Page 29 of Sweet Surprises

“Just stay outside with Chance,” he said over his shoulder, bracing himself for what he was about to see.

As much as he had wanted the family to consider getting rid of the shop, his heart hurt at the idea of the place being ruined. Grandma Lawrence had loved those pine floors. When he pictured her, it was always behind the polished wooden counter.

He could hear the water raining down before he even got inside.

“Don’t turn on the lights,” he barked at Charlotte, knowing she would be tempted. “Stay outside.”

He turned on the flashlight on his phone instead and ran for the basement door, rushing down the uneven cellar steps to cut the water main.

He splashed through a few inches of freezing water as he headed for the front wall. Thankfully, he’d had a plumber come out and replace a couple of valves recently, so it was easy enough to stop the water supply to the building.

He opened the electrical panel next, and turned off the main breaker.

Jogging back upstairs, he could hear the water still coming down. But at least now he knew the source was gone and no one was going to be electrocuted. He kept going up to the apartment to see if he could find where it was coming from.

As he emerged on the landing, the temperature seemed to drop even more. It felt colder up here than it was outside.

“Frozen pipe,” he said to himself, heading to the bathroom. It was on the back wall, and that made it the most vulnerable to a freeze.

As he moved, his mind was doing calculations on the damage and trying to remember what their insurance deductible was. It was high, he was pretty sure, and it was going to take an awful lot of ice cream sales to get them out of this unnecessary hole.

Frozen pipes happened if you weren’t careful, so he checked on the place pretty regularly. But Charlotte was living here now. She should have said something if her heat went out.

As if he had summoned her with his thoughts, Charlotte appeared in front of him. She had beaten him to the bathroom, and she was pulling the shelf over the toilet away from the back wall.

“The heat was off,” Tag said, gesturing for her to move out of the way. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I-I didn’t know,” she said.

“It’s colder than a polar bear’s butt up here,” he snapped. “You didn’t think to tell someone?”

She ran from the room and he felt a pang of guilt, but mostly relief. Now that she was out of the way, he was able to see that the leak was from the supply line on the sink. So at least the shop was raining clean supply water, not drainage.

Catching his breath, he headed back down to the shop, intending to see if the freezers had been damaged.

As he came out of the stairway, he could hear that the downpour onto the main floor had already slowed to a drizzle that slid down the back wall instead of coming through the whole ceiling.

And Charlotte had beaten him down here as well. But instead of checking on things like she’d done upstairs, she was bent over something on the back counter, weeping.

Tag froze.

As he stood helplessly watching, Olivia sprinted into the shop, leaving Chance in the front doorway, holding Jenny’s hand.

“Charlotte,” Olivia said, her voice full of sadness. “Charlotte what’s wrong?”

She wrapped her arm around the young woman’s shoulders, reminding Tag of the way she held Chance when he was sad.

“It was my dad’s,” Charlotte whispered.

There was no sound but the trickle of water for a moment.

If Tag wasn’t sure Olivia knew Charlotte had recently lost her dad, it was pretty clear now.

“Can I see?” Olivia asked gently.

Charlotte sat up a little, and even from where he stood, Tag could see that it had been a framed photograph of two smiling faces. But the water had damaged it.

“He always kept it on his desk at work,” Charlotte said. “But it’s just a picture.”

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