He sounded very official. It made her feel self-conscious. She’d woken up on a couch in front of this man, and she still felt fuzzy and unsure, while he stood there looking like a recruitment ad for heroic park rangers who had to rescue idiots stranded in the snow.
“Well,” Leah said awkwardly. “Well, thank you. Again. I’m sorry to have been so much trouble, I just...my car...”
Her car. She had no idea what was wrong with it, and they’d run into a tree. The window was broken, and probably there was some other damage in the rear, besides whatever was wrong with the engine.
She was going to have to get it fixed, but she had no money, and no way of getting any money anytime soon. And even if she were willing to ask, she knew her mom wouldn’t have several hundred dollars on hand to just give Leah for car repair.
What was she going to do?
That’s not your problem right now, she told herself firmly. That was a problem for tomorrow, or the next day. Focus on the positive. Right now, she was alive, Emily was alive, and they were in a cabin with a warm fire going and a park ranger to help them stay alive until they could get to a town and figure out their next move.
“I saw your car,” the ranger—Jeff—was saying. “Looks like it skidded down that hill and ran into a tree?”
Leah nodded, shying away from the memory. “It’s a miracle Emily wasn’t hurt. If that branch had come in the other window...” She shuddered at the thought.
It looked like Jeff shuddered too, although it was hard to tell under his bulky clothes. “Thank God it didn’t. She looks just fine. You did a great job of keeping her warm.”
“Thank you.” Leah looked down at her sleeping baby. “I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep going, and then she’d just...” She blinked hard.
“Hey, hey.” Jeff’s voice was gentle, and Leah looked up to see him leaning over her, watching with concern in those strangely familiar gray eyes. “You did the absolute best you could, and it turned out fine. Here we are.”
“Where is here, exactly?” Leah looked around the cabin. “Is this a...ranger station?”
Jeff winced. “Actually, it isn’t. We aren’t in the park, so there aren’t any stations nearby. No, this is just some poor folks’ vacation cabin that I broke into to get us out of the cold.”
Leah stared at him. “You broke in?”
“There’s no way to get back to town until the storm stops,” Jeff explained. “You were too cold to go far, and with the baby to consider...it was the only option. I’ll call the owners once we’re back and explain the situation, and pay for the lock. They’ll understand. Everyone out here knows what can happen in the wintertime.”
“I suppose so,” Leah said dubiously. “But...I should pay for the lock, since I was the one who needed help.”
Jeff shook his head firmly. “Nope. You didn’t make any decisions to break and enter. Besides, it’s possible that the rangers will pay for it, since it was a rescue. We’ll have to see.”
Well, if the rangers might take care of it...that was probably all right. And it wasn’t like she had the money to follow through on any payments, so stepping forward to take responsibility wasn’t even meaningful.
Not your problem right now, she reminded herself. There were other problems to deal with first.
If there was one thing you learned as a single mom, after all, it was that you had to tackle problems as they showed up. Future problems needed to wait their turn.
So: they had shelter. There was a fire. For now, anyway. “How much wood is there for that? Are we going to be able to stay warm overnight?” Leah craned her neck to try and see if there was a big stack. She only saw a couple of logs.
Jeff followed her gaze. “I’m going to go chop some more as soon as I’m sure you’re okay. How are you feeling? Are you still cold?”
He looked back at her, his gray eyes assessing, and she was suddenly intensely self-conscious. She wanted to say I’m just fine and be done, but it would’ve been a lie. She was still frigid. The fire must not have been going very long, because the air in the cabin was freezing. But at least there wasn’t any wind or snow. “Pretty cold. It’s mostly my hands and feet.”
Her feet were bare, she realized all of a sudden. Her boots and socks had been set neatly to one side. Her toes were still numb, not even tingling with the heat of the fire, and although her feet were red, her toes were bone-white.
She could remember reading something about skin turning white...“Is that frostbite?” she asked, a chill running through her.
“The very earliest stages of it.” Jeff’s voice was professionally reassuring. “Sometimes it’s called frostnip. It’s not serious, especially if you know how to treat it. We’re in plenty of time, so don’t worry.”
“How do you treat it? Emily doesn’t have any, does she?” Leah looked down at Emily’s face, but she was pink-cheeked and content in sleep. Her fingers were a little chilly, but not freezing cold or stiff, and they were a healthy color. When Leah tugged off her little booties and socks, her toes seemed normal.
“Emily looks completely fine.” Jeff reached down and tugged
at her toes, almost playfully. “See? Plenty of bloodflow here. The best way to treat frostnip is to immerse the body part—your feet, in this case—in warm water. Not too hot.”
“Do we have warm water?” Leah looked around. Craning her neck, she could see a sink and a stovetop behind her, on the opposite side of the big room they were in.