lake and left this big half circle of brown as it stirred out to the middle of the lake. And that was exactly how the pickup truck with those poor people had ended up in the lake in that big crush of high water some years back.
This was nothing compared to that, but it was enough for her to have a reality check. She looked around and noted that, if the water kept rising like it was, she couldn’t take the creek route to Nan’s anymore.
She shook her head. “Who knew?”
Mugs scooted back a couple feet and sat beside her on her property but on the little bit of a hill area, so she could watch the water. Thankfully he missed sitting on the newly transplanted heather.
“It’s so beautiful but so deadly.” Just then she heard a voice from over Richard’s fence.
“Like all water,” the voice snapped.
But whose voice? His? His wife’s? Doreen was never sure who she was talking to when she had no face to put to the androgynous voice. Richard had said he was married and that his wife’s name was Sicily. Yet Doreen had never seen her. The mystery of Richard’s partner remained unsolved to date. But Doreen’s curiosity hadn’t dampened.
She stared at the fence. “Can you see? The creek is so high.”
“It’s not that high,” he/she said. “It’s not coming under my fence yet.”
She stopped and stared, thinking about that. “Does it normally get that high?”
“Not normally,” the voice said, “but I’ve certainly seen it happen a half-dozen times in the years I’ve been here.”
“I understand better now,” Doreen murmured. But then her neighbor’s fence was a little lower too. So maybe that made sense. “Well, I no longer have a fence, so I can see it while I sit here on my property.”
“You can watch it all you want, but it can get dangerous as all heck.”
“Wow,” Doreen said. “I’m really amazed.” The early morning sun was shining on the water that danced and gushed all the way down to the lake. “It’s incredible.” Branches floated by and even occasionally a whole tree. “There has to be thousands of gallons of water plugging through here.”
“Yes,” the neighbor said.
After that, there was no more conversation, as Doreen just sat and enjoyed herself. Finally her coffee cup was empty, so she turned and headed back to the house to get more. The ground itself seemed a little wetter, as if the water had soaked in through the ground overnight, reaching back toward the house.
The water was coming out of the hoses she had hooked up to the sump pump with Nan’s help. She stared in surprise to see just a trickle coming out, but it meant the pumps were working. She headed over and lifted one of the round wooden disks above the pump to see water on the inside.
Even as she watched, the pump activated, sending a gush of water that was in the little cistern out to the creek. She smiled. “Wow,” she said, “there’s more to this than I expected. Does everybody have pumps along here?”
But the neighbor didn’t answer. She figured that either he/she was down at the creekside or had gone into the house.
After the handcuff case scenario, it wasn’t like the neighbor was any friendlier. It was almost as if he/she had decided to blame Doreen for all that attention. But, so far, the media hadn’t heard about the pink satin handcuffs found in Richard’s front garden. Too bad. They could haunt him for a change.
She was still chuckling as she headed up to the deck and inside. She really should make a trip to the local jewelry store, get a receipt for all the jewels, and leave them for an appraiser, if it seemed okay with them. She grabbed the loose stones in the jewelry bag. She still wasn’t terribly comfortable with the whole appraisal thing. She also needed to go grocery shopping and might even come back with tarps, so Mack’s time off could be spent doing the stuff she didn’t know how to do.
It would take her a while to figure out the tarp thing and to pull the weeds. She wasn’t sure about getting rocks in just yet, as plenty of rocks were around her garden, and, of course, if she wanted to, she could always pick up a couple from her creek. There was probably some law or something against it, but, if she was careful and not too greedy, maybe the city wouldn’t mind