Excerpt: Cross Lake

"You know, I'm thinking your furniture is a little too...Ethan Allen for this house," Quinn commented as she surveyed the living room. The movers had delivered and arranged everything from Ellie's Columbus house on the previous day. The deep white sofa, with its curved back and wealth of black and white scroll patterned throw pillows, dominated the room. Between the ottomans that matched the roomy chairs, and the stone topped nesting coffee table, there was scarcely any floor space to walk on.

"I think it's fine," Ellie said, sounding a little wounded. She'd chosen this furniture with Tony, only a couple of years ago, and she still loved it. Sure, the room was smaller than their living room at home, but it made things look...cleaner. And more current.

"I think the house is a little too Walton's Mountain for our furniture," Julia snarked. She'd been spending most of her time arranging her furniture and nicknacks, and talking on her phone, but she occasionally put in an appearance to offer a derogatory opinion, or just be generally whiny.

"That's ridiculous. The Waltons lived in West Virginia," Ellie replied, determined not to stoop to her daughter's level.

"And we might as well," Julia replied. "I need a hammer."

Quinn didn't even ask, but dug in a nearby tool box, and handed it to her. "Don't take out any walls," she said.

Julia tossed her dark blond ponytail, and went back upstairs with the tool.

"She's being a huge bitch," Quinn said.

"She's very unhappy with me," Ellie replied, frowning. "She's taking this move really hard."

"Well, have you told her she'd have been living in a one bedroom apartment and riding a secondhand bike to public school in east Columbus, if you guys had stayed?" Quinn asked. Already, she had no patience with what she thought of as her niece's privileged and spoiled attitude.

Ellie shrugged. "More or less. She doesn't care. She would've been the star striker on CSG's volleyball team this year. She thinks being here is like starting over from scratch, or worse."

"Well, she needs to put on her big girl panties and deal with it. We all have to cope with shit," Quinn said. "Like me having to cope with your giant couch and fourteen ottomans."

"Oh, my God, will you stop?" Ellie was getting even more tired of her sister's constant commentary. "Let's move everything to the center of the room, cover it, and paint in here. It's dingy."

"Good, something we agree on," Quinn replied. "I'm going to go see if I can't fix that leak in the upstairs bathroom. Then we can go into town and pick out some paint. I'm thinking a nice Home Depot orange, because all your white-on-white is killing me."

Ellie mouthed a silent good riddance at Quinn as she went into the kitchen. So far, it was the homiest feeling room in the house. Lots of light poured in through the large windows, and the tall cabinets were already stocked with food. She was still in the process of unpacking all the dishes, but the pot rack that hung from the ceiling was full. She'd had to banish Peter and Cale from helping her uncrate the kitchen items after one too many glasses had been broken, but she could hear the boys outside.

It didn't feel like home yet, but it was getting there. She went into the pantry, which they had converted into a laundry room, and switched a load from washer to dryer. Everyday, mundane activities helped her feel like this was all normal, rather than a dream she was waiting to wake up from.

Maybe they could go to one of the many little roadside fruit stands in the area, after she and Quinn probably almost killed each other disagreeing about paint. Peaches fresh off the trees would help that, certainly. They could make cobbler. That is, if she could find her baking pans.

"Mom!" Peter's voice came to her as the screen door slammed extra loudly. "There's a boat! And old wooden boat, but it's a motorboat! Cale says he can drive it...can we take it out? If we're careful? We'll be careful..." he trailed off as something caught his eye. "Oh. I think maybe I broke the door."

"No, it wasn't you. Your Auntie Quinn knocked it off its hinges this morning, carrying some boxes in," Ellie replied. She hadn't even thought about the boat. The Lady of Spain was her Grandpa Mike's pride and joy, and had borne them on many an early morning fishing expedition. But based on the condition of the house, she wasn't willing to trust her son and nephew to the safety of the boat. "I'm probably going to make some lunch. Why don't you run out and tell Cale to come in. I don't think we'll be able to do anything with the boat right now."

"Aww, moommm!" Peter was not typically a whiner, but Julia seemed to have rubbed off on everyone the last few days. "We won't go far...we'll stay in sight of the shore. We'll..." he was interrupted by a clunk, and then a rushing water sound, accompanied by shouted curse words.

Seconds later, Quinn came barreling down the stairs. "Shit! I cracked off the old rusted pipe under the sink! Where's the shutoff valve for the house, El? Quick! Don't you remember?" The front of her jeans and t-shirt were soaking wet. "Don't you remember?"

"Mom!" Julia's voice shrieked from upstairs. "There's water all over the bathroom floor! It's flooding! And I need to take a shower!"

"Shutoff valve, right," Ellie said, casting her eyes around the kitchen. She knew it wasn't in there, or at least, she was pretty sure it wasn't. "In the basement!"

She and Quinn and Peter pounded down the stairs into the gloomy, unfinished basement. The spiderlike gravity furnace loomed in the center of the room, and Peter immediately looked apprehensive, but gamely helped with the search.

"Do you see it?"

"Try over there, by the old laundry sink!"

"No dice. I know it's here!"

"Here! Under the stairs!"

Quinn and Ellie both reached it at the same time, and wrenched the handle to the right as hard as they could. The sound of rushing water in the distance slowed, and then stopped.

"This means no water in the whole house," Ellie said as they went back upstairs.

"Excellent. So much for making any more progress today." Quinn flopped into a kitchen chair. "I'm generally pretty handy with stuff, but this place is beyond me. I give up."

Ellie sent Peter outside again, and grabbed herself and Quinn each a beer out of the refrigerator. "Maybe we should find a plumber," she said. "But I'm not even sure how to go about that. No yellow pages, and our internet doesn't get turned on for another couple of days. We're totally stranded."

Quinn nodded, and took a long swallow of her beer, absently peeling her t shirt away from her front. Then she sat straight up. "I met this guy in town, the other day," she said. "Said he does odd jobs, handyman stuff. He gave me his card." She got up to find her bag. When she came back a few minutes later, she was holding the card between fore and middle finger, looking at it. "Charlie Sandover. Ring any bells?"

"No. But he sounds like our best option." Ellie sat in the chair Quinn had vacated. "Call him up. If he doesn't do plumbing, hopefully he knows someone who can."

Quinn punched up Charlie's number, and when no one answered, left a voicemail. She was dejectedly nursing her beer when her phone buzzed in her hand.

"Quinn? This is Charlie," his deep voice said. "I got your message. What sort of problem are you having?"

"I should tell you what sort of problems we aren't having; this would be a faster conversation," Quinn replied. "We've got about fifty instances of rotten wood and cracked plaster. And my latest masterpiece includes Little Cross Lake, which is now located in our upstairs bathroom."

Charlie chuckled, a warm sound. "How about I swing by there?" he asked.

"I like the way you think," Quinn replied. "And my sister will even make you lunch."

He laughed again. "Hopefully she's a better cook than you are a plumber."

"No doubt about it. See you in a bit," she replied, and hung up. "He's on his way," she told Ellie.

"You offered him lunch? You like this guy?"

"Hardly," Quinn tossed over her shoulder as she went upstairs to change into dry clothes. "I'm hoping maybe it'll convince him to knock something off the bill. So be generous. Make roast beef sandwiches. He looks like the kind of guy who expects lots of meat, or something."

*

Charlie Sandover took a few seconds to enter Quinn Cleary's number into his phone's directory.

"Who was that, Carlito?" Isabel Peña continued wiping down the bar in El Indio Ristorante. "You get another job?"

Charlie looked up. "That was Quinn Cleary," he said.

Izzie's head snapped up as she pinned him with sharp black eyes. "Mi Dios. ¿Ellos están realmente aquí?" she practically whispered.

"Yep, they're really here. Quinn, and her sister Ellie. Eleanor, I think, is her full name. And their kids." Charlie looked up at Izzie, who was just standing there, the wet dish cloth hanging from her fingers. "They moved into Mike and Mace's house. And they need some work done."

"Ay, nino...you get your ass down there right away then, entiende?" Izzie, a short, wiry Mexican woman in her early fifties, threw the cloth at a bin behind the bar. "No, actually...you just wait. I'm gonna send you with some food for them. Kind of like a little welcome, no?" She rattled off a list to herself in rapid fire Spanish. "Good thing I had Hector get those imported habaneros!"

"Izzie...you sure they're going to be able to handle your specials, made with 100 percent fire roasted habanero peppers? These people are from Ohio, or Washington, or something. They won't recover for weeks from your five-alarm burritos rasas!"

Izzie tossed her curly head and made a psshh sound. "These girls, they're Clearys. No problemo."

"You've never even met them, Iz. What makes you think they're the right ones for the job?"

"Carlito. You know how it is. The job, you don't choose it. It chooses you."

Charlie shook his head, ever skeptical. He was slow to make judgements about such things. From his first and only meeting with Quinn Cleary, he knew she was direct and practical, and that she had a fatherless son who was very protective of her. And he'd not met Eleanor thus far at all. It wasn't a lot to go on. "I know all that. Mike told me all about it, before he passed."

Izzie crossed herself at the mention of Michael Finnegan Cleary. "The Cleary girls are back for a reason. They know. They may not know they know...but they know. Hector!" she bellowed, her raspy voice carrying into the kitchen. "Arregle cinco del tren especial de hoy!"

Charlie cringed a little. He hoped, for the sake of Quinn and her family, that today's special was indeed not the five alarm burritos rasas. "At any rate, it sounds like they need me to go fix a sink, and maybe I'll get some other work out of it, as well."

Izzie nodded, listening. She rummaged under the bar and came up with a wooden box. She opened it, and arranged a few things on the high counter. Red thread, some sprigs of various herbs, a black candle, a white candle. A small vial of liquid. And a crucifix. "I wish I had known, I'd have made some things up ahead of time," she muttered. Then she looked up at him. "Make sure you take the time to check the property, Carlito. See if the old protections are still in place. If they are not..."

"If they're not, I'll redo the spells," Charlie assured her. "Don't worry, Iz. Nothing will happen to the Clearys before they can figure out if they know...what they know, or whatever. Dang, you make it so confusing." He watched Izzie's blunt-nailed fingers moving dextrously, weaving small figurines of the herb sprigs, and tying them with red thread.

After a couple of minutes, she held one up; a little mannequin of sticks and string. "Do you think you can get one of these into each of their rooms?" she asked. "It would be better if they carried them on their persons, but, I can't expect too much..." abruptly she set the little figurine down again, passed the crucifix over it once, mumbling, and then unstoppered the vial, and let a droplet fall on it. A sharp, astringent fragrance rose and then dissipated.

"Iz. There's no reason to suspect the hive is even aware of them, yet. I'm not going snooping in their bedrooms. I'm just not."

Izzie snorted. "Some chamán you are, baby."

"At least I know what I know," Charlie quiipped back, as Izzie's brother Hector came out of the kitchen with a large brown paper bag. She was the business end, and he was the creative. The master chef of El Indio. He nodded at Charlie before shuffling back into the kitchen to keep preparing for the dinner hour.

"Gracias, Hector," Charlie said, taking the bag. "I'll let you know how it goes," he said to Izzie.

"You do that, Carlito," she replied, opening the large cooler behind the bar. She withdrew a six pack of Dos Equis, bagged it, and added it to his armful. "You do that."