A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [115]
“Brought a sheet of tin to patch up your barn roof, fix her up good as new. Hear you lost a few windows. Why don’t you show me what you got?”
Too stunned to argue, Cici led him through the house to the sunroom. Along the way they picked up Ida Mae, who said, “I’ll put on a pot of coffee. You tell your boys to stop by the kitchen when they want some.”
“Farley nailed up some boards to keep out the weather,” Cici explained as they reached the wrecked sunroom. “I really don’t know what more we can do until I’m able to get out and try to find some windows. Although where we’re going to match hundred-year-old windows, I don’t know.”
Ida Mae said, “Why don’t you use the ones that are in the attic?”
Cici stopped dead and turned to stare at her.
“Used to be,” Ida Mae explained, “there was windows in the ceiling here, too. I remember Mr. B used to grow oranges and lemons here. Then the last time the tree fell on it—”
Cici said, incredulous, “The last time?”
“They decided to put a real roof in,” Ida Mae went on as though she hadn’t been interrupted, “and put what windows was left up in the attic.”
“Yeah, I remember that.” Jake already had his tape measure out, pulling measurements from top to bottom and side to side. “Fifteen, twenty years ago, weren’t it?” He peered up at the ceiling, tested the sturdiness of a stud half exposed in the wall. “Don’t look like any structural damage was done, but ’pears there might be a little rot up there in the rafters. I’ll check it out. We got plenty of four-bys and three-quarter-inch ply out in the truck and a roll of roofing fabric. You want me to go up and look at them windows? If there’s enough, it won’t take us but a couple of hours to get ’em in, as much help as we got.”
“I—thank you, yes, that would be great but . . .” Cici hardly knew what to say. “This is awfully nice of you, but, well, the thing is, I really don’t think we can afford to have all these repairs done now, and the plywood will hold through the winter . . .”
He was already shaking his head, shuffling his feet, looking embarrassed. “Don’t you worry about it, Miss Cici. I’ll just put the materials on your bill, and you pay when you can. The labor, well, that’s just being neighborly.”
And then she really didn’t know what to say. And because she was afraid that if she tried she would start to cry, she just said, “Um, I’ll show you the way to the attic.”
“It was just like a movie,” Bridget said wonderingly.
“From the 1950s,” agreed Lindsay.
The work crew had stayed until dusk, and in that time had repaired the barn roof with weathertight seals, patched the sunroom roof with new decking and asphalt fabric, and replaced and caulked all of the broken windows. All that remained to be done was the cosmetic work.
“I never thought—” Cici stopped, and shook her head as though to clear it. “I never expected anything like this.”
The supper dishes were done, Ida Mae had gone to bed, and the three women sat on the sofa in front of the living room fireplace, their feet, dressed in wool socks and fleece-lined slippers, propped up on the coffee table in front of them. They shared a fringed throw for warmth, and, in deference to Cici’s pain medication, they sipped hot chocolate instead of wine.
“Ask and you shall receive,” said Bridget, raising her cup in a toast.
“More or less,” qualified Lindsay.
“Well, look how much money we saved on replacing the windows,” Bridget pointed out. “They were stored up in the attic all this time.”
“Yeah, but now we’re going to have to replace the entire roof on the sunroom,” Cici said, “and maybe the kitchen.” When the men had pulled up the broken part of the decking to replace it, they had discovered water damage beneath the shingles, with at least one rotten rafter. The patch they had put in place would hold until spring, but no longer. “And if we restore it with glass the way Ida Mae said it used to be, we’re looking at a major expense.”
“There’s no getting around it,” Lindsay said with a sigh. “This place is a money pit. We just lucked out this time.”
Cici looked from one to the other