“Oh, well, seeing as I won’t be paying store rent anymore, we’ll have extra to spend on sewer stacks.”
“That’s my girl, Daisy.” Joe squeezed my shoulder. “Way to look at it as the glass half full.” And with that, he disappeared back down into the basement.
Angus and I stood there with our mouths hanging open.
“Jeez, Angus, he doesn’t even realize when I’m being sarcastic anymore.”
My best friend of the male variety shook his head sadly. “If you need to take a shower, come on over to my place, but you can use this downstairs powder room to wash up in the meantime. The leak in the pipe is above this level, so it’ll be okay. I’ll help Wayne replace the stack on Monday. He’s knocking off for the day now.”
“Miller time?”
He nodded.
“Thanks so much, Angus.” I gave him the biggest, tightest hug I could manage around his mountain man physique. He was helping with the work purely out of the goodness of his heart in order to make the project go faster.
After Wayne and Angus packed up their stuff, I slumped down at the kitchen table, depression gnawing at me. I’d have to get my merchandise out of Sometimes a Great Notion soon, as I wouldn’t put it past Rosenthal to change the locks before the deadline, but I couldn’t bring myself to go to the store now.
I decided what I needed was a good long walk.
I put on my hiking boots, down jacket, and woolen scarf. It was another cold, but bright and sunny afternoon, and Jasper danced along beside me, delirious with excitement. He was going to miss these country adventures when Sarah finished filming and brought him back to the city. I bit my lip, not wanting to think about that now, on top of everything else.
We took the path through the end of the Browns’ property, saying hi to Georgia, who was basking in the sunlight, and plunged into the woods, walking along trails covered in a thick bed of rust-colored pine needles. Ferns lined the way, and there were enough smells from hidden wildlife that Jasper was a sniffing machine, dragging me along as if I were holding on to a ski tow.
There wasn’t another soul on the path. Out of the sunlight, the temperature dropped at least ten degrees, and I was glad of my warm coat. We passed the ruins of someone’s long-ago house. A piece of one fieldstone wall was still standing, and the stone slabs on the ground showed the base of a fireplace. I wondered who had lived out here in the middle of the woods. Perhaps an artist looking for solitude, one of the many for which Bucks County was renowned. Or maybe it was one of the old mill worker’s homes.
The terrain sloped up, and I fought for breath as we negotiated a rocky slope. Jasper, who had dragged me nonstop along the flat, now walked obediently at heel. I gritted my teeth as we crested the top, and headed down the other side, past boulders littered over what might have been a lake bed at one time. The trees thinned out and I could hear the creek.
When we reached it, we walked alongside the swiftly moving water, where piles of twigs and branches had washed up along its sides. In an eddy formed by a couple of gray boulders, I watched the water lap over the mossy rocks beneath. I bet it would be fun in the summer to sift through the mud here and see if there were any remains of broken pottery from the mill. One tree had fallen into the creek, and lay with its roots half exposed, but amazingly, still alive.
Lastly we came to the crumbling mill itself with its accompanying outbuildings, now nearly engulfed by climbing vines. The holes where the windows used to be were like sightless eyes that let me see straight through the stone walls to the trees behind.
It was late by the time we got to Ringing Springs Park. A mile and a half in country terms sure felt like a lot longer. I wondered if Alice had just guessed at the distance, or had ever actually walked it herself.