Given the number of calls and texts, it could be urgent. I’d get in touch with Evan to give him the heads-up, but I don’t have his number and can’t unlock Cooper’s phone to get it. If it’s important, the girls will try Evan eventually, I reason. So I mind my business and go back to my homework.
But the buzzing continues. For another half hour, about every five minutes, Cooper’s phone rattles on the kitchen counter. Fuck it. I grab the phone the next time a call comes in and this time I answer it.
“Hello, Steph?” I say, reading her name on the screen.
“Who’s this?”
“Mackenzie. Cooper’s out with Evan and Levi. He left his phone at home.”
“Damn,” she says with a frustrated huff. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of Evan, but he’s not answering either.”
“What’s going on?”
“There’s water coming in through the ceiling of the bathroom. We heard something that sounded like a tree falling on the roof, and then suddenly water’s running down the wall.”
“You okay?”
“We’re fine, but we need to fix this before the entire house is flooded. We’ve got towels down, but there’s too much water and we don’t have any way to stop it.”
Shit. If they can’t reach Evan, it probably means the twins are still wrapped up helping their uncle. The storm is really wailing now, thunder and lightning coming every few minutes and the wind and rain battering the windows. And according to the radar on TV, this thing isn’t passing quickly. Which means Steph and Alana are going to need a raft soon.
Pausing for a moment to think, it occurs to me Cooper’s truck is still here, and his keys are sitting on the coffee table. I bet he’s got all kinds of stuff in the garage—a ladder and tarps.
A plan forms in my head.
“Okay. Write down my phone number and text me your address,” I tell Steph. “I’m coming over.”
“Uh …” There’s muted chattering in the background that I assume is Alana. “I’m not sure if that’s—”
“I’m going to grab some supplies from Cooper’s garage and head over there. Trust me, this’ll work.”
“Alright,” she finally relents. There might even be a hint of relief in her voice.
After we get off the phone, I borrow a rain jacket from Cooper’s closet then grab his keys and dash through the rain and mud to his garage. Inside, against the wall, he’s got all sorts of building materials stacked up from the renovations he and Evan have been doing on the house. Among them, some black vinyl-type material and rope. Thankfully, Cooper keeps his tools well organized and I find a hammer, nails, and a heavy-duty staple gun with little effort. Good enough.
Ten minutes after hanging up with Steph, I back Cooper’s truck up to the door of the garage, get everything loaded into the bed, wrestle with the twelve-foot ladder, and then head to Steph and Alana’s house.
Everything looks normal when I pull up to the little blue house. No obvious signs of damage from the front. As soon as I ring the doorbell, Steph flings the door open and pulls me inside with the rain trailing after me and a puddle around my feet.
“It’s this way,” she says after brief hellos. She takes me to the screened-in rear porch. From there, I see the branches of a tree hanging off the back corner of the house. “We were lucky to make it through the last hurricane with those branches overhanging the house. It was only a matter of time.”
“Evan kept saying he’d come trim them back.” Alana steps onto the porch with an armful of wet towels. “But of course he forgot.”
Steph glances at her. “Maybe toss those in the dryer so we can have something to put down when the others soak through?”
Alana sighs. “Hope no one wanted a shower tonight.”
“Give me a hand outside,” I say to them. “First thing, we’ve got to get on the roof and pull those branches off. With the wind and everything, leaving them up there could make it worse.”
“What?” Steph looks at me, aghast. “You’re not going out there?”
“What’d you expect?” I give a wry laugh. “You weren’t calling Cooper for more towels.”
“But it’s dangerous. There’s lightning.”
Steph has a point, of course. The alternative is flooding their whole house and ending up with a massive hole in their roof. Anyway, I spent three years of high school on the stagecraft crew with the drama department. I can be pretty handy when I need to be.