Page 5 of Pining for You

“Storms can be scary, especially when they’re right overhead. The lake seems to amplify them.”

“I suppose it would be smarter of me to move into town, where the storms aren’t as bad. But I love this place, and Bob and I made so many memories here. My son doesn’t want it, and Holly and her sister have their lives in Toronto. Especially Holly. There’s no way she’d give up her career to move out here.”

Over the past year, there’d been hints that Mrs. B was thinking of selling, but she’d never vocalized it aloud before, though I’d occasionally heard her sigh, followed by comments like “I have such good friends,” or “I have such good neighbors.” Her own way of acknowledging that she couldn’t handle the house on her own anymore. Nor did she liked to admit that she was starting to have problems with her health. Like the white plastic pendant hung around her neck that swung as she shifted Henrietta. A pendant with an emergency button her family had insisted she wear after she’d fallen and dislocated her shoulder last spring.

On good days, especially on warm spring or late fall afternoons when Marilyn invited me to sit on her back porch overlooking the lake, I’d allowed myself the dream that I could buy the house when Marilyn finally decided to sell. I’d imagine the furniture I’d buy for the living room and where I’d place it. I even lingered over paint chips when I was picking up supplies for Dad at the hardware store, imagining which colors would work best, before shoving the samples back, reminding myself that home ownership was nothing more than a pipe dream. There was no way I’d ever be able to afford the price tag of a house with any waterfront. Hell, I could barely afford the rent on my one-bedroom apartment the way rents were these days, even in a small village like Port Paxton.

Eventually the storm eased up, and Marilyn rose as if nothing had happened, busying herself at the sink. “Would you like coffee, dear?”

Without waiting for an answer, she bustled over to the counter, placing Henrietta on one of the breakfast stools. The chicken fluffed its feathers, made another soft bawk, and settled into place as if it was quite at home, the queen of its roost.

Marilyn made the best damned French press coffee I’d ever tasted. She said the secret was that she added salt, but I’d tried it at home and hadn’t had the same success.

While she waited for the kettle to boil, she asked me about work. I hadn’t intended to say anything, but somehow the whole story about Gord closing the diner spilled out of me.

Marilyn set a mug of coffee in front of me. “What are you going to do now?”

I inhaled the steam first, then wrapped my hands around the mug and took the first sip.

It gave me time to consider her question, but I didn’t really have an answer, so I lifted my shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been unemployed before, but Port Paxton was a small town that had limited jobs available, and most of those jobs were seasonal. “I’ll find something.”

I had to. A forty-three-year-old woman shouldn’t be dependent on her parents to take care of her just because her ex-husband had landed in prison for fraud.

“I’ll keep an ear out if anyone is looking to hire someone,” Marilyn said, sitting back at the table, lifting Henrietta back into her lap.

I murmured my thanks before gazing beyond her patio doors, beyond the deck where we’d normally sit if the sun were shining, over the long sloping lawn ending on the shores of Hawkeshead Lake. The birches and fully grown maples on either side of the lawn writhed in the wind, making me wonder if they’d survive the storm. Beyond them, the lake matched the angry gray of the sky, and vicious white-tops lashed the shore. The rain was so heavy that it shrouded the view of Port Paxton with its iconic red grain silos and the numerous boats parked in its harbor on the other side of the lake.

“You’ve always been a resourceful and determined girl. You get that from your father. And your grandmother.” Marilyn’s eyes crinkled as she sipped from a thick ceramic mug of her own coffee, one gnarled finger unable to curl properly around the cup. “Your grandmother had to be to deal with your grandfather and his family.”

I laughed, as she’d intended me to. Yes, my grandmother was a determined, feisty woman who kept my grandfather, and my father, in line.

Marilyn continued, “At least it’s the right end of tourist season, so a lot of stores may be looking for extra help.”

Help that wouldn’t be needed in six months when the tourists closed up their cottages for the winter and stores laid off their seasonal employees.

We talked about Mrs. B’s granddaughter Holly who co-hosted a morning talk show at one of the Toronto television stations, about Holly’s sister and her two rambunctious children, how Mrs. B’s son was thinking of retiring from the Ottawa police force, and all the gossip she’d learned from the various friends who would check on her during the week. My phone chimed, a text from my dad asking if I’d checked out Mrs. B’s place or the campground. Only then did I realize the time—I’d been here over an hour. The rain had died down, and fingers of sunlight speared through breaks in the cloud, sparkling across the lake.

“Let me go see what other damage there is.”

I unlocked the patio door overlooking the back yard that sloped down to the lake. Two large branches from a Manitoba maple had fallen along the southern edge of the property, luckily missing Marilyn’s chicken coop, and a blue spruce had snapped in the middle, though the trunk hadn’t fully separated. That would require an arborist. “I can’t do anything about that spruce, or the ash out front, but I can deal with those downed branches for you. Do you want me to cut them into firewood for you to use later?”

They’d need to be seasoned, but it was always better to have extra wood out these parts, when the power might cut out for days on end during the winter. Marilyn did have a generator, but we’d had outages of more than a week, and I wasn’t sure she kept enough gasoline on hand for that long a time. Especially when the roads were iced in, which often happened on the Island Road.

“That would be lovely, dear. Shall I put the kettle on for another cup of coffee?”

“Thanks, but after I’m done here, I need to go check on the campgrounds for Dad.” I couldn’t keep the regret from my voice. I didn’t want to leave her alone, but I owed Dad and had never been one to shirk my responsibilities. Even when it was my ex who’d created them.

Outside, I unlocked and lifted the lid covering the truck bed, and hauled out one of the two chain saws I stored in the toolbox. After checking the chain and fuel, I donned my protective gear and got to work.

BRAD

Before I left the office, I hitched up the wood chipper and grabbed a couple of chain saws and whatever else I needed to take care of Mrs. Bordon’s trees. Because Chip and Team B were busy, they could only spare the new kid, meaning Nash, the arboriculture intern from the local college, over to help me. See? We were already shorthanded, stealing help from Team B to complete Team C, yet John was still stalling about hiring a replacement for Brian. How had John managed to stay in business as long as he had?

Because he was the name everyone knew and trusted. He’d actually had that as a slogan painted on our trucks for a few years. It also helped that he was the closest arborist and the locals wouldn’t have to pay for extra mileage and time the way they would have to for the other firms in the bigger towns.

I had just secured the wood chipper when John ambled into the work shed. “Mike called again,” John announced. “Once you’re done dealing with Marilyn’s downed tree, go down the road to the old Tamblin campgrounds and check it out. Make up an estimate and send it to me so I can forward it to him to present to his client. Let him handle that discussion.”

“Sure.”

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