Chapter 25
A month before when Hank showed up at his shop, Tripp would have been worried about whether he could get all the Christmas orders finished on time.
But that evening his mind was on a merry-go-round, comparing Willa Rose’s words to what Bernie had said.
Just before he crawled into bed and turned out the lamp, he noticed the sprig of mistletoe still lying on his nightstand.
“If you have any power left at all, give me a sign,” he muttered.
At two o’clock in the morning, his phone rang and awoke him from a dead sleep. “Hello,” he mumbled.
“Tripp, I have no water and there’s a strange hissing sound under the house.” Willa Rose’s tone was one of pure panic. “What do I do?”
“The parsonage is an old house, and the cold front that hit us yesterday has probably frozen the pipes under the house. What you are hearing is water spewing out when they burst,” he answered.
“If you’ll pack bags for you and the baby, I’ll come get you.
I will turn off the water at the meter, and you won’t be able to stay at your place until we get a plumber. ”
“But Nicky’s things, his cradle and…”
“We can bring what he needs tonight to my house and worry about what else we need to move tomorrow.”
“Okay, then I’ll start getting things ready, and thank you, Tripp.”
“No problem.” He ended the call, picked up the mistletoe, and kissed the red ribbon. “I will never doubt you again.”
A bitter north wind whipped through the tree limbs and sent a couple of huge tumbleweeds toward him when he stepped off the porch. He looked up at the sky, half expecting to see clouds that promised another snow or ice storm, but stars twinkled around a waxing moon.
Lights shone out Willa Rose’s windows, leaving long strips of yellow on the crispy grass.
He saw shadows moving around through the lacy curtains, but didn’t go straight for the house.
Instead, he parked on the road, hefted his toolbox over the truck bed, and found the water cutoff.
He thought of Brodie back last spring when he had to do the same thing after the tornado blew away their house and all their belongings.
“At least I’m not having to do this in the rain and with no clothes on.” He chuckled.
When he finished, he backed the truck up to the porch. Willa Rose slung open the door and said, “The hissing stopped.”
“Good,” Tripp said. “That means only whatever water is in the pipes will flood out under the house when they unfreeze. You are lucky…”
“How can you say that?” she butted in. “It’s the middle of the night.”
He drew her close to him for a quick hug.
“Lucky that the pipe didn’t burst inside the house, or you would be walking around in ankle-deep cold water.
As it is, there is most likely a lake under the floor that will have to dry up before a plumber can even get to the problem.
If this cold front hangs around, that could be days or weeks since it’s close to the holidays, so you will have to stay with me for a while. ”
She stuffed even more baby clothes into a second diaper bag. “Do you believe in signs?”
He thought of that little sprig of mistletoe. “Sometimes. Do you?”
“Yes, I do,” she answered as she took Nicky out of the cradle. “I asked for an omen just before I went to sleep. A sign of some kind to help me sort all of this out, and I woke up to that noise under the house. At first, I thought it might be a den of rattlesnakes.”
He picked up the cradle and headed for the door with it. “What does this mean to you?”
“That we need to figure it out together, not apart,” she answered.
“Absolutely,” he told her, but he did not mention the mistletoe. After the holidays he was going to have that bit of greenery encased in a square of Lucite or preserved forever in a glass bubble.