one
Celeste
Thethunderstormstartsatmidnight and by two in the morning it has become personal.
I'm not being dramatic. The storm has targeted my house specifically,my bought-it-for-nothing, needs-everything, what-was-I-thinking bungalow on the edge of Silver Ridge, and water is coming through the ceiling in three distinct streams. Two of them are aimed directly at my desk and the equipment that represents eight months of rebuilding my life from scratch.
I have towels. I have a mixing bowl from under the sink and a stock pot from the Silver Ridge thrift store. All of it deployed. None of it enough, because somewhere inside the wall I can hear water gurgling, and the lights are flickering in a way that makes my stomach drop.
The house cost forty-two thousand dollars. A foreclosure bungalow nobody wanted, bought with the last of my savings because I needed something that was mine. Somewhere Icouldn't be evicted from. Somewhere I could work without looking over my shoulder.
The work is a feasibility study: whether Silver Ridge and the surrounding valley could support real high-speed internet, what the infrastructure gap actually looks like, what it would take to close it. Three months of speed tests, interviews, and field data. It's not glamorous. It pays almost nothing yet. But it's mine, built from the ground up, and no one can take it from me because I haven't shown it to anyone.
My phone has one bar. It's had one bar since I moved here, which is part of why the study exists. Right now I need two bars minimum, because I need an electrician.
The 24-hour number for Lindstrom Electric rings four times. I've been holding my breath since the third ring. When it connects I exhale so hard I get dizzy.
"Ross Lindstrom." The voice is flat and low. A man who answers a two-AM call the same way he'd answer it at noon.
"Hi,” I squeak. “Yes. I have an emergency. Water's coming through the ceiling near the electrical panel and I don't know how close it is but the lights are—"
"How close is the water to the panel?"
I go look. The panel is in the narrow hallway, and there's a damp patch spreading on the drywall directly above it. I tell him this.
Silence for two seconds. "Don't touch the panel. Don't touch anything metal near it. I'll be there in twenty."
He hangs up before I can ask anything else. I'll find out later that this is his entire personality, but I don't know that yet.
Twenty minutes in the hallway watching water drip and thinking about what I've put into this place. A small amount of money. Lots of time. The floors I refinished myself over two weekends. The kitchen wall I patched with YouTube tutorials and pure stubbornness. The little office in the second bedroomwith its secondhand desk and my one good piece of equipment, my laptop, which is in there right now. I go to move it.
I'm in the office doorway reaching for it when the front door opens.
Ross fills the doorway. I register this before I register anything else, the sheer fact of him, rainwater sheeting off a jacket, a toolbag in one hand, flashlight in the other, already scanning. His eyes find the panel. Then they find me, one arm extended into the dark office. He kind of looks like Hagrid. But a sexy mountain man version.
"Stop."
His voice gets me out of my own thoughts. "I'm getting my laptop—"
"The outlet beside that desk. Is it on the same wall as the panel?"
I look. Yes. Same wall, other side.
"Come out of that room." He sets the bag down. I back up. "I need to see the panel before you go anywhere near that side of the house."
Ross looks at the panel with his flashlight for sixty seconds that feel much longer. Then he straightens.
"Your laptop. It's not plugged in, is it?"
I think about it. "No."
"Then it's fine." He opens the panel and the house goes dark. Completely dark. The refrigerator hum dies. The porch light cuts out. Rain against the roof suddenly sounds much louder.
I'm in the hallway with my phone light on, working very hard at being a rational person. I bought this house four months ago with the belief that I could fix whatever it threw at me. It has thrown a great deal. I've fixed most of it. Right now, standing in the dark while a stranger I called twenty minutes ago stands three feet away, I'm not entirely sure I have the resources left to fix this one.
"Hey." He's turned his flashlight around, pointing it at the ceiling so the light spreads soft between us. "The panel's not compromised. The water is tracking down the exterior wall — it's a flashing issue at the roofline, not the wiring. Your house isn't in danger."
I look at him. Ice-blue eyes.
