Page 12 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

6

RAFE

Amalfunctioning woodstove is a genuine hazard, and that's the whole reason I'm standing in a strange kitchen at eight at night with a toolbox in my hand. Carbon monoxide doesn't care whose cabin it fills up, and Dot Higgins would never let me hear the end of it if something happened to the new hire and her kids because I couldn't be bothered to drive eleven miles. Good reasons, solid and defensible, the kind that hold up if anyone asks me to explain myself.

Nobody's asking. I don't examine too closely why the toolbox in question is my own, the good one from the loft, the one with the level that's actually calibrated and the screwdrivers that don't strip out halfway through a job, and not the roadside kit that's been rattling around in the truck bed since spring.

"It's the flue," I tell her, crouched in front of the open iron door with a flashlight between my teeth. "Damper's stuck half shut. You've been trying to burn wood in a box that can't breathe."

"Is that bad?"

"It's why you've got more smoke than heat." I work the lever free with the heel of my palm, feel it give, and swing it open the rest of the way by hand. "There. Try it now."

She crouches next to me, close enough that I catch the smell of her shampoo under the cold and the woodsmoke, and feeds in the kindling she already has stacked and ready, because whatever else is wrong with her fire-building, her prep work is solid. The flame catches on the first try and holds, small and orange and finally behaving like it's supposed to.

"Oh, thank God." She sits back on her heels, staring at the fire like it personally wronged her for two straight days and she's still deciding whether to forgive it. "I was fully prepared to sleep in my truck tonight."

"Wouldn't have recommended it. Gets down into the twenties up here this time of year."

"See, this is exactly the kind of information that would've been useful before I moved to a mountain town with two kids and zero relevant skills." She stands, brushes soot off her knees, and looks at the fire with the suspicion of someone who expects it to betray her the second her back is turned. "I can read a spreadsheet standing on my head. I can talk a divorce lawyer down off a ledge. Anything requiring physical labor, I am a genuine liability. Ask anyone who's ever watched me try to parallel park a moving truck."

"Fifteen minutes."

"What?"

"That's how long the damper took. You could've fixed it yourself with a screwdriver and a YouTube video."

"Sure, if I had a screwdriver, or knew what a damper was, or had any confidence whatsoever that I wasn't about to burn the cabin down." She fills two mugs from a kettle that's already whistling and spoons instant coffee into both without asking if I want any, which tells me she's decided I'm staying whether I meant to or not. "Fair warning, this stuff tastes like a campfire had a bad opinion of itself."

"I've had worse."

"That's not the endorsement you think it is."

"I've had MREs that came with their own apology letter. This is fine."

"Now I need to know what an MRE is and I'm almost certain I don't."

It's genuinely terrible, the coffee, bitter and thin and somehow both burnt and watery at once, and I drink it anyway because she made it and because leaving now, fifteen minutes into a job that's already done, would require an explanation I don't currently have.

"This is an insult to coffee," I tell her.

"I know. I bought the cheapest jar at the General Store out of spite, because the good stuff felt like admitting I was staying somewhere with a leaking roof and a woodstove that hates me." She wraps both hands around her mug and leans against the counter, looking more at ease than I've seen her since the day she walked into my brewhouse with two kids and a resume. "Turns out spite doesn't taste great either."

"Noted for future reference."

"You're really not going to let the U-Haul thing go, are you?"

"I watched you back a twenty-six-foot rental into a gravel lot at a forty-five-degree angle on your interview day. It's not something a man forgets."

"I got it in eventually."

"After four tries."

"Three." She points the spoon at me like it's a weapon. "And I'd like the record to reflect that nobody died."

That's the part that gets me, low and unexpected, before I can see it coming. I laugh, actually laugh, the real kind I haven't used in a long time, and it catches me off guard on the way out. It surprises both of us. She goes still for a second, watching me with an expression I can't quite name, something between delight and disbelief, like she just witnessed a solar eclipse.

"Was that a laugh?"