Maggie Shayne - An Enchanted Season

“Is she always this cheerful?” Pete asked Bella.

“Yes. You get used to it after a while.”

“A long while,” Mike added dryly. Cassie only laughed and continued playing with her yarn.

“Well,” Rachel stated. “Now that everyone is back, and we have a bit of power for lights, I’m going to bring out the apple crumble I baked earlier. And some of our famous Bethel Inn cheese from the curing cupboards down in the basement. We can heat the crumble on the woodstove here and serve it piping hot, if you’re willing to wait a few minutes. Does that sound good?”

“That, and some of that magnificent spiced cider of yours sounds delicious,” Mike praised, voicing the enthusiasm of the others, who were all nodding.

“Then I’ll be right back.”

It didn’t take long for Rachel to bring out the casserole pan with the apple crumble, nor to set it on the woodstove to heat. Heading down into the basement, she entered the room where the cheese was made and turned to the curing cupboards. The sweetness of the apple crumble would be best offset with a sharp flavor, so she turned toward the cupboards holding the rounds that had aged the longest.

It was very chilly down there, colder than expected. So cold that her breath frosted almost as badly as if she had stepped outside. That meant when Rachel heard a ting-ting followed by a crack and a pshhhhhhh off in the distance, she guessed instantly what had happened. Dismayed, she abandoned the cheese room, hurrying through the other rooms comprising the basement.

The busted pipe was in the laundry room, of course. It sprayed water down from one of the pipes crossing the ceiling. There was a drain pipe in the tiled floor, but with the ground ice-cold under all that snow, it would soon freeze and clog up. Biting back a curse, Rachel hurried for the stairs.

She couldn’t shut off the water, since if it stopped flowing, it would freeze that much faster elsewhere in the house. Once Joey was ready to work, then it could be shut off. She couldn’t even put a space heater into the room to keep the other pipes in there from freezing until the water was cleared up, and not just because of the electricity hazard. Space heaters drained a sizable chunk of the generator’s power; it would be better to just let the furnace do its work.

“Joey? Joey!” She found him headed her way in the front hall, trailed by the others. “You brought your work truck, right?”

“Yeah, I did,” he agreed, jerking his thumb at the front door behind him. “It’s not ten feet from th’ porch, buried under all that snow.”

“Well, unbury it as fast as you can and get your toolbox,” Rachel ordered him tightly. “The blizzard just busted a pipe in the laundry room, and since you’re here, I need you to fix it.”

“You know, who’s gonna pay for all these things we’re supplyin’?” Dave asked her and Steve as Joey stood up. “Help in the barn, shovelin’ all that snow, those spark plugs, and now a busted pipe?”

“We haven’t charged you for your extra meals yet,” Steve pointed out. “Why don’t we call it services in trade?”

“You gotta admit, the food is worth it, Dave,” Joey allowed, hurrying to get into his winter clothes. Bella, ever willing to go out into the snow, was already pulling on hers.

“I’ll get the snow shovels,” Steve sighed.

Rachel caught his hands as he started for the mudroom. Tug-ging him close, she kissed him on the lips, then leaned back with a smile. “One problem at a time.”

“Yeah, but it’s one problem after another,” Steve muttered back, feeling the tension from earlier in the week returning to his shoulders. He hadn’t realized just how much he had relaxed in the last twenty-four hours, thanks to a nearly full inn. Having all these new troubles piling on top of him threatened to grind him right back down again.

“So think of our blessings. The power would have gone out, regardless…and we’d be without a functional generator, and the pipe would have frozen and busted anyway. But we’ve got a full enough house to pay the mortgage, a mechanic who had the spark plugs necessary, a plumber who can fix our pipes…and plenty of heating oil in the furnace, so long as we have the power to run it,” she reminded him. “And plenty of wood for the woodstoves here and in the kitchen, just in case.”

Bella poked her head into the front room. “Are you getting the snow shovels or not?”

Sighing, Steve nodded. He did spare a moment for another quick kiss with his fiancée, then followed their dark-haired guest back to the mudroom. Rachel watched him go, thinking of all the exercise he’d been doing. Deciding he needed rewarding, she started planning what could be done, once the latest problem was fixed.

JOEY NOT ONLY HAD THE TOOLS AND THE PIPING TO MAKEthe necessary repairs, he also had a roll of insulation, white on one side, shiny on the other, and fibrous in the middle. Steve and Rachel had pooled their resources for the renovations, even to the point of draining the money originally set aside for a wedding, but they hadn’t been able to insulate all the pipes in the basement. With the power lines buried underground, the electricity rarely went out in the winter; in fact, it was far more common for the Inn and its neighbors in that corner of the county to lose power in the summer from various repairs and construction projects.

The chance of a storm knocking out the electricity had been weighted against the presence of the generator and the fact that the basement rarely got cold enough to freeze. It was a gamble they had lost this time around. But with the pipe repaired and the now-functional generator helping the furnace to blow heat into the rooms once more, it was thankfully not as bad as it could have been. The furnace burned oil, yes, but it operated electronically, an irony not lost on anyone thanks to the storm.

Aware of how much these sort of repairs would cost normally in labor as well as materials, Rachel and Steve conferred quietly, then asked the young man what he would want in additional trade for the work and materials. He thought for a moment, then shrugged and said, “A wheel of your cheese. Mom and Gran are always going on about it, and I think it’d make a nice Christmas present for ’em.”

Considering the youth had managed to make his insulation roll stretch to cover three rooms of piping so far, Steve didn’t think that was adequate. “ Two wheels of cheese.”

Joey grinned at the offer, pulling more binding tape from the roll in his hands while Dave held the insulation in place. “Well, now…if that’s the price you’re offerin’, I should have a look at all th’ washers and drainpipes in this place, make sure the seals are good and the U-bends are unclogged.”

“I won’t object to that,” Steve laughed, reaching out to shake the younger man’s hand as soon as he was done taping the latest section of insulation.

“I wouldn’t object to some of that hot apple crumble we were promised, neither,” Dave stated, climbing down the other half of the two-sided ladder.

“As soon as we’ve run out of insulation,” Joey promised his friend. “I’ll make a plumber’s apprentice out of you in the meantime, if you don’t watch out!”

“And I’ll make a grease monkey outta you, ” Dave quipped back, helping him shift the ladder. He waited for Joey to measure off a manageable length of the insulation, cutting it into strips that would just fit around the pipes with a little bit of overlap. “Aren’t you done with that thing yet?”

“I’m still cuttin’ it out,” Joey retorted, working the shears through the material.

“No, I mean, haven’t you run out of it?”