“Then what the hell are you waiting for? Go get your woman!”
––––––––
The roads were worse than he’d thought. The freak March snowstorm caught everyone off guard, and the road crews were already dangerously low on salt and cinders because of the worse than normal winter. Jack was glad he’d put the snow tires and chains on the Galaxie, but even they weren’t much help on the slick metal grate of the bridge spanning the river.
When the back end started sliding out behind him, he compensated without thinking by turning the wheel hard, bringing the car back in line with the road (or where he thought the road was). Only a few more miles and he’d be at O’Leary’s Diner. That was where he’d likely find Kathleen, but if not, he’d go to her parents’ house next.
A plow pulled out in front of him, which was both good and bad. Good, because it improved the immediate road conditions in front of him, and bad, because it would take even longer to reach his destination.
Jack heaved a huge sigh of relief when he arrived at O’Leary’s and found Conlan and his son-in-law, Seamus, shoveling the lot. Conlan straightened and rested his hands on the shovel. By the displeased look on his face, he already knew about their disagreement.
“Mr. O’Leary,” he greeted respectfully. “I need to see Kathleen.”
After pinning him with the glare of a father whose daughter had been wronged, Conlan informed him that Kathleen had gone back to the house with her mother earlier. “I don’t know how ye managed te cock it up so badly so quickly,” his father-in-law told him, “but doona fash, lad. My Katie-belle loves ye, and she’ll forgive near anything if yer apology is sincere enough. Ye are goin’ te apologize, aren’t ye, son?”
“Aye. And I’m thinking perhaps some groveling will be involved as well, sir.”
The older man’s lips twitched. “I knew you were a smart lad.”
Jack thanked him for the vote of confidence and proceeded to the house. Unfortunately, Kathleen wasn’t there, either. “She left about an hour ago,” Kathleen’s mother told him, wringing her hands, her brow creased in worry. “She said her place was with you. I didn’t want her to go with the weather turning so foul, but there’s no stopping that one when she sets her mind to something.”
His heart swelled; then fear wrapped around it and squeezed, constricting it to smaller-than-normal size. Kathleen was out driving on these roads alone? Had he passed her on the way, so focused on staying on the road until he could get to her that he hadn’t even noticed?
His heart fell every time his low-beams fell on another vehicle off the side of the road, but none looked familiar. At one point, the car in front of him slid off the road and down into a ditch as he watched helplessly. He stopped to offer assistance, and was extremely glad he did when he saw that the vehicle contained a young mother and two little kids. They only lived a few miles out of his way, so he made sure he got them home safely.
By the time he got back to the Pub, it was very late. A great wave of relief washed over him when his headlights revealed Kathleen’s little Chevy Vega in the lot, covered with snow. How the thing had even made the trip was beyond him. He made up his mind then and there. The first chance he got, he was going to pay his friend Harry a visit and trade both cars in for a reliable, used four-wheel drive vehicle.
The place was completely dark, which was somewhat surprising. He’d left the outside carriage lights on (at least the ones that were still working), and a few over the bar, but there was no sign of them now. A brief glance up and down the street assured him that there had not been a widespread power outage; only the Pub seemed to be affected. It was unlikely that Kathleen would have turned off all the lights, which meant that given the age of the Pub and its current state of disrepair, he would be adding yet another expensive item to his ever-growing to-do list.
But if the electricity had failed in the Pub, why could he not spot the flicker of candles in any of the windows? Why was there not a wisp of smoke curling up from any of the chimneys?
The frigid temperature was nothing compared to the cold fear that gripped his heart. Had something happened to Kathleen? Had she tried to navigate her way through the place in the dark and gotten hurt? Or, God forbid, had she attempted to descend the rickety steps into the dirt-floored basement in search of the breaker box and fallen?