The Goat Next Door

1. Ember

Ember

“If you think this is bad,

you should see what I almost did instead.”

— Ember

The bank’s secure portal is judging me.

Or at least, that’s how it feels.

It’s sitting there on my laptop screen like a smug little rectangle of financial superiority, glowing bright white against the chaos of my studio apartment while casually displaying a number that has completely destroyed my ability to think like a normal human being.

$12,412,400.00

I keep expecting the number to update into something more reasonable.

Like $12,412. Or $12. Or “oops.”

A week ago, I was roughly forty-eight hours away from committing suicide by sheer corporate boredom.

My daily routine consisted of staring at logo guidelines for a dental insurance firm, drinking lukewarm office coffee, and listening to my boss, Marcus, tell me that my shades of blue weren’t “disruptive enough.”

Being a graphic designer for a PR firm meant working for men who didn’t know the difference between navy and midnight, yet wanted women to do all the heavy lifting only to take the credit for themselves.

I eventually quit, convinced I could reclaim my creative soul through freelancing.

It turned out, however, that the industry was just as soul-crushing on my own, and I ended up tethered to Marcus anyway, freelancing as a sub-contractor for his firm because it was the only way to pay rent.

It was a suffocating cycle of being underpaid and micromanaged by a man who couldn’t even pick a decent font.

Now, I have exactly twelve million reasons to never care about decent fonts ever again.

The wire transfer landed three hours ago, right after a painfully long conference call with the state lottery’s legal team.

The entire thing sounded like it had been narrated by people who ironed their socks for fun. They said life-changing words like asset distribution, verification process, and financial discretion in the exact same tone people use to explain printer maintenance.

During the call, I kept nodding even though they couldn’t see me, like that would somehow make me sound more financially responsible.

I even said “indubitably” at one point, a word I have never used in my entire life and one I instantly regretted.

I spent the entire forty-five minutes sitting cross-legged on my floor, staring at a grease stain on my kitchen wall and wondering if I was having a very specific, stress-induced stroke.

But the money is real.

It’s there.

If I hit refresh, the numbers don’t move. They don’t vanish. They just blink back at me, heavy and concrete.

I’ve checked twenty times.

My first instinct is that someone is going to knock on my door and politely ask for it back. Like I’ve accidentally stolen it by thinking about it too hard.

I briefly consider Googling “can money be a hallucination caused by burnout,” which feels medically plausible given my last years of employment.

My apartment, unfortunately, hasn’t caught the memo that I’m suddenly rich.

Wealth, it turns out, doesn’t spontaneously scrub your baseboards.

There is a towering laundry mountain in the corner, design proofs are scattered across the floor, and a mug containing half a cup of cold, graying coffee is sitting on the edge of my table. A thin, oily film has formed over the top of the liquid. It looks toxic.

I am wearing an oversized university sweatshirt that smells faintly of old popcorn and black leggings with permanent white acrylic paint stains.

And according to a brief, horrifying glance in the bathroom mirror, there is a streak of charcoal smudged across my left cheekbone from a sketchpad session three days ago.

Apparently, becoming an overnight multi-millionaire doesn’t automatically make you less of a disaster.

Disappointing, honestly.

I always assumed wealth came with immediate improvements to one’s posture and a sudden, natural affinity for linen trousers.

So much for the instant transformation into a chic, poised heiress.

I’m still just Emmy: disorganized, covered in graphite, and breathing through my mouth because my nose is clogged from dust.

You know that phrase people always post on social media? “If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t tell anyone, but there would be signs.”

Yeah, I used to not believe that.

I had a whole blueprint mapped out in my head for the exact moment those millions hit my account.

I was going to be predictable.

I was going to buy a ridiculously oversized pink house, the kind that looks like a Malibu Barbie dream home threw up on a suburban cul-de-sac.

I was finally going to buy those ridiculously overpriced, cloud-soft sweatpants I’ve had bookmarked for three years—the ones made from the underbelly wool of ethically sourced Himalayan mountain goats.

And I was going to spend my days lounging on a velvet sofa doing absolutely nothing.

It was a good plan. It was a normal, sane person’s plan.

Instead, I have clearly lost my mind.

There are no pink houses in my browser history. There are no luxury sweats in my shopping cart. The money is there, sitting in my bank account like a ticking time bomb, and my brain has apparently decided to short-circuit in the most bizarre way possible.

Right now, the only actual sign of my massive, life-altering windfall is the fact that I’ve spent the last forty minutes staring at a listing for a goat farm.

I am not looking at mansions; I am looking at exactly twelve goats.

Twelve.

I don’t even know what you call a group of goats—a herd? A crew? A chaotic syndicate?

But according to the description, they are all included in the sale, and for some terrifying reason, my newly wealthy brain is whispering that this is my true, glorious destiny.

Marcus would probably lose his mind if he saw me trading in my stylus for a pitchfork, which honestly only makes the idea feel more reasonable by the second.

I can already picture his face, his small, beady eyes blinking in horror as I explain that I am leaving the graphic design industry to become a goat owner.

The goat farm is in a town called Suncrest Hollow.

I don’t even know where that is, really.

The listing features a sprawling, slightly crooked historic farmhouse with a wraparound porch that needs some serious structural affection, surrounded by twenty-five acres of wild, unruly, beautifully un-gentrified grass.

My phone vibrates against my thigh, the sudden buzz making me jump so hard I nearly knock over the cold coffee.

It’s Mom.

I slide the bar to answer. Before I can even clear my throat, her voice is already halfway through a sentence.

“—mber? Emmy? Is it in there? Your father is literally trying to put on a tie right now, I’m not kidding, he’s shaking so bad he almost choked himself. Is it actually there?”

I let out a shaky breath, pulling my knees tight against my chest. “Yeah. Yeah, Mom. It’s… it’s in the account. I’ve just been staring at it. I thought if I closed the tab it would disappear.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god, Emmy. Don’t close anything!

Leave it exactly like it is. Oh, wow. Okay.

Okay, let’s—we need to think. What are we doing?

I’ve already got a list. We need to find you a place.

Something with security, obviously. A penthouse, maybe?

One of those ones with the elevators that open right into the hallway?

We have to get you out of that shoebox, sweetie. ”

“Mom, wait, slow down,” I say, dragging the laptop across the linoleum until it hits my shins. “I’m actually looking at places right now. On Zillow.”

“Oh, good! Let me see, text me the link. Is it the high-rise near the river? I always liked that one with the blue glass.”

“No, it’s… well. It’s up north. Near the county line. I think I’m going to buy a farm.”

Silence.

Absolute, dead silence.

It lasts long enough that I check the screen to make sure the call didn’t drop.

“…A farm?” she says. Her tone has shifted completely from lottery euphoria to the quiet, careful voice she uses when I tell her I’m going to give myself bangs. “Emmy, honey. You killed a cactus.”

I huff, immediately defensive. “That cactus was incredibly dramatic, Mom.”

“You didn’t water it for four months.”

“It was a desert plant! It was supposed to be independent. It made its own lifestyle choices.”

“It turned into a black crusty fist, Emmy. It looked scary.” She sighs. “A farm? What are you going to do on a farm? You don’t even like dirt. You complain when the park has too many bugs.”

“It has goats,” I say, staring at the screen. “Twelve of them. And this really pretty farmhouse with a porch. I’m just… I’m tired of the city. I want to walk outside and not smell the dumpster behind the Thai place.”

“But what about… everything else?” Her voice rises a little, genuinely distressed now.

“The shopping? The restaurants? You love that little coffee shop with the lavender syrup. Can you even get lavender in a barn? Emmy, you have a five-foot neon flamingo in your bedroom. Where is that going to go? In a tool shed?”

“I’ll put it in the barn,” I say, a small grin starting to break through. “I’m going to paint the barn doors neon magenta, Mom. It’s going to be great. High-fashion agriculture. I’ll buy sequined halters for the goats. It’ll be a whole brand.”

Another pause.

“You’re serious,” she says, her voice dropping into a flat, quiet realization. “You’re actually going to do this.”

“I’m looking at the ‘contact agent’ button right now.”

She lets out a breath that sounds half like a groan and half like a laugh.

“Oh, boy. Okay. Alright, well… if you’re going to be a goat person, we need to do it right.

You’re going to need real boots. Not those flimsy ones with the rhinestones you bought last winter, Emmy, real ones.

And what do goats even eat? Do they just eat grass?

Let me call your aunt Sarah, her neighbor used to have a llama, maybe it’s the same thing. ”

“Mom, please don’t call Aunt Sarah yet,” I laugh, my stomach tightening with a mix of relief and nerves. “You don’t need to become a livestock expert by lunchtime.”