Katie laughed. Lauren was his daughter and she was also recently engaged to Ryan Kowalski. Lauren and her teenage son, Nick, were in the process of preparing to move to Ryan’s home in Brookline, Mass, and there had been a lot of talk about paint samples. The house was beautiful as far as form, function and resale value, but it was very bland. Lauren had declared her first act as the future Mrs. Kowalski would be to “unbeige the place.”
“I stopped by Lauren’s a few days ago,” Katie said. “Looks like they’re almost ready to make the move.”
He nodded, but fortunately she saw that coming from experience and paused the snipping until he stopped moving his head. “Very soon. Nick will finish school here in a couple of weeks. They want to have a week to move in, and maybe he can familiarize himself with the neighborhood. Then they’ll come spend Christmas week here so Nick can be with his father and the little ones while Ryan and Lauren finish getting her house ready to sell.”
Katie moved to the other side of the chair, halfway done with the cut. “So Nick can start his new school with the new year, instead of starting and then having time off. Makes sense. How’s Mrs. Dozynski taking it?”
“She’s happy for our daughter, of course, but it will be hard for her. She doesn’t drive and Lauren helped her a lot. Now she’ll be nagging me even more to retire.”
Katie hoped not, though she didn’t say out loud. The hardware store ran on such a thin thread, Dozer didn’t even have hired help anymore. The only way he could retire was to close it, which would be heartbreaking and inconvenient, or sell it. There wasn’t much of a market for small-town hardware stores anymore. Not with the big-box stores springing up around them.
Before she could respond, the big black phone on the wall rang with a loud jangle. The thing was practically a relic, but she’d answered it when she was a little girl hanging around with her dad, and she couldn’t bring herself to replace it with something less alarming. “Just a second, Dozer. Don’t move.”
The phone rarely rang. The shop’s hours hadn’t changed in at least thirty years, so the only time anybody bothered to call was during the winter, when somebody might check to see if she was there during a snowstorm. Since she lived upstairs, she usually was.
“Barbershop.” She didn’t bother identifying herself. There had only ever been one barber at a time in Whitford. First her dad, then the idiot who’d “run” the business for her mom after her dad died, and then Katie as soon as she met the licensing requirements.
“Hey, it’s Josh.”
The little zing she’d been feeling at the sound of his voice since her body had reached zinging age was chased by a pang of anxiety. He never called her at the shop. “What’s up?”
“It’s not a wicked emergency or anything, but I’m taking your mom to the hospital.”
The pang of anxiety solidified into a knot of fear in her gut. “What’s wrong?”
“Same as last time, more or less. The cough’s gotten worse since yesterday and she’s got a fever. She won’t let me take her temperature, but it’s pretty obvious.”
“Is it bad enough for an ambulance?”
“No. She’s arguing with me, actually. Says she just needs to have some tea and lie down for a while, but I can tell from looking at her she feels like she did when we took her in before.”
Katie’s fingers tightened around the old-fashioned phone receiver. “So you think she has pneumonia again?”
“I’m not a doctor but, like I said, seems to be the same symptoms that got her that diagnosis last month.”
“Can you wait for me? I need maybe five minutes to finish this cut and then I’ll hang the sign and lock up.”
“Yeah. She’s still trying to convince me she doesn’t want to go, so we’ll be here debating the point for a while yet.”
“I’ll be there as quick as I can.”
She hung up and walked back to Dozer, but took a few seconds to calm herself before taking the scissors to his hair. The first bout with pneumonia had been scary enough, but her mom was a pretty healthy woman. Now if she had it again, it could be so much worse. Her immune system was still building itself back up and she hadn’t fully regained her strength.
“Is Rose sick again?”
Katie shook off her dread and made sure her hands weren’t shaking before lifting the scissors. “Maybe. Josh doesn’t like the sound of her cough and he says she has a fever, so we’re going to take her to the hospital to get checked.”
“I can have Pat finish this if you want to go.”
“I appreciate that, but I’m almost done.” And she’d seen what Pat Dozynski had done to his hair when the hardware store was busy and he hadn’t had a chance to get away while the barbershop was open.
Ten minutes later, Katie locked the door behind Dozer and used a dry-erase marker to write Gone Fishing on the bottom of the Closed sign before turning it around. She’d probably take less flack if she wrote Closed for Family Emergency, but that news would spread through Whitford like wildfire and concerned neighbors would descend upon them like torch-bearing villagers.
When she got to the lodge, she found her mom in the front room, still arguing with Josh.