Quinn jumped down from the pickup and worked Jo and Britt into the brigade line, but he pulled Phee out. “You need to take a break. Those things weigh forty pounds or more. You’re going to be sore tomorrow.”
“I’m fine,” she protested.
“How about you go start a pot of coffee? We’re all going to be cold and exhausted when this is done. And call your dad while you’re at it. He’s probably going crazy wondering what’s happening.”
She’d forgotten about Dad in all the excitement. Her gaze followed the water’s route down the tributary. “Is it still rising?”
Quinn looked up and down the stream, then at the sky, which for now had quit dumping rain on them. “I’m afraid it is. But not as fast as it was when we got here.”
“We can’t lose these cabins, Quinn. We can’t.”
He looked her hard in the eyes. “You are not going to lose anything.” He turned away and rejoined the brigade.
Chapter 25
Standing on the open tailgate of the pickup, Quinn removed his cap and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Well, that’s the end of the bags. We’ve done what we can. Now let’s just pray the Lord sees fit to reward our efforts.”
He didn’t speak those words lightly. He couldn’t remember when he’d last prayed so hard about something—at least not for someone else’s sake. And he was praying in the interest of the Chandler sisters, but he had a pony in the race too, given that they’d bought this place, in part, on his recommendation.
He jumped down from the tailgate and shook his coworker’s hand. “Thanks, Duane.” Duane Parker had recruited a friend, and the three of them had rounded up the sandbags from one of Langhorne Construction’s sites that had remained high and dry. “Phylicia has coffee brewing up at the cottage.”
The guys waved him off in unison. “Thanks, man, but we’re gonna grab breakfast in town. You want to come?”
“No. I’m good.” Quinn had sent Joanna and Britt up to the cottage half an hour ago, and he thought he smelled bacon frying. He would invite himself to breakfast if they didn’t offer.
He let himself heave a sigh that released a taut band of tension. There had been some frightening moments as the water continued to rise and their supply of sandbags dwindled in direct proportion. He’d sweat blood wondering how things could possibly be redeemed if Phylicia and her sisters lost even one of the cabins. And they still weren’t completely in the clear. But as he’d told Duane, it was out of their hands now.
The guys gathered up gloves and tools and loaded their pickup. As Duane climbed behind the wheel, Quinn hollered after him, “You guys can mail me your chiropractor bills.”
They laughed and waved back at him as they drove away. Quinn walked around behind the cabins to check on their handiwork again. The rain was no more than a fine mist now, and the backyard stone fence around the far cabin had been built up two feet with sandbag “bricks.” The water hadn’t receded, but neither had it risen. If a dam broke upstream, or if it started raining again, there was nothing else to do. He shot up a prayer that the wall would hold and the cabins would survive. “And if not, Lord,” he whispered, “please let Phee and her sisters see your purpose in whatever happens.”
It startled him a little to hear himself refer to her as “Phee.” But after being around Phylicia’s sisters, who never called her anything else, he’d come to think of her by that nickname. Thoughts of her were almost constant now. And he wasn’t sure what to do about that.
He finished loading his pickup and drove the short distance back up to the cottage. Maybe he should just leave. They hadn’t invited him to breakfast, and they were surely exhausted. But the enticing aromas of bacon and coffee were more than he could resist. He put the truck in Park and went to knock on the door.
Britt opened it almost before he could finish knocking. “Come in. Breakfast is ready.”
“I was hoping you’d invite me to stay.”
“Are you kidding? Of course you’re invited.” She looked over his shoulder to the lane. “Where are the other guys?”
“They went into town.”
Joanna appeared in the arched doorway of the breakfast nook, hands on hips. “Then you’d better be ready to eat about forty-two pancakes.”
“And a pound of bacon!” Phylicia’s voice floated from the kitchen.
He laughed and hollered back, “I think I just might be able to manage that.” He worked his boots off and set them by the porch door. “I need to wash up.”
“Help yourself.” Phylicia came through the kitchen wearing an impish grin. “You know where the bathroom is. But you might not want to lock the door.”
“Seriously? Is that still giving you trouble?”
“I’m just kidding.” Phee looked much as she had that morning he’d rescued her. She’d changed into clean clothes, and her hair was damp, burnished a darker shade of honey-brown than usual. “The door seems to be working fine. If you ever need a new career, you might consider locksmithing.”
“I would if I hadn’t already decided to go into dam-building.” He nodded toward the infamous door and went to wash up.
Her laughter behind him made him thankful he hadn’t chickened out on inviting himself to breakfast.
Phylicia flipped another pancake and looked over at the kitchen table where Quinn sat across from her sisters.
“I saw you go off that tailgate, Quinn!” Britt’s giggles were contagious. “I thought for sure you were going to break your neck!”
“You should have seen it, Phee.” Jo spoke over a bite of pancake. “We’re talking Olympic-quality swan dive.”
“Well, what did you expect?” Quinn affected an offended tone. “I told you it was intentional.”
“Ha!” Britt pointed at him. “Funny. You were nowhere near the water when you took that nosedive.”
He cleared his throat. “Swan dive. Please. Get it right.”
Joanna and Britt weren’t buying it, having witnessed the whole thing, and had been giving him all kinds of grief, which Quinn was taking with his usual good nature.
Laughing with them—and a little jealous that she hadn’t been there—Phee flipped the last of the pancakes and turned off the stove. “Last call for pancakes. Who wants another one?”
They all groaned, and Quinn puffed out his belly and patted it. “I had my forty-two. I’ve done my duty.”
She moved the griddle to a cool burner before rejoining them at the table. Her sisters’ teasing laughter mingled with Quinn’s. The friendly scene around the kitchen table made this morning’s drama seem like a forgotten nightmare.
Thankfully, the rain seemed to have stopped altogether. A few minutes ago, the sun had even peeked out for a short while. Still, Quinn had warned them they weren’t completely out of the woods yet. While they’d done everything they could to shore up the rock walls, there was no guarantee their makeshift dam would withstand a rising river.
Joanna rose, collected the plates sticky with maple syrup, and deposited them on the counter beside the sink. “I really need to shower and get to work.”
“I need to get to work too.” Britt pushed her chair back.
Quinn looked surprised. “Where are you working, Britt? I didn’t realize you’d started a job.”
Britt blushed. “Oh, I haven’t. I just meant at Dad’s house. Now that the open house is over, I’m going to pack up the rest of my things to move out here.”
Phee shot her sister a look. “Oh, sure. Leave me with the dishes just because I got the day off.”
Quinn scooted back his chair. “I’ll help with the dishes.”
“Oh, no. You don’t need to do that, Quinn. I was just giving my sisters a hard time.”
He gathered the syrup bottle and the butter dish and carried them to the counter. “It’s the least I can do to thank you for that amazing breakfast.”
“Are you kidding? That breakfast was the least we could do to thank you for you saving our cabins.”
“I think you give m
e a little more credit than I deserve.” He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Point me to a dishrag and I’ll get started.”
“Thanks for everything, Quinn.” Britt started gathering up her belongings.
“Yes, thank you. I need to hit the shower.” Joanna waved and ducked into the hallway.
“You guys be careful on the roads.” Quinn checked his phone and followed Britt to the front door.
Phee listened from the sink. “I don’t see any warnings on the news, but with all this rain, there could be water over the road in spots.”
“I’ll be careful. Thanks.”
The front door slammed, and Quinn came back to the kitchen.
Phee moved dirty dishes aimlessly around the counter, suddenly nervous to be alone with him. And yet, she didn’t want him to go either. She grabbed a fresh dishrag from the drawer and tossed it to him, then turned on the hot water to fill the sink. “Sorry, but this place doesn’t have the luxury of a dishwasher.”
“What? No dishwasher?” He put a hand to his chest, feigning shock. “Who talked you into buying a place that didn’t even have a basic appliance like a dishwasher? That’s just crazy!”
She swatted at him with a dish towel. “Very funny.”
He rolled his eyes. “If I wasn’t kidding, I’d be a hypocrite, since I have a dishwasher in my kitchen but never use it.”
“I didn’t use mine in the apartment much either. When I did, there was never a clean dish in the cupboards because it took me a week to fill that thing up.”
“I get that. Besides, I grew up without one and it didn’t kill me.” He gave a little laugh. “Well, my mom always said she had two dishwashers—a Markus brand and a Quinn brand.”
“My mom said the same thing.” Phee laughed, memories flooding back. “Well, of course her brands were different than yours. Must be a mom joke, because my sisters and I did not think it was very funny.”
“We didn’t either. Especially when she bought a dishwasher the minute I left for college.”
“My parents did that too! What is the deal with that?”
He rinsed a plate under running water and handed it to her to dry. “Must be a conspiracy.”
It felt good to remember her mom from better, more ordinary days. Her nervousness had vanished, and she was suddenly very thankful the cottage didn’t have a dishwasher … well, except for the “Quinn brand” standing beside her.
They worked in companionable silence while, in the hallway on the other side of the kitchen wall, they could hear Joanna rattling between her bedroom and the bathroom. A few minutes later, Jo poked her head in the kitchen. “Gotta run. Thanks again, Quinn.”
The door slammed and they were alone again. Really alone this time.
Quinn handed Phee the last dish and dried his hands on the corner of her towel. “I’m going to drive down and check on our sandbags. See what the water level looks like by now.”
“Mind if I go with you?”
He started to say something, then shook his head as if he’d changed his mind. Finally, he looked at her with what she could only describe as … tenderness in his eyes. “I’d like that a lot.”
His simple words filled her with an emotion she couldn’t name—an exhilarating brew of joy and terror and hope.
Chapter 26
March
Phee leaned over the front porch railing and looked up to the wooded hills above the cottage. A thousand daffodils waved their yellow heads in the greening vegetation along the lane, and there must have been at least as many birds singing their hearts out on this bright Sunday morning. In the rumpled flowerbed below the porch, a baby bunny nibbled a weed.
It was hard to believe that only three weeks ago they’d been frantically hauling sandbags in the cold winter rain, trying to save the cabins. Now, in the woods above the cottage, a faint mist of green quivered on the trees, and the hopeful scent of spring was thick in the air. She and her sisters had walked up to the clearing in the woods yesterday and discovered redbud and serviceberry, and even dogwood blooms on the verge of opening.
Thanks to “springing ahead” for Daylight Savings, they’d had an extra hour of daylight each day this week, and tomorrow it would be officially spring.
Through the open window, she could hear Jo and Britt bickering over the bathroom. Phee and Joanna had both moved out of their apartments the week after the floods to avoid paying March’s rent. They were stuck now—all three of them—in this cottage. And charming though it was, this one-bathroom, three-sisters situation bordered on dire. Phee was thankful she’d claimed first dibs this morning, so she’d have time to dry her hair and do something besides throw it in a messy bun on top of her head—a style she’d pretty much lived in since they’d moved out to the property.
The three of them were meeting Quinn for breakfast, and they’d agreed to go to church with him afterward. Quinn was probably sick of seeing her with her hair like that. She’d been a hot mess for the past two weeks, while they cleaned up the debris from the flooding, dumped sandbags, and cleared out the cabins for renovation. Despite the protests of Phee and her sisters, Quinn had shown up every evening after work and stayed until it was too dark to do more.
It was hard, dirty work—and Phee had been putting in full hours at the flower shop besides—yet she’d never felt so fulfilled in a task. She was so grateful for the extra hour of daylight they had now. And not just because it meant they got more work done.
Taking a sip from her steaming mug of coffee before setting it back on the porch rail, she laughed to herself. If Quinn had simply waited to show them this springtime view of the property, he would have saved himself a lot of grief. This peaceful spot on the edge of Langhorne had won her over long before this morning, but if this had been her first view of the cottage and cabins, she was pretty sure she would have signed on the dotted line without a second thought.
She sobered thinking how much they owed Quinn Mitchell, though the man was loathe to take an ounce of credit for saving the cabins from flooding. He’d insisted that her dad’s orchestrations from afar, the generosity of his coworkers, and the manual labor of all of them combined were the reason the cabins had withstood the floodwaters.
Phee hadn’t realized on that frightening morning what an almost-miracle it was that Quinn had been able to get the sandbags from his construction site on such short notice. She shuddered to think what they might be dealing with had things gone differently. As it was, the roofers were due to start on the two cabins bright and early tomorrow morning, and Quinn had put together a crew from Langhorne to start interior work the following week.
He hadn’t said for sure, but she hoped—and suspected—that he would be the one to head up that crew. Mary had graciously given her next week off from the flower shop, and Phee had a whole list of things she hoped to accomplish before she had to go back to work.
She was thankful for the distractions. Even the flood that had almost spelled disaster kept her from obsessing about the whole thing with her dad. And with Mom. She’d talked to Dad a couple of times since the flood but only about surface things. And while he sounded more himself, he always seemed eager to end their calls just when she thought she might be able to ask him some questions. He hadn’t mentioned Karleen, yet for some reason, Phee wondered if Dad was back with the woman. How strange that now she almost hoped that was the reason her father seemed to be avoiding her, rather than something more personal.
It was little comfort to learn that Joanna and Britt had talked to Dad on Friday afternoon while Phee was at work. They were bubbling when they told her about it, because, as Britt put it, “I feel like I have my daddy back!”
“Phee!” Britt’s voice drifted through the open window as if summoned by Phee’s thoughts.
Sighing, Phee tossed the dregs of her coffee over the rail and went inside.
“Oh, there you are.” Britt pulled a sweater over her shirt. “Can I borrow your tan boots? Pretty please?”
“No,
Britt. I was going to wear them.” She’d actually decided not to wear her favorite boots given the muddy mess the yard still was. But she would be more careful with them than Britt would, so she’d take her chances.
“Then I guess I’ll have to change clothes, because I don’t have one pair of shoes that goes with this outfit.”
“It’s supposed to be warm today anyway. I don’t think you’re going to want a sweater.”
“I will in church. You know how cold they keep that sanctuary.”
“That’s so you won’t fall asleep.”
“Whatever.” She gave a little growl. “Phee, may I please borrow your boots?”
When Phee didn’t respond, Britt huffed and made a show of shrugging out of her sweater. Seeing that Phee wasn’t going to weaken, her sister stomped back to her bedroom like a petulant seventh grader.
Phee laughed and went to dry her hair, praying she and her sisters would still be friends by the time they got the cabins finished and each had a space to call their own. Yet even as the whispered prayers left her lips, a disturbing question nagged at her. Were her sisters even actually her true sisters? And if she discovered they weren’t, could anything ever be the same between them?
Quinn waited in the church foyer across the hall from the women’s restroom, feeling awkward while the three Chandler sisters did whatever it was women did when they went to the restroom in packs.
He was already squirming from the subject of this morning’s sermon, especially worrying that Phylicia might think he’d purposely invited her here to hear Pastor Franklin expound on the different types of love the Bible spoke of. The truth was, if he’d known what the topic was, he probably would have waited a week or two to issue that invitation.
Instead, he’d sat with Phylicia on one side of him and Britt on the other, while the pastor spoke about phileo, or brotherly love, and agape, the sacrificial love Christ had for His church and that the church was to have for one another. But Pastor Franklin had also spoken quite frankly of eros love.
Reason to Breathe Page 21