Annie's Rainbow - Fern Michaels [147]
“You were just a toddler when we came back here the last time. You were too little to remember. Cala and Mike spent the whole time sliding down the banister. It’s a wonderful old house. All the beams and wainscoting are original, as are the wooden pegs they used for nails back in those days. The floors are solid oak. They could stand to be refinished at some point. The people Mr. Dunwoodie hired to clean everything up did a good job. It’s more than livable.”
“It’s freezing in here,” Cala grumbled.
“Guess that means you kids have to go outside to the woodshed and bring in some wood. Mr. Dunwoodie said he had two cords of cherry wood delivered. In the meantime I’ll turn up the thermostat and hope it works. Take your gear upstairs, pick out a bedroom, and put on an extra sweater. This house was always drafty, and heat rises,” Kristine said, pointing to the high ceilings. “I want to check out the kitchen to make sure the stove and water pump work.”
“Are you saying we have to pump water too?” There was such disgust on Mike’s face, Kristine cringed.
“If you want water, that’s exactly what you do,” Kristine said, her patience wearing thin. She wondered what her children would say and do when they saw the archaic contraption that heated the water in the upstairs bathroom.
Kristine was priming the pump in the kitchen when she heard her daughter’s screech. “One bathroom! There’s only one bathroom up here! What am I supposed to do? There’s no vanity either. What the hell is this . . . thing?”
Kristine knuckled her burning eyes. She would not cry. She absolutely would not cry. “You should be here, Logan. We should be doing this together. They wouldn’t be acting this way if you were here,” she muttered under her breath as a steady stream of rusty water shot from the pump spout. She continued to pump water because it was something to do. She didn’t want to think about what Cala would say when she washed her hair for the first time in the hard well water. She wished she could lie down and go to sleep and not wake up until Logan walked through the door.
“It’s sleeting out, Mom. The temperature is dropping,” Tyler said, coming up behind her. “How much wood do you want us to bring in? I counted ten fireplaces in this house. Which ones do you want to light?”
“I guess you better light the ones in the bedrooms and the one here in the kitchen and the one in the living room. The heater doesn’t seem to be working. The propane tank could be empty. I’ll look into it tomorrow. I don’t think we’ll freeze. My mother had wonderful quilts and down comforters on all the beds. A lot of wood, Tyler. There’s a wood carrier in the shed that holds a lot of wood. Off the top of my head I’d say you need four loads. Bring it to the kitchen door. If the three of you work at it, you should be able to drag it up the kitchen staircase. My father used to do it on his own, so I think you three robust children should be able to handle it. It’s called, work, Tyler.”
“There’s no television set, Mom.”
“So there isn’t. I guess you’ll just have to miss the tube for one day until our belongings get here tomorrow. Read a book.”
“This is like one of those houses you see in horror movies,” Mike said as he slammed through the kitchen door behind Tyler. “What do you mean there’s no television set?”
Kristine clenched her teeth so hard she thought her jaw would crack when she opened the refrigerator. Eggs, a can of coffee, bread, butter, jam, bacon, juice, and milk. “This certainly takes the guesswork out of what to cook for dinner,” she muttered. Tomorrow things will be better, she thought.
Since the preparation time for dinner would be ten minutes or so, Kristine gathered up her baggage to carry upstairs. She shivered as she walked through the old house, drafts swirling about her legs. She took a minute to marvel at the old furniture, antiques really, and the fact that everything was in such good condition. Her own comfortable, worn furniture wasn’t going to fit in anywhere in this barn of a house. Still, she would have to spread it out for the children’s sake