“How did you?—”
“Everyone’s power cuts out at their cabin. The wiring’s held together by duct tape and prayers. Here.” She adds a pair of heavy thermal socks. "The well water is cold enough to come up through the floor. Here." She adds a pair of rubber-soled slippers. "Wear these when you pump."
She moves through the store with the efficiency of someone who has done this exact tour before. A fire extinguisher. A camping lantern. A large flashlight that could probably illuminate a small country. A first aid kit that could probably handle a small amputation. A multitool. Waterproof matches.
“You’re prepping me for the zombie apocalypse,” I say.
“No,” Marnie says. “I’m prepping you for the cabin in June. A zombie apocalypse prepping would take longer.”
I leave with approximately forty pounds of supplies and a weird sense that I’ve just been adopted by a practical grandmother figure. I also leave with the unsettling certainty that I’m exactly the kind of unprepared person who needs everything Marnie just sold me.
I load everything into the Jeep and drive the three blocks to the café, which is probably excessive, but forty pounds ofapocalypse gear is not a walking situation. There's the café (Dotty's), a hardware store, what looks like a real estate office, and a building with a hand-painted sign in the window that reads: Moosehead Lodge – Open Tuesdays, Fridays, and for emotional emergencies.
I like this town. In a way that surprises me.
Dotty’s café is warm and smells like coffee and cinnamon, which is a sensory hug. It’s a place where the tables don’t match and the chairs are mismatched and the menu is handwritten on a board that someone has illustrated with small doodles of coffee cups that look vaguely angry.
Dotty is behind the counter. She’s maybe sixty, with dark hair that she’s clearly colored to a shade of red that says “I have opinions and I’m not hiding them.” She greets me by name, which is still slightly terrifying.
"How was your first night?" she asks, setting a coffee down in front of me without asking if I want one.
"Survivable," I say. "The oven situation is less survivable."
"Lucifer giving you trouble?"
“Lucifer? The oven has a name?”
“It does,” Dotty says. “Edna named it. Edna said it was stubborn, temperamental, and occasionally made you question your faith in divine benevolence. She said that made it a pretty good oven.”
I wrap my hands around the coffee cup. The warmth is good. Sixty days. The number sits behind my sternum like a stone.
"You're doing the math," Dotty says. It's not a question.
"Is it that obvious?"
"Everyone who sits in that chair on their second day does the math." She refills her own coffee. "Edna did too, the first year. Sat right where you're sitting, counting everything."
“Do you think—” I start, and I can’t quite finish the question. Do you think I can do this? is what I mean, but it’s too vulnerable to ask a stranger.
Dotty answers it anyway. “I think Edna wouldn’t have given you sixty days if she thought you couldn’t do it. Edna didn’t believe in false hope. She believed in brutal, honest assessment and then making other people rise to match it.”
There’s something in her voice that makes me think Dotty knew her. Really knew her. Not in a casual neighborly way, but in the way you know someone when you’ve spent years sitting across from each other at small tables.
“The oven—” I start again.
“The oven is fine,” Dotty says. “It just requires respect. Edna said it was like a person that way. You have to pay attention. You have to show up. You have to adjust when it tells you to adjust. And you have to never, ever assume you know better.”
I write this down mentally, filing it next to all the other unhelpful-but-essential advice I’ve received in the last twenty-four hours.
When I get back to the cabin, the water pump is fixed.
I don’t notice it at first. I walk around the cabin with my forty pounds of supplies and my head full of Lucifer and clauses and brutal honest assessment, and I just pump.
The handle moves smoothly. The water comes out clear. I fill a pot with zero effort.
That's strange. I pump it again just to confirm I'm not imagining things.
There’s a note under the cabin door. Actual handwritten on actual paper.