Page 86 of First Bride to Fall
…
Nell limped back into the kitchen carrying the cleaning bucket and the mop. Scouring that tiny bathroom had been hard work, but it looked so much better now. It glistened.
She tightened the band on her ponytail holder, examining the cabin’s wood floors.
Those gleamed, too.
Embers glowed faintly in the woodstove.
Oh no. She’d totally forgotten to stoke it. Soon, it would be getting dark outside, which would mean Grant coming back. She hunted around near the hearth, but there was only one small log in the log holder. That wouldn’t be enough. At least there was more wood outside.
Nell put on her jacket and boots, discovering the right one fit on more easily. Even after all her moving around, her ankle appeared to be doing better. It was probably helpful that she’d sat on that step stool while doing a lot of her cleaning and that she’d been on her hands and knees while polishing the floors. She grumbled, knowing she could never tell her sisters about that.
She was glad Charlotte and Misty hadn’t shown up early and caught her cleaning house. They would have hustled her out of there so fast, but that was just because they didn’t understand what was going on. Nell did, though, which was why she was going out to grab that wood. She would not be dumping Grant Williams. Not today; not ever.
She ambled awkwardly out the back door and over to the woodpile on the far side of the fish-cleaning station, but none of the wood pieces were small enough to fit in the woodstove. They looked more like sections of a tree trunk that had been halved, some of them quartered. She spied a long-handled axe leaned up against the woodpile.
So that’s what he meant by a log splitter. O-kay.
It looked a little intimidating, but she’d always been the kind to learn by doing, and she wasn’t afraid to give this new task a try.
She scooted over to the log splitter and hoisted it into her hands. It was heavy, but she could wield it. Yeah. She could do this. It might actually be kind of fun.
She took a big chunk of wood and stood it on end.
Then she stepped back a bit and raised the log splitter.
Whoof!
She brought it down with awhack,and the log split in two.
Nell stared at it, amazed by her success.
Not only that, the action had felt good, empowering.
Hey. She was going to do it again.
And again.
And again.
Each time she split a log, she got better at it. The work also helped her take out some of her frustrations. And she had a few minor ones, if she was being honest.
Cleaning the bathroom hadn’t exactly been a joy, for example.
Whack.
The floor polishing had made her knees and back ache, too.
Whack.
There’d be no Thanksgiving turkey in her future—ever?
She couldn’t exactly blame Grant about Robby.
Wait.
She recalled his pasted-on pout.
