Part 2
Grant took the flashlight from the door pocket and found his pry bar beneath the tool bag.
“You two wait,” he told the dogs. “I’m checking the accommodations.”
Tess backed away from the opening when he reached for his equipment. Boone watched him step out, then turned his attention to the cabin.
The snow was deeper beside the porch than it had looked from the truck. Grant approached along the sounder side, testing each step before committing his full weight. The key turned, but the door had swollen against the frame. A controlled push with his shoulder freed it.
He stayed on the threshold and swept the flashlight across the floor.
Nothing moved. There was no drip of water, no hum from the utility room. He checked the entry boards with his boot before going farther.
Arthur’s chairs and sofa were covered. Dust had gathered in the folds of the canvas, and the room smelled faintly of wet lumber beneath the older smells of ashes and closed cupboards. Grant passed the furniture without uncovering it.
Heat came first.
The furnace fired after a second attempt, rattled, and shut down before he had finished taking off his glove. He tried once more. It ran a little longer and quit with a hard clunk.
“Taking your time, then.”
The filter was filthy. An exterior vent was choked with ice, and one connection needed attention. Grant checked the rest of the accessible system before returning to the truck.
Boone was waiting at the door. Tess stood farther back, his glove still in her mouth.
“The floor passed,” he said. “Heat’s under negotiation.”
He clipped the gray leash to Boone’s blue collar and the amber leash to Tess’s plum-colored one. Boone jumped down, then stood quietly until Tess joined him.
Before bringing them inside, Grant walked them around the cabin, steering wide of the damaged porch. Boone investigated the woodpile and the packed snow beneath the windows. Tess followed so closely that her shoulder brushed his hip.
Then a mouse broke from a drift near the shed.
Tess jumped away from it, landed, and immediately pounced after its vanished trail. Snow sprayed over her nose. She wheeled toward Boone and dropped into a play bow.
Grant laughed before he meant to.
Boone stood beside his leg, looking at Tess with the weary stillness of a dog who had been offered this particular entertainment before.
Inside, Grant shut the bedroom doors and dragged a bench across the foot of the stairs. Until he had inspected everything, the main room and kitchen would have to do. He checked for exposed nails, loose boards, and anything the dogs might swallow before setting out their beds.
Boone chose the one nearest the door.
Tess inspected the room, stole a clean rag from Grant’s open tool roll, and took it behind the sofa.
“Tess. Bring that here.”
She peered at him around the covered arm.
Grant held out his hand. Tess moved two steps, reconsidered, and disappeared again.
He lowered his hand. A moment later, he put a piece of kibble on the floor and sat down, looking toward the kitchen instead of at her.
She took her time. When she finally emerged, she dropped the rag well out of his reach, collected the food, and hurried back to Boone.
“I’ll enter that as a partial return.”
The next hour passed in short trips between the utility room and the outside vent. Grant cleared the ice, replaced the filter, and dealt with the loose connection. Boone remained near the entry, moving only when asked.
Tess followed at a cautious distance until a wrench slipped from Grant’s hand.
The sharp impact on concrete sent her scrambling. By the time he reached the main room, she had wedged herself beside the sofa, sides moving rapidly.
Grant started toward her, then stopped.
Boone had already left his bed. He stood several feet from Tess, turned sideways, giving her room. Grant lowered himself onto the edge of a chair instead of crouching over her.
“You can stay there.”
He waited until she glanced at him. Then he set the wrench on the floor where she could see it and went back to work.
Several minutes later, Tess came out. She sniffed the tool, stepped around it, and retrieved the glove from beside Grant’s bag. She carried it to her bed.
The furnace stayed on after the next restart.
Warm air reached the main room gradually. Boone lifted his nose toward a register. Tess stretched a paw over the glove and let her head sink down.
By late afternoon Grant could work without his jacket. He fed the dogs well apart in the kitchen. Boone finished first and showed some interest in the other bowl.
“Not yours.”
Boone looked at him, then went back to his bed.
Tess paused twice to make sure Boone was still there. She finished every piece.
A knock came while Grant was washing the bowls.
Boone rose without a sound. Tess abandoned the kitchen and took shelter behind him.
The woman on the porch was short, white-haired, and holding a deep basket against her coat. Her glasses hung from a cord, and her mustard-yellow mittens were bright against the dark wool.
She looked past Grant at the board he had laid across the unsafe corner.
“Good. You found the hole before it found you.”
“Hello to you, too.”
“Ruth Dempsey. I’m through the trees, in the gray house.” She shifted the basket. “This is supper. You can argue after you eat.”
He remembered her name from his father’s brief phone calls. She had lent Arthur a ladder once and brought food more often than Arthur had wanted to admit.
Grant opened the door wider. Ruth noticed the dogs and paused.
“Well. Your father didn’t mention grandchildren.”
“Recent development.”
“May I?”
“Let Boone come to you. Tess may not.”
Ruth set down the basket, removed a mitten, and turned a little sideways. Boone smelled her hand and stepped back. Tess stayed behind his shoulder.
“No offense taken,” Ruth told her. “Plenty of people shouldn’t be welcomed just because they’re holding supper.”
Grant carried the basket to the kitchen. Inside were a covered pot, bread wrapped in a towel, and two folded napkins. He lifted the lid and found thick stew still warm from Ruth’s stove.
She looked around the room while he fetched bowls.
“Arthur let things go farther than I knew.”
“He didn’t mention how bad it was.”
“He didn’t mention how sick he was, either.”
Grant set a spoon beside the bowl a little harder than necessary. Ruth watched him, then took off her glasses.
“Somebody at the store recognized his truck,” he said. “Didn’t look happy about it.”
“That’ll have traveled by now.”
“I know there was trouble. I never got much out of him.”
Ruth sat at the kitchen table. “There was a slide above the old haul road. Your father was helping lead the volunteer rescue crew then. A convoy wanted to use that road to get below the ridge. Arthur wouldn’t let them.”
Grant leaned back against the counter.
“He sent them around the west side,” she continued. “Longer way. While they were doing that, two storage buildings and a lot of equipment went under.”
“People in the buildings?”
“The families had already left. The crew was checking the lower work area and whether anybody had gone back for machinery.”
“What was his reason?”
“He didn’t trust the snow above the road.”
“And the people here didn’t trust him.”
“Afterward, some didn’t.” Ruth rubbed one lens with her scarf. “He could be very clear when he gave an order. Less gifted when somebody wanted an explanation.”
Grant glanced through the kitchen doorway. Boone had lain down again. Tess stood near the sofa with the glove in her mouth.
“You thought he was right?”
“I thought he’d sacrifice a building before he risked a truck full of volunteers.”
“That doesn’t tell us what was on the slope.”
“No,” Ruth said. “It doesn’t.”
She let him eat without filling the silence.
When she got up to leave, she pointed toward the wall behind a tall cabinet.
“Check that side before the next hard freeze. He had a draft there last winter.”
“I felt it when I came in.”
“Then I won’t instruct you further. Imagine the shame of having to explain a draft to a man with your training.”
“How do you know about my training?”
Ruth put on her mittens. “Arthur talked. The two of you didn’t always have to be speaking for that to happen.”
Grant opened the door for her. She declined his offer to walk her home, promised to retrieve the basket, and picked her way toward the path.
He watched until her coat disappeared among the trees.
After dark, he braced the porch entrance from inside, checked the latch, and made the dogs’ last trip out. Boone waited before crossing the threshold. Tess tangled herself once in the leash, then followed when Grant stepped aside and gave her space.
Back indoors, both went to their beds.
He should have put away the tools. Instead, he stood beside the cabinet with his hand held low against the wall.
Cold air slipped across his knuckles.
Grant moved the cabinet and knelt briefly, then shifted into a squat to spare his knee. A board near the base had curled outward. It was damp, though the boards beside it were dry.
He brought the flashlight close. Dark insulation showed through a narrow gap.
Arthur’s cabin drawings lay on the workbench. Grant checked them, returned to the wall, and tapped with a screwdriver handle.
Boone came to stand beside him. Farther back, Tess watched the tool.
Grant tapped once more, tracing the edge of a space the drawings didn’t show…
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