It was a diner much like many others. Open from seven AM to nine PM, Irene's served the truckers, travelers, families, and factory workers of the humble town of Constance. Irene's three daughters helped out whenever they were off from school, with the eldest, Nora, and youngest, Sylvia, waiting tables, while middle daughter Taylor worked in the kitchen.
Today, Mom and Dad were out of town on a long-overdue vacation, and only Nora and Taylor were on the clock. Sylvia was spending the day in Mom's office, writing a report on Margaret Hamilton, the engineer who helped program the software that controlled the Apollo 11 mission. After a difficult start—opening paragraphs are always the most difficult part—Sylvia was on a roll, and managed to get three whole pages written. Now she just had to come up with a conclusion.
Then the screen blinked off. The lights went out. With no windows in the office, Sylvia found herself in total darkness.
And she hadn't saved her file.
Sylvia belted out a furious scream and pounded on the desk.
Okay, this wasn't a complete disaster. Computers saved backups all the time. As soon as the power came back on, she could reopen the program and find that at most, she probably just lost a few paragraphs. But that meant the power had to come on. This wouldn't happen if Mom would just buy her a laptop or a tablet.
The door opened, and a flashlight beam entered. "Sylvia?" Nora said. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Sylvia said. "But I was almost done with my report." Sylvia got up and followed the light to the hall, where she could finally see her sister. No sense sitting there in the dark. "What do you think happened?"
"Who knows? I just hope it's fixed soon. I've got four tables out there and no way to print out checks. Unless the lights come on in the next five minutes, we're just going to have to give them all free meals."
Sylvia had a bad feeling about this. It always seemed like these either lasted only a few minutes or most of the day. There was never any in-between. And so far the lights were still out.
Sylvia and Nora came out to the dining room, which had ample sunlight pouring in from the clear day outside, so they didn't need the flashlight. Sylvia leaned on the checkout counter. "Guess we can't blame the weather."
Taylor set a plate of steak and fries in the kitchen window and hit the bell. "Oh! Taylor, you got it done?" Nora said. "Great, I was worried."
A hand making a thumbs-up appeared in the window. "I was already halfway done before everything went out. Afraid that's it until the power comes back, though."
"Fantastic." Nora passed the plate over to the bar, where a regular, Mr. Campbell, was sitting. "Here you go. So very, very sorry."
"Not your fault," Mr. Campbell said, and started eating.
Sylvia paced around the bar and sat down in one of the booths. Besides Mr. Campbell, there was also a family of four, a married couple, and three frat guys. A middle-aged woman also walked in, but Nora had to turn her away. She left in a huff, as if it was Nora who turned everything off.
"Hey, have you called the power company?" Sylvia said.
"I knew I was forgetting something." Nora whipped out her cell phone, which still had a battery and a signal.
"I already took care of it!" Taylor stepped out of the kitchen. "They said they've had other reports, and they're working on it."
This was turning out to be a weird day, if Taylor was showing her face to customers. Part of the reason she liked working the kitchen, besides the fact she really enjoyed cooking, was the relative privacy it gave her. But now she had as much reason to stay in there as Sylvia did to stay in the office. She took a seat on one of the barstools.
Sylvia had been watching the woman drive off. The traffic lights outside the diner had all gone dark, as well as the lights at the antique store and the law office across the street. "Looks like the whole neighborhood's out."
"Not just this neighborhood," the husband of the married couple said, holding up his phone. "My brother in Crestwood lost power, too."
"Geez, Crestwood?" Nora said. "That's a whole five minutes away. Wouldn't be surprised if everything on this side of the river is out. Now what?"
Taylor shrugged.
Sylvia knew what she was going to do: turn on her phone, text some friends from school, and play a puzzle game. By the time the family of four left, Sylvia had heard from Frankie that the blackout had hit her neighborhood, too. Then the frat boys left, and Caroline texted that her neighborhood across the river was fine—meaning Nora was probably right about that part. Then at last Mr. Campbell and the married couple walked out.
After each departure, Nora went out to collect the dishes from the tables, although without hot water, they could forget about washing them for the time being. Mr. Campbell had left behind forty dollars, more than enough to cover his meal and a hefty tip. The frat boys had each left a twenty. Sylvia thought she had overheard one of them whispering, "C'mon, she's hot, she deserves it" about Nora. Nora gathered the cash and carried it behind the counter as carefully as holy relics.
Some of the aromas from Taylor's cooking still lingered in the air.
Sylvia got up and locked the door.
"What are you doing?" Nora said.
"What are we supposed to do? We can't stay open like this. It doesn't make any sense to let people in when we can't even cook anything. I should leave a note on the door, too."
"But we have to stay open. Mom's counting on us to take care of the diner. If we lose money because I'm in charge—"
"But we're not doing that," Taylor said. "We're losing money because half the town has no electricity."
"Yeah, get real, Nora," Sylvia said, on her way to the office. "Just 'cause that one lady got mad doesn't mean Mom will."
Sylvia used the flashlight on her phone to search her mother's desk for paper and a marker. Once she found them, she wrote a note in big letters: "CLOSED DUE TO POWER OUTAGE. WILL REPEN REOPEN WHENEVER LIGHTS ARE ON. SORRY!" She drew some lightning bolts on the sides for emphasis, and a kitty for herself. She taped the note to the front door of the diner, just as a younger couple got out of a car out front.
Sylvia sat with Taylor and watched the two of them try to pull the door open without even looking at the note. They both tried it. And Sylvia used big letters, too. It wasn't until the man's second attempt that he looked at the note, and the two finally left.
Taylor called the power company again. "Well, great. They said it would take up to three hours to get everything up and running again."
"Three hours?" Sylvia said. "It's already past five. By the time they're done we'll only have about an hour to do anything. Do they know what caused it?"
"You're not gonna believe this. Apparently a badger got into a power station and electrocuted itself. Caused some serious damage, too."
"Oh geez. That poor badger." Sylvia spun her stool around. "Guess we might as well go home."
"What?" Nora said, still behind the counter. "No, we can't leave."
"Might as well." Taylor hopped up. "I'll go clean up the kitchen. As much as I can, anyway."
"Better than sitting around in here while it gets dark," Sylvia said. "At least at home we can light some candles and play one of Taylor's board games."
"But… but they said up to three hours, right?" Nora said. "We could get power before then. We'll have at least an hour to open up. Somebody'll come in, and they're gonna need something to eat, right? And besides, we still need to balance the register before we go. Wash the dishes. Make sure everything's nice and neat for the morning crew."
"So we'll come back tonight and get all that done," Taylor said from the kitchen. "But until then, I'd rather not spend three hours at work sitting on my thumbs."
Nora crossed her arms. "Well, I'm the only one here with a driver's license, so I say we stay."
"It's two against one, Nora," Sylvia said.
"You're not old enough to vote."
"Well neither is Taylor. Isn't that convenient for you, Ms. College Student?"
Nora turned her back to Sylvia. "I can't believe you two. Don't you want to show Mom how well we can take care of the diner? What's she going to think if we abandon ship at the slightest problem?"
"I wouldn't call this a slight problem," Sylvia said.
"And this isn't a ship," Taylor said. "And you're not the captain." She stepped out of the kitchen. "And besides, Nora, we all know there's one person who'd know exactly what to do in a situation like this."
The three sisters all said it at once. "Mom."
"You're right," Nora said. "I'll give her a call." Nora took her cell phone out of her pocket, glared down at the screen. "I didn't want her to think I couldn't handle it."
"Does she know about the outage?" Sylvia said.
"I texted her as soon as it started," Taylor said.
"So did I," Nora said. "But I thought it'd be over by now. I don't think she knows it's still going on. So who's the one who does the honors?"
Sylvia and Taylor both stared at Nora.
"I mean…" Nora held the phone, but her fingers didn't move.
"Oh for crying out—gimme that." Sylvia snatched the phone, looked up Mom's number, hit the button to dial, then thrust the phone in Nora's face.
Nora took the phone back as it rang. "Hey, Mom. Yeah, we're okay. It's just the blackout's kinda lasting longer than we thought it would. The power company says it'll be three hours before they fix it." She listened. "All right, I'll tell them. We love you. See you tomorrow."
She hung up.
"She said we can go."
Sylvia and Taylor high-fived each other.
"You don't have to rub it in," Nora said. "Let's get what we need and go."
Nora and Taylor hung up their aprons as Sylvia got her handbag from the office. She decided to leave all the stuff for her report at the desk so she could pick up where she left off tomorrow. Once they got everything straightened up and gathered together everything they needed, they went out, locked the door, and headed for the car.
"Anybody else getting hungry?" Sylvia said.
"Yeah, I could eat," Nora said. "Oh, but we can't fix anything at home. Where should we go?"
The three girls fell silent. Thanks to the blackout, the only places that would be open would be downtown, across the river. And with the three of them spending so much of their free time at Irene's Diner, they didn't eat out at other restaurants that often.
No way they'd be able to agree on this.