By the time Elaine got to the third item on her list, Jeff was wishing he hadn’t answered when she phoned. Or, at least, he shouldn’t have admitted he was bored.
“You’re right,” she’d agreed. “It’s way too cold to work outside. But there’re a few things you could do in the house.”
Elaine had taken the kids to Saskatoon for the weekend. She had a meeting, and Connor and Jenny were thrilled to spend a couple of days with Elaine’s mother. “She said we could go to the museum,” Connor announced.
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“And the toy store,” his little sister Jenny chimed in.
With Elaine and the kids away, and with his parents spending their last week in a Yuma trailer court, Jeff had the house and the yard to himself.
Elaine’s job list wasn’t that long, so Jeff got to work. Step 1 was a trip to the shop for a few tools. He put on his warmest clothes and headed out, startled by the burn of the -39 C air. With just a few steps his coveralls were crackling with cold.
When the dog heard the shop door open he came running over to greet Jeff. The cats, of course, stayed curled up in their pile of old blankets.
Jeff looked around the shop. The Hansons’ new hired man had left the workbench messy again. Even the cordless phone was out of its cradle, which would annoy his dad to no end. “Have to clean this place before they get back,” Jeff thought.
He gathered the tools and started back to the house. Usually the dog followed Jeff everywhere, but today Buddy shot him a look that could only have meant, “You go outside in that if you want. I’m not crazy.”
Back in the house, Jeff fixed the dishwasher’s slow leak and tightened the squeaking bolts on Connor’s bunk bed. He took time for lunch and a nap before tackling the sticky closet door. By four o’clock he was down to the second-last item on Elaine’s list: install the new lock on the front door.
With his mom and dad away, Jeff and Elaine had been more vigilant about locking the house when they were both gone. But last week, swirling winds in the porch had forced wet snow into the keyhole, making it impossible to force a key in the lock.
Elaine had picked up a different door handle at Peavey Mart. “That new sales guy helped me,” she said. “This one has a code we can punch in, so we don’t even need a key.”
It was simple to install. In just a few minutes, Jeff had the old one off and the new one on. “Better check to make sure it works,” he thought to himself as he slipped out the door, pulling it shut behind him. Then he took hold of the handle, and found out it worked just fine. The door was locked tight.
But what was the code?
Damn. Jeff had looked at that page when he’d leafed through the installation manual. He’d taken note of the spot where he could find the default four-digit code when he needed it. But had he even read the numbers? If he had, they sure weren’t in his head now.
So there he was, standing out on the snowy step in his socks. No jacket. Jeff felt his pocket. No cellphone. Now what?
He thought of the attached garage, but the only way in was through the overhead door. Then he remembered the last thing on Elaine’s list: change the batteries to get the garage door keypad working. Without the remote, he wasn’t getting into the garage. And the sliding doors that led in through the deck had been locked for months. Jeff started to panic.
“I can’t die of hypothermia right here on my own damn step,” he thought. How would he explain that to Elaine? And how would Elaine explain it to the kids? He could just imagine it. “Connor, your father died of stupidity.”
Jeff looked past the trees to the road, not sure if he was hoping that someone would drive by the farm and save him, or that none of the neighbours would see him.
Obviously, his family should never have left him home alone.
Then Jeff heard his cellphone ringing from where he’d left it — lying on the floor just inside the door. Inspired by the glowing screen, Jeff took off like a shot, running for the shop at top speed, although, given the slipperiness of socks on packed snow, his top speed was quite a bit slower than usual.
When he made it to the shop, Jeff went straight for the cats’ corner, where he yanked a blanket out from underneath the cat pile and wrapped it around his shivering body. “Thanks for warming it up,” he told the indignant cats.
Next, he found a pair of mitts for his icy feet. And saying, “Finally your sloppiness pays off, Mark Edwards!” he reached for the cordless and dialled up the rest of his plan.
An hour later, Jeff was back in the house, feet in his thickest socks. By the time Elaine and the kids came home, he had a pot of chili simmering on the stove for their supper and he’d even tidied up the living room. “Nobody needs to know about that,” he thought, eyeing the front door.
Over supper, Connor and Jenny told Jeff about their trip to Grandma’s house. “She took us to the bookstore!” Connor announced, pleased.
“I got a book too!” Jenny said.
“Yes, but she can’t read,” Connor said, feeling very pleased with himself now that he could pick out a handful of smaller words.
Elaine talked about her meeting. “I knew everyone else on the board was pretty smart,” she told Jeff. “But those guys were prepared! I’ve got a steep learning curve to climb.”
Then it was Jeff’s turn.
“How was your weekend?” Elaine said. “Did you find something to do?”
“I got through your list. Then I just watched a couple of movies.”
“Oh?” Elaine said.
“Yeah,” said Jeff. “Fixing that dishwasher leak didn’t take as long as I thought it would.”
“I heard you installed the new door handle.”
“What?” Jeff asked. How could she know?
“Thanks,” Elaine said. “We should write the code down and put it in the truck and the SUV.
“Yeah,” Jeff said, wondering if he was imagining the mocking gleam he thought he saw in her eye.
“We wouldn’t want anyone to get stuck outside, not knowing the code,” Elaine said.
Now Jeff was sure she knew.
“How did you find out?”
“The guy at Peavey Mart called me before he gave you the default code.”
Jeff shifted from mystified to mad. “He told me he had to put me on hold while he opened another box.”
“He was looking out for me,” Elaine said. “How does he know who should be in my house?”
“He didn’t have to give you the whole story!” Jeff said.
Elaine just smiled. “I would have known something was up when I saw all that cat hair on the back of your shirt anyway. You didn’t take any pictures, did you? For my Twitter account?”
