‘It’s my dad. He doesn’t know about you or Pegs, so try to keep quiet.’
When Joel nodded, Emily answered the phone, ‘Hi Dad.’
‘Em, where are you?’ Her father asked, sounding worried. ‘I’m home and you’re not here.’
Emily checked her watch and was shocked to see the time. ‘I’m on the roof,’ she explained.
‘What are you doing up there?’
Emily improvised. ‘Well, remember I told you I heard sounds from up here? I wanted to see the storm damage from last night and I lost track of the time.’
‘Stay there, I’ll be right up.’
Emily felt a sudden rush of panic. ‘No Dad, don’t come up. I’m um, I’m working on a surprise for you and I don’t want you to see it yet. I’ll be right down.’
Before she gave her father the opportunity to say anything further, she hung up.
‘My dad’s home,’ she explained. ‘I’ve got to get down there so he doesn’t come up. Will you stay with Pegs? I promise to be back as soon as Dad goes to bed. He’s been working long shifts and will be tired. When he’s asleep, I’ll bring up some more food for all of us.’
‘Don’t forget the honey if you’ve got some,’ Joel called after her. ‘And anything else with sugar in it. Pegasus will need it if he’s to heal.’
‘I won’t,’ Emily promised as she walked over to the roof entrance. Turning on her flashlight, she gave Joel a wave before entering the darkened stairwell.
On her way down, Emily tried to think of what she was going to tell her father. She worried what he would say when he saw her black eye. But whatever she said, she knew she couldn’t tell him about Pegasus. She had given the stallion her word and wasn’t about to break it. Even to him.
She opened the door of her apartment. ‘Dad?’
‘I’m in the kitchen,’ her father called.
Inhaling deeply, Emily made her way to the kitchen. She saw her father standing at the refrigerator in his police uniform, his back to her. He looked almost funny as he pulled out multiple items and tried to hold them all in his arms.
‘What a mess,’ he said without turning to her. ‘Everything is defrosting. We’d better eat a lot of this before it goes bad.’
He turned around, saw her face and dropped everything in his arms. Bottles of pickles and vegetables went rolling around the kitchen floor.
‘What happened to you? Em, your eye is black!’
‘I know,’ Emily said, trying to sound casual. ‘I tripped when I was on the roof and fell into the rose bushes. Somehow I managed to hit myself in the eye. Actually,’ she corrected, ‘I think I kneed myself in the eye.’
As her father inspected her face, he whistled in appreciation. ‘Good grief! I haven’t seen a shiner like that in ages. It must hurt like the devil!’
‘Kinda,’ Emily admitted. ‘But not as bad as the thorn scratches.’ She pushed up her sleeves to reveal the deep gashes on her arms. ‘I guess the roses won the first round.’
‘Looks like they won the whole fight,’ her father agreed. ‘We have to get those cleaned up.’
Emily remembered that she and Joel had taken all the medicated creams and bandages up to the roof for Pegasus. ‘It’s OK, Dad,’ she said quickly. ‘I already put some stuff on it. Really, I’m fine.’
‘All right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But look, I don’t want you going back up there alone. By the looks of things, it’s become dangerous.’
‘But Dad,’ Emily protested. ‘I want to do something special for you. I … I’m fixing the garden! You know how much Mom loved her garden, we all did. After so long, it’s gone completely wild. Please let me do this. It’s really helping me deal with things.’
Emily hated herself for using her mother’s painful death as an excuse to continue to go up to the roof. But she couldn’t allow her father to forbid her, not while Pegasus was still up there and in desperate need of help.
‘Please Dad, I really need to do this.’
Finally he sighed. ‘Well, at least wait for me to help you. After the blackout, I’m owed a few days’ leave. Why don’t we make it our special project?’
Emily knew this was the best she could hope for with her father.
‘That would be great. But if I promise not to do anything heavy, can I at least go up there to try to clean up a bit before we get to the real work?’
‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘But only if you promise to be careful and keep away from the edge.’
‘I will.’ Emily quickly changed the subject before her father could change his mind. ‘So what are they saying about the blackout?’
‘Well, it’s not good,’ he said as he went back to work in the refrigerator. ‘The power company has put its entire staff on it, but it looks like we’ll have no electricity for at least two days, maybe three.’ He paused and looked at her again. ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’