Burn notice

“Are you okay?”

My husband is calling me, on his cellphone, from the sleeping cabin where he was napping.

I am not okay. I am clinging to the dog. He, too, is trembling, pressed tightly against my leg. My chest feels as if it will explode, like the massive thunder boom that just crashed somewhere close—too close—and left our old cottage vibrating like a drum. “Check outside and see if any trees were hit,” my husband says. I stand up and turn around. That’s when I see the smoke coming from the back bedroom. In an instant he’s beside me, with our ancient fire extinguisher. Miraculously, it works. He sprays the exploded ends of the frayed power cord that smoulders on the wooden floor.

We were lucky. The boom signalled a lightning strike that hit our property in multiple places. An explosive surge raced through our electrical system and blew out the power cord on a reading lamp—hence the smoke that I saw. There was a lot more damage, including split siding and floorboards, uprooted trees, cleaved granite rock, and a hole