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“Nope. And when you’re in charge, you can exempt yourself from the rules.”
“If growing up means working myself to the bone, no thanks,” someone behind me said.
I turned to kindly shoo them away, but they’d already run off.
Basement next. I took a few deep breaths, to steel myself for what I’d find, and headed in.
The water was almost up to the bottom step.
I hollered four names and handed out more tasks. “Grab some tarps from the toolshed. One goes at the top of the stairs, one out under the pavilion. Two of you haul boxes up the stairs and set them on the first tarp, the other two finish taking the boxes outside. The moment you’re done, out of the wet clothes and into extra layers, to warm up.”
I hated asking them. If any of them got sick because of this, I’d feel so bad. But the work needed to be done quickly.
While I picked my way through the basement to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, cold biting into my ankles, I called the place we got our beds from. They’d have replacement mattresses for me in a couple of days.
It was too long—we were already past capacity—but yelling wasn’t going to magically increase the available supply.
My phone rang, and I answered. The plumber was running behind. Go figure. I had a basement full of water, and he had more important things to deal with.
I could call other places, but I’d worked with this one enough that I trusted them and they gave us a good rate.
“If you have a sump pump, you can start getting the water out before I get there,” he said. “I’ll do it once I arrive, if you haven’t, but this will make things go faster.”
“Where am I supposed to get a sump pump?” I was asking myself as much as him.
“I-bet-Oz-has-one.” Luna’s rush of words startled me, and I spun to find her standing at the bottom of the stairs. Pink dotted her cheeks, probably not all from the cold.
Cole—he only let Luna call him Oz—had a hard exterior and a soft heart. He’d been a huge name in tech more than a decade ago, but decided he was tired of the grind. One of his rentals had a lot of basement-flooding problems because the property sat on a water table.
He was also a beast of a grump with almost everyone but Luna. Who would be happy to call him, based on the way she was biting her bottom lip.
“I’ll get started on water removal,” I told the plumber. “Get here as soon as you can.”
The plumber sighed. “You should know, if anything big is broken, I can’t start work today anyway. Your boiler is so old, there’s a good chance I’ll need to order parts. It’s going to be a couple of days.”
So I had a house over full of people, without enough beds and with no heat.
Wonderful.
Five
Imade some calls, to get space heaters. It took calls to five different places to find enough heaters, but I secured them all.
“Cole’s here.” Luna practically lit up at the sound of an old truck parking on the street.
I followed her around front. Cole’s pickup was an ancient Chevy with a hardtop, with as many parts replaced as were original. I waved at Cole, and he gave me a terse nod. His gaze flitted past me quickly, to land on Luna. As he turned back to his pickup, I swore I saw the corner of his mouth twitch.
“Brought some stuff.” He opened the camper shell and tailgate.
He pulled out a couple of giant fans.
“Eep.” Luna squealed. “You’re amazing. Basement is soaked. Wet carpet everywhere. Does that sound dirty? Didn’t mean it that way. Promise.”
Cole glanced at her with a raised eyebrow, then grabbed more things from his truck. A bucket, some PVC pipe, and what I assumed was the pump. “This is temporary. It’ll get you cleaned out. Let you know when I’m done,” he said.
“Do you need help? That’s a lot of stuff.” Luna was already reaching for the bucket.
Cole moved it out of her range. “I got it.”
