As Beautiful as the Bay by Serenity Woods

Author:Serenity Woods
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Alpha hero, holiday vacation rural, romantic comedy and humor, marriage wedding love friendship, dating relationships single women, family life sister beach, international Australia Pacific, baker bakery
Publisher: Serenity Woods
Published: 2017-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

They spent the rest of the day working. They took heaps of photos, then rolled up their sleeves and started clearing the debris. First, they did what they could in the house, as Sam wanted his father to be able to return home as soon as he could. They removed all the damp rugs and as much of the furniture as they could manage, storing it in the garage, which had luckily escaped the flow of the river. The carpet-drying company arrived late morning, and Sam left the two guys sucking up the worst of the water in their big vacuum cleaners while he set to work on the bakery.

He didn’t say anything to Piri or Ginger, but his heart felt heavy as he cleaned and carried the debris outside. This wasn’t going to be a simple matter of mopping up a few puddles and turning on a dryer for a few days. The whole bakery looked structurally unsound. The car that the river had carried must have been pinned lengthways across the window, because it had broken the wooden frame and taken with it half the bricks that surrounded it. Sam didn’t like to think of the force it had taken to do that. There was another hole on the other side of the bakery where the water had ripped away a section of pipework, taking part of the wall with it. And the shop was a complete mess, with a portion of the building missing along with the main counter.

No amount of tidying and clearing was going to get the bakery up and running again. The whole place was going to need to be rebuilt.

He wanted to just sit in a corner and put his head in his hands, but Ginger and Piri were like forces of nature, determined to help him put as much right as they could. Piri’s uncle was able to source several skips, which they set up outside the shops, and they began clearing the rubbish, removing broken pottery, damaged utensils, splintered wood, old bricks, and any equipment that was beyond repair, after taking photographs.

As the morning wore on, people began appearing, the community coming together to help clear up. All the owners of the surrounding shops were there, along with their families, and those who didn’t have damage to their buildings came to help the ones who had. Jace Hart, the lawyer, turned up with some friends, and around eleven, Mac, Fred, and Sandi arrived, along with another half a dozen people who worked at the vineyard.

Around lunchtime, someone set up a few tables outside, and people began bringing food—whatever they had in their shops or at home, to feed those who were working—pies, sandwiches, sausage rolls, fruit from the garden, even a lasagna, heated and served up on paper plates.

Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars of damage had been done, and some of the shops like Sam’s were ruined, but the mood was oddly upbeat on the most part, with the combined effort making everyone feel that if nothing else, at least they weren’t alone.

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