2. Brooks
Brooks
“Visitors often report feeling ‘unexpectedly calm’
within the first hour.”
— The Guide to Suncrest Hollow
The mornings in Suncrest Hollow are meant to be quiet.
They’re meant for the crisp sound of chickadees, the low rustle of wind through the ancient valley oaks, and the steady, rhythmic thwack of a hammer meeting a fresh cedar fence post.
They are absolutely, unequivocally not meant for the shrieking mechanical protest of a rented U-Haul transmission that sounds like it’s being fed a steady diet of river gravel and pure malice.
I am halfway through replacing a rotting post along my eastern perimeter line—the property edge that sits just one hundred yards from my own front door—when the noise hits.
The sound is getting louder, closer, and suddenly a fifteen-foot U-Haul box truck comes lurching right up my gravel driveway.
It looks like it was recently driven through a glitter bomb factory.
Literally.
There is a fine, shimmering dusting of iridescent pink sparkles clinging to the side mirrors, coating the door handles, and swirling across the heavy layer of dust on the windshield.
Whoever is behind the wheel is currently wrestling the steering wheel, struggling to negotiate the wide, simple curve near my entry ditch.
I watch, my grip tightening around the handle of my hammer, as the massive truck swings entirely too wide.
CRUNCH.
My mailbox, which I spent three hours leveling, cementing, and securing just last Saturday afternoon, decides to abruptly embrace the earth. It folds over at a tragic forty-five-degree angle with a pathetic, metallic sigh, the wooden post snapping cleanly at the base.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I just stand there in my work boots, feeling my blood pressure do a slow, dangerous climb into the stratosphere.
Well. That’s just fucking perfect.
The truck finally rolls to a heavy stop a few feet past the wreckage.
The driver’s side door swings open with a violent creak, and out steps… a natural disaster.
She has a massive halo of wild, unruly blonde curls that look like they’ve never met a comb. She’s wearing baggy denim overalls over a gray t-shirt, and there is a massive white paint stain splashed right across the left thigh.
She hops down from the high cab, lands on the loose gravel with a surprisingly confident thud, and immediately starts scanning the property with her hands on her hips.
She doesn’t even check the side of the truck. She doesn’t look down at the mangled heap of metal beneath her rear tire. Instead, she turns her gaze to me, eyes the hammer in my hand, and beams.
She struts over to the carnage of my mailbox, tilts her head like a curious bird, and lightly taps the bent metal with the toe of a sturdy leather boot. Then she looks up at me, her wide eyes dancing with an absolute, hyperactive energy that instantly makes the bridge of my nose ache.
“Hey!” she chirps, waving a hand. “I’m Ember.
Well, Emmy. Literally nobody calls me Ember unless I’m in trouble, which, okay, technically I might be right now.
Are you the local handyman? I think I might have had a very minor, slight altercation with the mail station here.
Do you think you can fix it? I’m happy to pay for the parts, obviously. And the labor. I’m kinda rich.”
I blink at her.
“I know that’s a weird thing to say out loud,” she adds quickly. “My mom has been telling me to stop leading with it.”
I slowly lower my hammer, my knuckles turning a sharp shade of white against the grip.
She smiles wider. “So… are you a handyman?”
I take a slow, deep breath through my nose, trying to channel whatever patience I have left after a twenty-four-hour shift at the fire station.
“Handyman?” I repeat, my voice dry. “I’m not a handyman. I live right there.” I point a finger toward my house, easily visible through the thin line of trees. “And you aren’t on public property. This is my driveway.”
“Oh! Well, that explains why the GPS told me to make a sharp left into a bush. My bad!” She waves a dismissive hand toward the broken wood.
“You clearly know how to use a hammer, and I clearly don’t know how to reverse a fifteen-foot commercial vehicle.
Since you’re already here, you can help me unload, right?
It’s a win-win scenario. I’m moving into the Gilded Goat.
I just bought the place. I’m officially a woman of the soil. ”
I stare at her in dead silence.
The words I just bought the place bounce around my skull like a pinball.
I look past her shoulder, toward the dilapidated, overgrown money pit that has been blessedly empty for seven years since Arthur—the previous owner—moved to a smaller, a much easier to manage house.
The roof is half-rotted. The plumbing is a myth. And now, apparently, it belongs to a girl who looks like a walking art project.
And she is going to live just a hundred yards from my front porch.
Fuck this, I think. Fuck the previous owner’s real estate agent, and fuck my luck.
“You bought it,” I say flatly.
She nods so hard her curls bounce wildly around her face.
“I did! Impulse control is apparently not one of my gifts.” She beams, crossing her arms over her chest. “Confetti fell down my screen and everything. It was very official. What’s your name?
And more importantly, do you happen to have a Phillips-head screwdriver?
I think I left my entire toolkit on my kitchen counter in the city, which is like hours away. ”
“Brooks,” I say. “And no, I don’t have a screwdriver for you. I have a shift to schedule as the fire chief, a fence line to finish before the noon heat, and very little patience for people who use my infrastructure as a braking mechanism.”
She winces theatrically. “Ouch. You phrase things like a man who alphabetizes his canned goods.”
“I do alphabetize my canned goods.”
“That is somehow the least surprising thing I’ve heard all day.”
I sigh and turn back around, squaring my shoulders to the fence line and picking up a fresh cedar plank, hoping that if I ignore her with enough stoic intensity, she’ll simply evaporate back into whatever high-end boutique she crawled out of.
I can hear her boots crunching aggressively through the loose gravel.
She doesn’t take the hint.
Instead of backing her truck out, she marches back to the rear of the U-Haul, grabs the heavy metal roll-up door latch, and gives it a violent yank.
It doesn’t budge.
She tries again, throwing her entire body weight downward, then pulling upward. The metal tracks groan, completely jammed.
I keep my eyes on my work. Thwack. I drive a nail into the wood. Thwack.
From behind me, I hear her huffing, her breath catching in her throat as she strains against the metal.
A few seconds later, there’s a loud, echoing metallic clang followed by a frustrated, sharp, “Oh, for the absolute love of God, you stupid piece of shit—”
I shouldn’t look.
I know I shouldn’t look.
I’m the fire chief of this town. I have a five-year-old daughter to pick up from kindergarten later, a quiet life I have spent years meticulously stabilizing, and a strict policy against getting involved in self-inflicted urban disasters.
I don’t have the time, the energy, or the emotional bandwidth for a girl who treats rural agriculture like a whimsical weekend retreat.
But then I hear a heavy thud, followed by the sound of her boots sliding on the loose shale.
I close my eyes.
I hate my mother for raising me with a conscience.
I can already feel the headache forming behind my eyes, because I know exactly what I’m about to do, and I know I’m going to regret it.
I sigh, dropping my chin to my chest, and glance over my shoulder.
She has somehow managed to get the door open about two feet. Now, she is attempting to drag a massive, reinforced cardboard wardrobe box out of the narrow opening.
She’s straining violently, her face turning a deep, flushed shade of crimson that makes her blonde curls stand out even more.
“Hey!” I call out, taking a step toward her. “Stop. Leave it.”
Emmy snaps her head around, her chest heaving as she tries to catch her breath. “It’s fine! I can do it myself. I am a strong, independent woman. I just need to… find the right structural leverage point.”
She gives the box another desperate shove. Her right foot slips again on the gravel. She tilts precariously, her balance entirely gone, nearly taking the box down on top of her.
“Dammit,” I mutter, tossing the framing hammer into my leather tool belt with a heavy thud.
I drag a heavy hand over my face, letting out a long, exhausted breath. “Fine. Yeah. Stop moving before you break your spine. I can help you get the boxes inside.”
“Oh, looking for a tip already?” she asks, though she instantly steps back, looking immensely relieved as she wipes a stray curl out of her eyes with the back of a dirty hand.
I don’t say a word as I approach, which I consider an act of extreme neighborly mercy.
I step right into her personal space, gently but firmly nudging her to the side with my forearm. I reach into the truck bed, dig my gloved hands beneath the heavy plastic strapping of the wardrobe box, and hoist the entire thing out using one clean, practiced motion.
“Lead the way,” I mutter, holding the massive box against my chest. “Let’s get this over with.”
I follow her the short walk across the field, past the property line, and up the creaking wooden steps of the porch.
“Wow,” she says, walking backward. “That looked aggressively masculine. I mean, genuinely. You lifted that like it contained feathers.”
“It’s clothes.”
“How do you know?”
“It says wardrobe on the side,” I deadpan.
“Oh.” She pauses. “Right. God, you’re observant. That’s intimidating.”
The front door is already unlocked, hanging slightly askew on a rusted hinge. Emmy pushes it open with a dramatic flourish, stepping inside first.
“Welcome to the—”
She stops dead in her tracks. Her voice cuts off entirely.
I step in behind her, setting the heavy wardrobe box down on the floorboards with a dull thud, and take a look around.
I already knew what the inside looked like—everyone in Suncrest Hollow does—but seeing it through the eyes of a girl who expects a “grand estate” is almost pitiful.
The house is a complete fucking disaster.
Half of the wallpaper in the living room has peeled away from the plaster, hanging down in long, yellowed scrolls like dead skin.
There’s a visible water stain spreading across the ceiling in the shape of an oversized kidney, and a pile of dried leaves has swept into the corner of the hallway from a broken window pane near the back.
The hardwood floors are completely dull, covered in a gritty layer of grime, and a solitary, dead mouse is lying belly-up near the rusted wood stove.
I look down at Emmy.
For the first time since she ran over my mailbox, her blinding, manic smile completely dims. Her shoulders drop about two inches. She stares at the peeling wallpaper, her lips parting slightly in horror.
But then, she blinks.
She takes a sharp, deep breath, forces her shoulders back up, and slaps a fiercely determined, aggressive grin back onto her face.
It’s totally fake, but you have to admire the sheer grit of it.
Most people would cry. Or panic. Or quietly sit on the floor questioning every financial decision that led them here.
Instead, she squares her shoulders like she’s preparing to fistfight the entire house personally.
Insane behavior.
Slightly impressive.
Mostly insane.
“Wow,” she says, her voice a little higher than before. “It has… so much historic character! Look at that wallpaper. It’s practically an artifact. Vintage chic. And the ventilation in here is amazing, considering the window situation.”
“It’s a biohazard,” I say bluntly, turning around to head back to the truck.
“It’s called a rustic fixer-upper, Brooks,” she calls after me. “A little paint, some string lights, it’ll look like a boutique hotel.”
I don’t argue with her. I just keep walking back and forth between our two properties, my boots thudding against the floors.
I move, hauling in the rest of her heavy art history textbooks, three boxes labeled NEON SUPPLIES, and a massive garment bag that smells faintly of perfume and synthetic glitter.
Emmy stays inside, aggressively moving a broom she found in the closet, trying to sweep the dead leaves out of the hallway while humming a pop song entirely too loudly to drown out the sound of the house groaning around her.
Ten minutes later, the truck is empty.
I set the final box down near the staircase, my chest rising and falling slightly from the exertion. I pull off my heavy work gloves, tucking them into my tool belt.
“That’s the last of it,” I say, standing in the doorway.
Emmy stops her frantic sweeping, leaning on the broom handle. Her work boots are already covered in gray dust, and there’s a fresh streak of grime across her forehead, but she looks up at me with that sharp spark returning to her eyes.
“Well, thank you. I’d offer you a glass of water, but I don’t really have a glass. Next time, I’ll have the champagne ready.”
“Don’t count on a next time,” I say, stepping back out onto the porch. “Keep the truck out of my lane when you back it out. And don’t touch the electrical panel until someone checks the wiring, unless you want to see me show up here in a completely different uniform.”
“Understood,” she says, giving me a mock salute with the broom. “See you around, neighbor!”
I turn my back to her, descending the creaking porch steps and heading toward the gravel driveway where the glittering U-Haul sits.
As I walk back toward my own house, I can hear the rhythmic, desperate sound of her broom hitting the floorboards again.
The quiet, orderly life I had thirty minutes ago is officially dead.
I go back to my hammer, my mind already assessing the structural state of her roof and wondering how much a local contractor is going to charge her to fix that ceiling.
Behind me, I hear a loud crash from inside the house followed by Emmy shouting, “Okay, what is this shelf’s problem!”
I close my eyes for one long second.
I hate this.
I hate that I’m already invested.
I glance one last time at the Gilded Goat.
Something tells me today is just the first day of a very long, very exhausting, and very complicated season.
And God help me, I have a feeling I’m going to end up right in the middle of it.