In the pre-dawn darkness, she shoved her hair out of her face where it had come loose from its braid, sat up, and listened. She heard it clearly then: rushing water, like someone had turned on every faucet in the house at once.
Jules launched from her bed and fumbled for the light switch. Cold wetness soaked through her fuzzy socks the instant her feet hit the floor, and what she saw made her stomach drop.
There was water everywhere.
It streamed from under the kitchen door, spreading across her living room in an ever-widening lake that ran off into her bedroom. Her vintage area rug floated like a dead thing, and photo albums under the coffee table sat drowning in two inches of destruction. As she stared in horror, one of her favorite sandals went floating by.
"No, no, no!"
She splashed through the flood and yanked open the kitchen door. Water sprayed from under the sink with explosive force, hitting the ceiling hard enough to rain back down. The walls streamed with moisture. The cabinets dripped.
"Fred!"
She rescued her succulent, setting him on top of the refrigerator, then dropped to her knees in the cold water. The cabinet doors hung open, knocked aside by the water's force, and she could see the problem immediately. A pipe had burst, the metal torn open like it was paper.
Squinting in the dark, she found the valve for that pipe, grabbed it and twisted.
Nothing.
She threw her weight into it. The valve groaned, gave a quarter turn, then stuck completely. Rust flaked off, cutting into her palms.
"Come on!"
Bracing both feet against the cabinet frame, she pulled until her muscles screamed. The valve wouldn't budge. If anything, the water pressure increased, soaking through her thin sleep shirt until she could win a wet T-shirt contest.
Think. Think. Think.
Main water shut-off. Had to be in the basement.
She ran for the basement door, slipping on the wet hardwood. Her hip slammed the doorframe as she careened by and pain shot down her leg, but adrenaline pushed her forward. The stairs were slick with humidity, and she took them recklessly, white-knuckling the rail.
The basement was already flooding. Three inches of icy water biting at her bare ankles beneath her soggy socks.
The shut-off valve was on the far wall, barely visible behind boxes of Christmas decorations and her parents' old things she couldn't bear to throw away. Jules waded through the freezing water, her pajama shorts plastered to her thighs. The boxes collapsed into soggy cardboard at her touch, ornaments and memories floating away to collect in the corners of the room.
The valve was painted over. Multiple times. Evidence of her father's "improvements" that did little but make things look better without actually fixing them.
A sense of momentary helplessness swept over her as she stared at it. "You've got to be kidding me, Dad."
Jules glanced around the flooding room. Tools. She needed tools.
Back up the stairs she went, slogging through the kitchen to the side door. Her father's toolbox was in the garage, exactly where he'd left it three years ago. She grabbed her keys from the hook on the wall and burst outside.
Just as Lex had predicted, the storm had intensified overnight. Wind drove snow horizontally, cutting through her soaked clothes like ice. Her teeth chattered and her wet hands turned red as she fumbled with the padlock on the garage door, which she eventually got open, then grabbed the heavy toolbox and ran back into the house.
Down in the basement again, the water was now four inches deep. Her dad's wrench wouldn't fit the painted valve. The pliers slipped uselessly. She attacked it with his hammer, chipping paint, denting the adjacent pipe, accomplishing nothing while apologizing to his memory for the mess she was making.
Above her head, wood groaned. Jules looked up to see the original beams from the year her grandparents bought the place began to bow. Water streamed through the floorboards onto her head.
She needed help. Now.
Running back upstairs, she grabbed her phone from the nightstand, scrolling through contacts with shaking, bloody fingers.
Mary from the coffee shop whose husband did plumbing work—straight to voicemail.
Ben from hardware—no answer.
But Faye…her best friend would answer. She always did.
