Two Strangers Knocked During a Christmas Outage. The Moment They Gave Their Names, I Knew Something Was Wrong.

”

“I know,” I told her, and I meant it. “You’d be doing a terrible job of it if you were.”

That got the smallest, thinnest smile out of her, barely there and gone in an instant, and then she started coughing too—a dry, painful sound of cold air scraping damaged airways.

I pulled two thick blankets from the hall closet and wrapped them around the strangers’ continue reading …