Janet put his bowl of Meow Mix down beside him, he looked at it and then looked back at the door.
"He's sick," she said. "He's off his food."
"He threw up the insulation. He'll be okay."