Chapter 12 Gwen #2
“I’ve got a few things.” Her throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “But I didn’t have time to grab much.”
“Then we’ll circle back here and get you a couple bags full.”
Crossing the intersection, I gestured down the left of Second, past the rec center. There was another building down there. More like an insulated aluminum garage, really.
“On the right up there, we have the clinic. It’s not a hospital by any means, but if you ever go on a hike and take a nasty fall, that’s where you’ll want to go. We always have a nurse on staff, but she mostly just gives advice. Tells us whether or not we need to go to the hospital.”
“Yeah, Rhiannon showed me,” she said, quieter than anything else she had said so far. Before I could question why that might be, she gestured to the end of the street. A similar building stood tall across from the clinic. Also an aluminum building, but this one had a blue roof. “What’s that one?”
“That would be the garage,” I said. “Rhiannon and some of the maintenance guys store equipment in there. If you ever need to work on a car or something, Rhiannon will let you in. Let you borrow tools too.”
“No car yet, and no idea how to work on one,” Delilah said, a teasing edge to her voice. “But that’s cool. My dad always complained about having to work on cars out on the road. We never had a garage.”
Neither had I. “There’s an automotive class once a month at the rec center. They taught me how to change my oil and brake pads.”
Nibbling her bottom lip, tilted at the corner with a smile, she shook her head. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything here.”
“Give it a couple months, and you’ll never want to leave.” I gestured to the stone buildings on the left and right of Main Street. “No kids, right?”
“No. No kids.”
“Irrelevant to you then, but that’s the daycare.” I pointed to the building on the left.
It was one of the newer additions, constructed in the last ten years.
It was only two stories high, roughly the size of a small apartment building on the edge of a suburb.
Nothing special there either. Just stone block, a dozen or so windows wrapping around the front and sides, and an aluminum roof on the top.
“There’s a playground in the back too. On the edge of it, a nice walking trail takes you through the woods. If you follow it the whole way, you’ll come out by my cabin at the edge of the ranch.”
“You’re in one of those cabins at the front?”
“Closest one to the gate. Don’t be afraid to come knocking if you need something.” I hooked a thumb in gesture to the building we were passing on the right. “Any idea what that place is?”
It stood three stories tall, half the width of the daycare across the street. However, they were decorated the same way. A green aluminum roof, gray stone blocks, and a few dozen windows. Rather than the daycare’s metal door for the entrance, it had a set of double glass doors.
“Nope, but I bet you’re going to tell me.”
“That’s our gym,” I said. “Once you have your key card, you can go in or out whenever you’d like.
There’s everything in there. Treadmills, ellipticals, bikes, stepping machines.
Nights are my favorite time, because mostly everyone’s in bed by then.
The only thing is that you can’t go into the pool unless there’s a lifeguard on duty. Safety issue, you know?”
Blinking hard, Delilah huffed. “There’s an indoor pool?”
“No use in having an outdoor pool in Montana.” A few hundred strides ahead, a small gravel road led to the apartments on the left. “And back there is where you live. Do you need me to show you around that area too, or are you ready to head back to the closet?”
“I think I know how to get back home from here.”
That warmed my heart. The way she called it home. “Then to the closet, we go.”
I tapped my thigh to get Honey’s attention. She spun around with me, romping through the snow in the field between the gym and the cafeteria.
“And I can just grab clothes?” Delilah asked. “I don’t have to pay for them or anything?”
“Clothes, shoes, household items. It’s basically a thrift store. We all donate to it, and we all take from it. You don’t have to pay for anything.”
“Crazy,” she said under her breath. “All of this is so beautiful, but so crazy.”
“It won’t always feel that way,” I said, veering closer to the right side of the road, to head toward the rec center.
“I don’t know about you, but I grew up poor.
My ex made more than me, so the money was always more his than mine.
I had a couple hundred bucks to my name when I left, and even renting an apartment somewhere was just about out of the question.
I just didn’t make enough money. But all of us, over a thousand of us, live on this ranch because of the way Rhiannon set up a hell of an inheritance. And that’s all it took.”
Delilah cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“Some donor inherited a couple billion dollars, and they gave it to her. It’s been enough to keep this place running for a decade. And to help a lot of other charitable organizations. It just goes to show how far money can stretch when it’s in the right hands.”
“I didn’t think a billion could do all this.”
“A billion is a lot more than you might think,” I said. “A thousand million—that’s a billion.”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s just crazy to think about how hard I used to work for not even half of what everyone has here,” she said. “You know what I still don’t understand, though?”
Now at the rec center’s entrance, I held the door open for her. “What’s that?”
She stepped through, and I followed.
“How everybody just gets along,” she said.
Delilah glanced out the window, watching all the women walk past. Some were hand-in-hand, others pushed strollers beside one another.
One thing in common among them all, though, was the energy that radiated from them.
Everyone looked comfortable. Some happier than others, but no one would watch these women walk down the street and worry for them.
They were why the other night hadn’t been a mistake.
“With any group of girls I’ve been around,” she said, “there’s always so much drama.”
“There’s drama sometimes,” I replied. “Just like there is any time you put a large number of people together. But no one is fighting over each other’s man around here.”
She laughed. “I guess that’s fair.”
“And there’s just a different energy on the ranch.” Turning to face her, I raised my shoulders. “Out in the world, there’s so much stress. Here, we all know we’re safe.”
At least, we had been. Until the other night.
“No one’s worried about losing the roof over their head. There’s always food at the cafeteria if you’re hungry. We have access to therapy and doctors. There’s no other place like this. Maybe when everyone’s basic needs are met, there’s less to fight about.”
Ever so slightly, Delilah’s shoulders loosened, and she tilted her head to the side. I could practically see the light bulb flick on over her crown.
Still glancing out the window, she gave a slow nod. “Yeah. Maybe.”