Chapter 9: The Countdown
Three days felt like three weeks and three minutes at once.
I'd learned, after the pipe incident, to pace myself. The rapid skill acquisition wasn't unlimited—push too hard, try to absorb too much, and the information blurred together like watercolors in rain. Headaches followed. Then confusion. Then mistakes that cost more than the learning was worth.
So I slowed down.
Mornings at the motel, working through the repair list one item at a time. Afternoons exploring the town, talking to people, filing away every interaction with the perfect clarity my memory provided. Evenings in the barn, resting a brain that had been running too hot.
Three skills at once, I figured. That's the limit. Maybe four if they're related.
Electrical work, plumbing, and basic carpentry could coexist in my head without bleeding together. Add accounting or negotiation or anything too abstract, and the system started to glitch.
Good to know.
Bob came on day two, as promised. He moved through the motel with the unhurried competence I'd noticed at his garage—checking the heating system, examining the cracked pipe, making notes in a little book that looked like it had been with him for decades.
"Good bones," he said, surveying the building. "Needs work, but the structure's sound."
"Can you fix the pipe?"
"Already did." He showed me the repair—cleaner than anything I could have managed, the kind of work that came from forty years of practice. "You were close to the right technique. Just forced it."
"I know."
He studied me with eyes that had seen a lot of people try and fail at things they weren't ready for.
"Patience isn't the same as giving up. You can push hard and still take time. Most people don't learn that."
I nodded, filing the advice alongside everything else.
"Thanks, Bob."
"Thank Stevie. She's the one paying the bill."
He left with a handshake and a promise to return if the heating system gave trouble. I watched his truck pull away and thought about what he'd said.
Patience isn't the same as giving up.
Maybe that applied to more than plumbing.
Day four brought Ray Butani.
I needed supplies for the motel—light bulbs, weatherstripping, caulk—and someone had mentioned Ray's office was the closest thing Schitt's Creek had to a general store. When I walked in, I understood why people said it with a mixture of affection and bewilderment.
The office was chaos incarnate. Travel agency desk pressed against photography studio lights pressed against real estate filing cabinets pressed against what looked like a small insurance processing station. Signs advertised six different businesses, all apparently run by the same man from the same cramped space.
Ray himself sat at a desk that held at least three laptops and a stack of papers that defied gravity.
"Mutt! Welcome, welcome. What can I help you with today? Travel? Photography? I have some very nice portrait packages—"
"Supplies. For the motel."
"Oh! Yes, yes. I have a small inventory of building materials in the back. Let me just—" He shuffled through papers, knocking over a pen cup, catching it before it fell. "Here we go. What do you need?"
I gave him the list. He disappeared into a back room that somehow existed despite the apparent lack of space, returning with boxes that contained most of what I'd asked for.
"I also have these." He held up a promotional flyer. "Tourism initiative materials. I pitched it to the council last month, but you know how that goes."
"They didn't approve it?"
"They didn't approve or reject. They just—" He made a vague gesture. "Talked about it until everyone forgot what we were talking about."
Sounds about right.
I took the flyer anyway. The ideas were actually decent—local attractions, seasonal events, partnerships with businesses in nearby towns. Ray had vision; he just lacked the focus to execute any single thing well.
Another file. Another pattern.
"If you need anything else, let me know." Ray beamed. "I'm thinking of adding a handyman referral service. You could be my first listing."
"I'll consider it."
The supplies fit in the truck bed with room to spare. As I drove back to the motel, I thought about Ray's scattered competence. Six businesses, none of them thriving, but none of them failing either. Marginal functionality across a dozen domains.
Like the town itself.
Everyone here had skills. Bob's mechanical expertise. Ray's entrepreneurial energy. Ronnie's practical leadership. Twyla's quiet perceptiveness. Even Roland, for all his bluster, understood local politics in ways that mattered.
The problem wasn't capability. The problem was direction. No one coordinating, no one pushing, no one willing to believe that coordination and pushing could produce results.
That's what the Roses bring. That's why everything changes when they arrive.
Not their money—they wouldn't have any. Not their connections—those were gone. Just their expectation that things should be better, that improvement was possible, that settling for decay wasn't the only option.
Three days, I thought. Three days until they get here.
The countdown pressed against my chest like a physical weight.
Day five, I overextended again.
Electrical work had been going well—I'd replaced three outlets and a light fixture without incident. Plumbing remained cautious after the pipe disaster, but I was making progress. The mistake was adding accounting.
The motel's books were a mess. Stevie let me look at them after I asked twice, clearly expecting me to give up after five minutes. Instead, I dove in, trying to understand the patterns of income and expense that had led to the current state of decline.
Three hours later, my head was splitting.
The numbers swam on the page, mixing with repair techniques and wiring diagrams in a tangle that made no sense. I couldn't focus on any single concept without three others bleeding into it.
Saturation limit, I thought, recognizing the feeling from before. Too much, too fast.
I closed the laptop and sat with my eyes shut, waiting for the throbbing to subside.
"You okay?"
Stevie had appeared without my noticing. Dangerous—my awareness usually tracked everyone in range. The overload had compromised even that.
"Headache. Probably need to eat."
"There's leftover pizza in the office fridge. From last week, but probably still edible."
"Tempting."
She didn't leave. Just leaned against the doorframe, watching me with an expression I couldn't read through the pain.
"You're pushing yourself pretty hard," she said. "For someone who used to be famous for not pushing at all."
"Maybe I'm making up for lost time."
"Or maybe you're trying to prove something."
Or maybe I'm preparing for a timeline only I know is coming, building skills and relationships as fast as possible before the main story starts.
"What would I be proving?"
"I don't know." She crossed her arms. "That's what bothers me."
The honesty surprised us both. Stevie didn't usually acknowledge being bothered by anything.
"I'm not trying to prove anything," I said. "I'm just... trying to be useful."
"Why?"
"Because useful is better than not useful."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer I have."
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she pushed off from the doorframe.
"Pizza's in the mini-fridge. Middle shelf. Don't blame me if it's gone bad."
She left before I could respond.
Day six, I went to Café Tropical.
The headache from yesterday had faded, but I was being careful now—keeping my skill focus narrow, giving my brain time to consolidate what it had learned. The café felt like a safe space for recovery. Quiet, familiar, populated by people I didn't need to impress.
Twyla greeted me with her usual warmth.
"Mutt. Coffee?"
"Please."
I took my usual seat by the window and watched the street while she poured. The morning was gray but not unpleasant. A few cars passed. Someone walked a dog that looked almost as tired as I felt.
"How's the project going?" Twyla asked, setting down my cup.
I blinked. "Project?"
"The motel." She smiled. "Small town. Everyone knows."
Of course they do.
"It's going. Slowly."
"Slow is okay. My grandmother used to say fast growth has shallow roots."
The phrase landed harder than she probably intended. Roots. Stevie's grandmother's garden. The motel that needed both.
"Your grandmother sounds wise."
"She was." Twyla's smile had a nostalgic quality. "Lots of people around here are wise. They just don't always show it."
Like you, I thought. Like the lottery money no one knows about. Like the perceptiveness hidden under optimism.
"Thanks, Twyla."
"For what?"
"For being observant."
She looked surprised, then pleased. "Most people don't notice."
"Most people aren't paying attention."
She went back to work, but I caught her glancing my way twice more before I finished my coffee. Something had shifted—a recognition, maybe, that I saw her differently than others did.
File that away. Useful later.
The final day before the Roses arrived, I rested.
The barn was cold, as always, but I'd found extra blankets in the storage loft and created a nest that was almost comfortable. I lay there watching light change on the ceiling, thinking about everything I knew and everything I didn't.
The Roses would arrive tomorrow. Johnny, Moira, David, Alexis—four broken people who would, over six seasons, rebuild themselves and this town in the process. I knew their arcs, their struggles, their eventual triumphs.
But I also knew that my presence changed things. Butterfly effects. Ripples from every conversation I'd had, every repair I'd made, every relationship I'd started building. The future I remembered wasn't guaranteed anymore.
Good, I thought. That's the point.
I wasn't here to watch the story happen. I was here to make it better.
The headache from my overextension had left behind a strange clarity. I could feel the limits of my abilities now—the saturation point, the recovery time, the way focus and practice mattered more than raw absorption. Still powerful, still uncanny, but bounded.
Constraints make creativity possible.
I slept twelve hours that night. The dreams were tangled—faces and names and repair techniques bleeding together in a kaleidoscope of learned information. When I woke, the sun was high and the day felt different.
Today's the day.
Somewhere, a family was packing their last belongings, leaving behind a mansion for two motel rooms. Somewhere, four people were about to have their lives redefined by loss.
And somewhere in Schitt's Creek, I was already waiting.
I got up, made terrible coffee, and headed for the motel. Whatever happened next, I wanted to be ready.
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