Under the Hill(11)

“They do?” Having money in hand was an unusual situation for most historical societies.

“Yeah. The Society also owns the house across the street, which they rent out for income, and Gail told me that when they talked to a financial advisor he told them that they could take out a mortgage on the rental house, and voilà! They’d have the cash for the renovations. The rent gives them enough income to cover the mortgage payments. Once they figured out how much money they had to work with, then they started thinking about building plans.”

“I’m impressed. So, that’s the library and the Historical Society—are you finished yet?”

“Not quite. There’s also a school building that needs some serious work, and nobody can decide whether to try to fix it—with state money—or to tear it down and start over. So we put together a committee to study it, but there’s a deadline coming up shortly.”

I really am out of the loop, Meg thought. Of course, not having any children, she hadn’t paid much attention to school-related issues, but still. “Is that all?”

“Almost. This is off the record, but the town is also thinking about selling the town hall building.”

“What? I like that building!” Meg protested.

“It’s a lovely structure, but a lousy municipal building. It was built as a private summer home at the height of the Victorian era. The wiring isn’t up to code, so it’s hard to use computers and printers and the like.”

“Where would the town administration go? Is there some other building that would work? Or do they want to build, too?”

Seth shook his head. “Not clear. They might be able to move into the old library when the new one opens.”

“This really is a game of musical chairs, isn’t it?” Meg said. “Where do you stand on all of these? I mean, you’re a selectman, so in a sense, you are the town, or part of it.” Meg knew there were only three members on the select board, plus a town manager. Who voted to approve projects like these?

Seth leaned back in his chair and stretched. “Caught right in the middle. The library and the Historical Society have their own funding, so they don’t need our approval, apart from permitting and inspections and such. The school project does, and obviously selling town hall would. Theoretically, I’m in favor of all and any of these, as long as the financial numbers make sense and they meet all construction requirements—which could be challenging, at least for the Historical Society.”

“Are you going to be personally involved?” Meg asked. When she’d first met Seth, he’d been managing his family’s plumbing business, but his real love was building restoration and renovation. Although plumbing was a good fallback when no one could afford historically accurate renovations to their older homes.

“If I had my choice, I’d help out with the Historical Society project. It’s an interesting challenge, and I’d like to be sure they retain the historic character of the building. As you know as well as I do, when you start jerking around an old building, you always end up finding other things you need to fix, like rotting sills or termite damage. And if they’re putting in an HVAC system—which, by the way, would be a first in that building—there are issues of windows and insulation and making the building more airtight while still keeping it authentic, at least in appearance.”

“And you don’t have to vote on that project, so there’s no conflict,” Meg mused, almost to herself.

“Exactly. The library doesn’t need me, and the school project probably wouldn’t either. The town hall question is anybody’s guess. So that leaves the Historical Society. By the way, I pointed Gail toward an architect who specializes in this kind of project, so they’ve already got plans in hand.”

“Can it be done before winter?”

“It’s a tight schedule, but it could work, if everything goes well.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We seal it up as best we can and hope for a mild winter. At least the collections will be stored off-site.”

“Speaking of the collections, I know she’s got more documents about this house that I’d love to see, but I haven’t had the time. Maybe when the harvest is over.” Winter, Meg knew from last year—her first as an apple grower—was the slowest time for the orchard. She’d have some long days to fill.

“How’s the harvest going?”

Meg shrugged. “I don’t have a lot to compare it to other than last year, but Bree says we’re doing okay. We were lucky that the drought broke when it did. Another couple of weeks and we’d have lost a lot of apples.” Along with most of my very thin profit margin.

“Everything working out with the pickers?”

“So far. Most of the regulars are back, bless them, although we lost one to a competitor over in Belchertown who could offer a little more money, and there are fewer and fewer people who want to do this kind of manual labor.”

Meg was lucky that although she was new to running an orchard, the orchard itself was well established, and in recent years had been overseen by the local state university. Which was also how she’d come to employee Bree, a recent graduate of the university who’d studied orchard management. The fact that Bree was Jamaican-born also helped her in managing the mainly Jamaican pickers who had been working the orchards in the Connecticut River Valley for generations—at least it helped once they got used to the idea of working for a woman, and a young one at that, and one who’d spent most of her life actually living in Massachusetts rather than Jamaica. But Bree had earned their respect and things were going smoothly; the loss of that one picker was in no way her fault. “That’s why Bree and I are both up there most days, just to fill in. It’s hard to know in advance from week to week what’s going to be ripe, and sometimes we get swamped. Plus, it’s demanding work. Thank goodness the new trees we planted in the spring won’t be bearing for a couple more years. Maybe by then I’ll have figured out how this all works.”