“Are you all right?” Tabby yelled.
Suddenly the kitchen was filled with light, and Tabby was standing at the end of the table. “I thought you’d fallen.”
Ellie Mae shook her head and righted the chair. “One for one. You fell off the ladder, and I knocked over a chair, so we’re even on the clumsy chart today.” Ellie Mae barely got the words out when her cell phone rang. She slipped it out of her back pocket, saw that the call was from Aunt Charlotte, and hit both “Accept” and “Speaker.”
“Hey, what’s going on in Colorado? I’ve got you on speaker with me and Tabby. We just finished covering all the windows and the front storm door, and this house is pitch black.”
“It’s beautiful up here. We’ve got our first snow,” Charlotte answered. “But that’s not why I called you, Eleanor Mason. I had to call both lines to get you.”
Ellie Mae rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Why did you second-name me?”
“I do that when I need for you to pay close attention to me, and this is so important that I’m not giving you girls a choice. You just have to do it,” Charlotte said. “The assisted-living center there in town has been evacuated. I know a couple of the ladies who work there, and one of them called me with a big problem. Four of the old folks there don’t have family to take them in. Nearby nursing homes and hotels are full, and there’s quite literally no room at the inn or anywhere else in South Texas. I don’t know anything about them other than there’s two women and two men, but I told my friend that they could stay at the B and B for a couple or three days.”
“But . . . ,” Ellie Mae stammered.
“I know the second floor isn’t all prettied up like you girls want it when you get done repainting and redecorating, but it’s better than nothing, so give them each a room. The fifth bedroom is Alex LaSalle’s. He always stays with me when there’s a hurricane because he knows how to take care of the well and the generator, and he’s a damn fine cook.” Charlotte’s tone left no room for argument. “Tabby June, you let him help you in the kitchen, because for the next few days, you are going to have to fix three meals and about two or three snacks a day. I’ve got to go now. My neighbor is here, and we’re doing yoga.”
“Yoga?” Ellie Mae asked.
“Yep, we got this program on the television that teaches us the basic stuff. Folks down in Sandcastle always lose power when tropical storms or hurricanes hit, and most of the time, a big storm will knock out the cell towers for your phones,” Charlotte reminded them. “The old house phone will work if the storm doesn’t snap the lines from the pole to the house, but the last hurricane knocked that out, too. I’m so glad I’m not there right now.”
“But, Aunt Charlotte, we aren’t equipped for five extra people,” Ellie Mae argued.
“Sure, you are,” Charlotte said. “There’s enough staples in the pantry and the basement to last at least three months, and the two freezers are full of food. The old folks will only be there for a few days until the power gets fixed and whatever damage is done to the assisted-care center is repaired. Y’all will do fine. They’re older than I am, so they’ll probably just eat and sleep. Bye now.” She ended the call.
Tabby groaned. “I didn’t sign up to run a nursing home.”
“It’s just until the storm blows over,” Ellie Mae answered. “Maybe three days at the most. But the rooms on the second floor will be full, and our redecorating will come to a halt.”
“We wouldn’t have time to do much, anyway. We’ll be busy cleaning up the damage. The way the trees are creaking in this high wind, I’ll be surprised if some of them aren’t uprooted,” Tabby said after a long sigh.
“Just think about all the cleaning and laundry.” Ellie Mae sat down in a chair and laid her head on the table. “At least we haven’t started stripping all of the ugly wallpaper.”
Tabby pulled out a chair across the table from Ellie Mae and sat down. “Even when the B and B is reopened next spring, I’d only planned on making breakfast and maybe keeping a fruit bowl and cookies out for a nighttime snack. I hope she was right about this guy who’s coming to help out being able to cook. What did she say his name was? My brain stopped listening when she said four old people were coming to stay here.”
“Alex something or other.” Ellie Mae raised her head and drew her dark brows down. “Alex . . .” She frowned. “Alex LaSalle. That’s it.”
“Sweet Jesus!” Tabby said.
Alex LaSalle had helped Miz Charlotte Landry make it through more than one hurricane, but those days were over now that she’d moved north and given the Sandcastle B and B to her two great-nieces. He hadn’t been by to welcome them to town, but then, he’d been busy keeping up with his job as a fishing guide. Besides, he hadn’t seen Tabby in years—not since he kissed her when they were teenagers—and he felt awkward about meeting her again.
Until two days ago, when the prophecy about Hurricane Delilah’s arrival had been set in stone, he hadn’t had time to do anything but get up at three in the morning, catch and cut bait fish, stock his boat with snacks and beer, and get ready for another trip out into the deep.
He had already boarded up his small two-bedroom house—the place he ran his business out of—and taken all the precautions he could with his boat. He said a little prayer as he slung his old army duffel bag into the back seat of his pickup truck and bent against the wind coming off the water. The curls on the waves would be a surfer’s slice of heaven if they had been able to get out there that day, but with the red flags flying on every pole on the beach, not even a seasoned surfer would chance the riptides.
He had just slid behind the steering wheel and fastened his seat belt when his phone rang. “Hello?” he answered without even checking the caller ID.
“Hey, I hear you got a storm coming down there,” Charlotte said. “Are you going to ride it out or evacuate?”
“The wind has hit, and the waves are probably taller than I am,” he said. “I was just about to evacuate. I’ve battened down the hatches and said my prayers that my boat survives the storm.”
“I need you to go take care of things at the B and B.” She told him about the folks from the assisted-living center who needed a place to stay. “I’ve already called Ellie Mae and Tabby and told them what’s going on. Neither of my nieces know jack squat about keeping a generator going or taking care of the well house.”
“I’ll be glad to hang around and help out, and this will free up a family with three little kids so they can get on out of here this afternoon.” Though he wouldn’t admit it to Charlotte, he really would like to see what kind of grown woman Tabby had become, too. “I was just talking to my hired hand before you called. He’s got family up around Lufkin they can stay with, but the wife works at the assisted-living center and refuses to leave until all the residents have a place to stay.”
The wind had gotten strong enough to rock his truck, and he could hear limbs popping off trees all over town.
“That’s the very woman that I just talked to. We were on the cookbook committee together at the church,” Charlotte said.