Jorge had insisted he would sleep on the sofa downstairs so he wouldn’t displace any of the women upstairs.
“I think it’s because he snores,” Aunt Beth said with a knowing glance over the banister as she and Harriet climbed the stairs behind Lauren and Mavis.
Harriet hoped she was merely speculating.
Chapter 9
The first thing Harriet noticed when she woke up was the silence. The second was Fred sinking his needle-sharp claws into the calf of her right leg when she attempted to move.
“Stop,” she said and batted him away. She listened again. The wind had stopped.
She shivered as she got out of bed and into her bathrobe then started for the window. She turned at a knock on her door.
“Come in.”
Aunt Beth came in carrying two mugs of steaming tea.
“Don’t look outside,” she said. handing one to her niece.
“Well, now I have to, don’t I? I mean, you can’t say something like that and seriously think I won’t look.”
“Let me rephrase,” her aunt said. “Brace yourself.”
“That bad?”
“Worse. Go ahead and look.”
Harriet went to the window and pulled the curtain aside. Beth was right-nothing could have prepared her for the scene outside.
Broken limbs and branches littered her driveway and the road beyond, but that was to be expected. As she looked down at the neighborhood that stepped down the hill below her house, what she saw looked like a scene from a made-for-TV disaster movie.
Her view used to include red and black and brown rooftops protruding through the canopy of trees. Today, foliage and roofing were all jumbled together, with trees broken and jutting through segments of roofs or tangled in torn power lines. It looked like the older Victorian houses with their multiple steep roofs had fared better than the newer flat-roofed contemporary homes that had been built lower down the hill. Two streets down, she saw a red sports car with its top caved in by an iron shepherd’s hook that had formerly held a large peat moss flower basket, which was now neatly deposited in the front seat of the small car.
A cloud of smoke floated up from the downtown area. It was unclear whether it was vigorous fireplace output or a burning building. Harriet hoped for the first.
Mavis shuffled into the room in her plaid wool bathrobe and fleece-lined moose-skin slippers, a ceramic mug grasped in both hands.
“This is the worst I’ve seen in at least twenty years, maybe more,” she said.
“How’d Curly do last night?” Harriet asked.
Mavis crossed the room and looked out.
“See for yourself.” She gestured toward the window. Jorge was on the grassy area to the inside of the circular driveway, a dog leash in each hand, Curly and Brownie tugging hard in opposite directions, their noses to the ground.
“Okay, they don’t look worried,” Harriet said. “Unlike Fred, who was up and down all night. I don’t suppose the power came on, did it?” Harriet asked sent a hopeful look at her aunt.
“You did just look out the window, didn’t you?” Beth asked.
“Is this a slumber party?” Lauren asked as she came in. She wore her zip-front sweatshirt over her pajamas, her little dog tucked between. “Power is the least of our problems. I listened to the Seattle news on my radio, and they said the Muckleshoot is over its banks.”
“Did they say if it’s over the bridge?” Harriet asked.
“I said I listened to the Seattle news. We’re lucky they even mentioned the Muckleshoot, much less Foggy Point and our bridge. They did say more rain is expected-a lot more.”
“That’s all we need,” Mavis said.
“Speaking of water,” Lauren said. “What’s the situation on ours?”
“There’s a fifty-gallon drum of water in the garage we can use for bathing, if the water system is contaminated.” Beth said. “You’d think they could have found a better place for the municipal water source-somewhere that wasn’t right in the middle of the Muckleshoot’s flood plain.”
“If I remember right, when this came up before, they said it was located there because they’re drawing water from wells and that’s where they found water,” Mavis explained.
“I’ve got three cases of individual bottles and ten one-gallon jugs in the garage for drinking.” Harriet added.
“Mavis and I brought our camping showers over,” Aunt Beth continued. “We can heat water on the gas stove and put it in the solar shower bag and hang it from the shower head in the bathroom. It only takes three to four gallons for a shower, and that includes washing your hair.”
“I’m impressed,” Lauren said.
“This isn’t our first rodeo,” Mavis told her. “You should have seen it back in nineteen-ninety. All the rivers flooded in November.”
“Yeah, they lost the span of bridge on I-Ninety between Mercer Island and Seattle,” Aunt Beth said.
“And then we got eighteen inches of snow in December,” Mavis continued. “And I had all the boys at home back then. We were without power for a week. I dug out the camping equipment, including the sun shower, and it was a lifesaver.”
“How’s the food situation?” Harriet asked.
“Heaven knows,” her aunt replied. “That man won’t let us in the kitchen.”
“I wonder how the homeless camp fared,” Harriet said as she joined the rest of the Loose Threads, who were drying their hair in front of the fireplace.
“Sit here,” Lauren said and got up from the footstool she was sitting on. She ran a wooden-handled hairbrush through her long, blonde hair. “I have to go check Carter. He wouldn’t eat with the other dogs, so I shut him in the downstairs bathroom with his dish.”
Mavis had wound her hair on curlers and was bent over at the waist, exposing the top of her head to the heat.
“We did what we could, but until the roads are clear Joyce and the others are on their own,” she said.
“And we did offer to take them to the church,” Aunt Beth pointed out. “They turned us down flat. There’s not much we can do if they don’t want help.”
“Your breakfast is served in the dining room, ladies,” Jorge called from the next room.
Harriet was impressed. He had made cheese omelets and hash brown potatoes and served them on plates with cut-up apples, oranges, bananas and toast points.
“This looks fabulous,” Mavis said. “How did you make toast without any power?”
“You have a gas stove. What more does a person need?”
“I’m not trading my toaster in anytime soon,” Lauren said as she returned, Carter again tucked into her sweatshirt.
A knock on the front door interrupted them before they started eating. They looked at each other.
“Who on earth could that be?” Lauren wondered.
“Let’s find out,” Jorge said and went through the entryway and opened the door.
“How’s it going?” Tom Bainbridge asked as Jorge led him to the dining room.
“What are you doing here?” Harriet asked.
“Hello to you, too,” he said with a grin. His normally neat hair hung at a rakish angle over his hazel eyes. He was dressed in brightly colored all-weather pants and a matching jacket. “Excuse me for checking to see how you all are doing.”
He set a heaping plate, covered in waxed paper on the table.
“Mrs. Renfro baked for days in preparation for the storm, and there’s just the two of them. Even with me, we can’t possibly eat it all. Turns out Mr. R had an off-road utility vehicle hidden in the garage, so they unleashed me to spread baked cheer around the neighborhood. I have dozens more where these came from.”
He pulled the paper off with a flourish, revealing large peanut-raisin-chocolate chip cookies.
“I take it back-I don’t care why you’re here, you can stay if we can keep the cookies,” Harriet said.