Page 5 of Merriment and Mayhem
“My neighbor needs help! She fell!”
“Can you tell me the address where she fell?”
“It’s 215 Juniper Lane. Please, please hurry!”
“I’m dispatching emergency services now, ma’am. What’s your name?”
“Gloria Martin. I live across the street at 220 Juniper Lane. Oh ... oh, God!”
“All right, Gloria. I need you to stay calm for me. Can you tell me the nature of your neighbor’s emergency? Where was she when she fell?”
“She was on the roof and ... and the ladder she was on broke. She slipped. My husband went to get our ladder, but it wasn’t tall enough. None of our ladders are tall enough!”
“All right, ma’am, I understand. Without moving her, can you tell me if your neighbor is injured?”
“Move her? I can’t reach her! Poor thing is holding on to the gutter for dear life!”
“Don’t let go!”
She gritted her teeth and choked up on the drainpipe, muscles she didn’t even know she had starting to seize. “Didn’t intend to, Bob!”
As if this whole ordeal weren’t mortifying enough, the entire street, twenty-some-odd neighbors, had gathered around, watching while Everleigh clung to the side of her late grandmother’s house like a desperate baby koala.
Don’t stress! Hanging Christmas lights is a piece of cake!They, being the self-proclaimed experts on TikTok, had said.Don’t be intimidated and don’t waste your hard-earned money on one of those expensive, gimmicky lighting services. With these easy hacks, you’ll be the best-decorated house on the block.
With a canvas tote bag full of colorful LED lights and TuffClips tossed over one shoulder, Everleigh had scaled the ladder she’d found inside the shed with confidence. It had been covered in cobwebs, but aside from a few crusty old spiders that had fallen onto the frost-covered grass when she’d dragged it out—and sure, it was a little rickety and wobbly—it was, by all accounts, perfectly serviceable.
Or so she’d thought until the moment her foot went through the topmost rung, rot weakening the wood. She had clung to the gutter, watching over her shoulder as the ladder hit the ground and snapped clean in half, leaving her stranded thirty-some-odd feet in the air, with only the unforgiving concrete driveway and a few prickly holly bushes beneath her.
“You’ve got this, Everleigh!” sweet, sweet Frank, the kind, white-haired gentleman who lived across the street with his wife, shouted. He’d been her personal cheerleader throughout this entire shit show. “Gloria says help’s almost here!”
In the distance, sirens wailed, the most wonderful sound Everleigh had ever heard.
“They’re here!” Gloria yelled, and a door slammed, followed by another. “She’s over here! Hurry!”
“Miss Dangerfield.” She knew that voice. Captain Keegan. “How are you doing?”
Everleigh let out a half laugh, half sob. “Oh, you know. Hanging in there.”
“You’re doing great. Brantley’s on his way up to you now. We’ll have you down in a jiffy.”
Arms and legs hugging the drainpipe, Everleigh stole a careful peek over her shoulder.
From the basket attached to the tip of a cranelike ladder, Griffin Brantley grinned. “Long time, no see.”
Four days had passed since her last brush with disaster.Four.“Not long enough.”
Griffin clutched his chest and laughed. “Ouch.”
“I didn’t mean—” She huffed. “You know what I meant. This is mortifying.”
“Look on the bright side. At least this time you’re wearing pants.”
“Small favors,” Everleigh muttered under her breath.
Griffin held up a padded belt with a rope attached. “I’m gonna slip this harness around you, okay?”
She looked at the harness and gulped. “Isn’t that a little overkill? Can’t you just, I don’t know, grab me?” Preferably fast.
