3. Ember #2
The instant the bell rings, the entire store goes dead silent.
It’s like a movie trope, but worse because it’s happening to me in real time.
There are three people in the aisle nearest the counter: a middle-aged woman holding a bottle of maple syrup, an older guy in a camouflage jacket looking at fishing lures, and a young guy behind the cash register with a name tag that says BILLY.
Every single one of them stops what they are doing and turns to stare at me.
Nobody smiles. Nobody says hello.
The woman with the maple syrup clutches the bottle tighter to her chest, as if I am about to steal her sugar reserves.
“Hi!” I say, my voice entirely too loud and cheerful for the room. “Good afternoon! Just doing some light moving-in shopping.”
Billy behind the counter blinks at me. He looks about nineteen, with a sparse mustache and an expression of pure skepticism. “You the one who bought that farm place?”
“The Gilded Goat, yes,” I say, stepping into the first aisle and grabbing a red plastic shopping basket. “I’m Emmy. Nice to meet you all.”
The guy in the camo jacket lets out a low, gravelly huff and turns back to his fishing lures, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like “city folk and their damn titles.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek, my bright coat of red lipstick feeling like a neon sign that says TARGET.
I walk down the aisle, trying to maintain my breezy confidence, but the atmosphere in here is thicker than the mold in my parlor.
I can feel their eyes tracking me through the gaps in the shelves. At this point I’m fairly certain there’s already a town Facebook group discussing me in real time. Every time my boots squeak against the floor, it sounds like an accusation.
And because I am a manic, over-compensating stress-shopper, I completely lose control.
I don’t just buy a loaf of bread and peanut butter.
I buy a massive, five-gallon jug of purified water because the thought of drinking from the shipwreck-spigot makes me want to die.
I buy a twenty-pound box of premium goat feed, white interior paint, a giant bucket of cleaning solution, forty tubes of industrial silicone caulk, a caulk gun, a box of trash bags, and—because the old man’s words haunted me—three family-sized boxes of saltine crackers for Kevis.
By the time Billy scans everything, the counter is a mountain of heavy, aggressive modern survival gear.
“That’ll be one hundred and eighty-four dollars,” Billy says, his voice devoid of human emotion.
I slide my credit card into the reader. It beeps in approval. Billy packs everything into massive, incredibly heavy paper sacks, leaving the five-gallon water jug and the twenty-pound goat feed sitting on the floor.
He looks at the pile, then looks out the front window at the empty street. “Where’s your truck?”
“Oh, I walked!” I say brightly, trying to sound like a whimsical, eco-friendly fitness enthusiast instead of a complete idiot who misjudged a map. “Gotta get those steps in, right?”
The store goes silent again. The camo-jacket guy actually stops looking at his lures just to stare at me in disbelief.
“You’re gonna walk a mile and a half with eighty pounds of gear?” Billy asks.
“I am a woman of the soil now, Billy,” I say, hoisting two of the massive paper bags into my arms and gripping the plastic handle of the five-gallon water jug with my left hand. “We are resilient.”
I manage to kick the front door open, the brass bell chiming a frantic goodbye as I stagger out onto the sidewalk.
The first fifty yards are a triumph of human will. The next quarter-mile is a descent into physical torture. Then I start actively negotiating with God.
The paper bags are tearing into my ribs, the five-gallon water jug is banging violently against my shin with every step, and the twenty-pound bag of goat feed is balanced precariously on my shoulder.
As I stagger down the shoulder of the county road, my breath coming in pathetic gasps, a sleek black sedan drives past.
It’s the maple syrup woman.
She slows enough that our eyes meet. I give an awkward little wave. She hesitates.
For one hopeful second I genuinely think she’s going to roll the window down and offer help. Instead she keeps driving.
Well.
Community building is clearly going beautifully.
“Kind country folks, my ass,” I wheeze, my knees shaking. “So neighborly. So rich in community spirit.”
By the time I finally stagger onto the dirt path of Old Mill Lane, my arms feel like they are about to detach from my torso.
I look toward Brooks’s house.
His driveway is still empty. His truck is still gone.
Part of me is profoundly relieved that he isn’t here to witness this pathetic, neon-pink trail of tears, but another, darker part of me is like, Where is a grumpy fire chief when you actually need someone to leverage basic physics?
I practically collapse onto the front porch of the Gilded Goat, dropping the bags with a series of heavy thuds.
I sit down on the top step, my head between my knees, my chest heaving.
“Why,” I whisper to the dirt. “Why did I do this.”
My phone buzzes. I pull it out with trembling fingers.
Mom: Emmy, darling! Your father and I just finished a spectacular scene involving a hayloft and some silk restraints. Have you met any rugged farmhands yet? Your father wants to know if they really wear flannel without shirts underneath.
I stare at the text, a hysterical, breathless laugh bubbling up my throat.
Ember: No farmhands. Just a very grumpy neighbor who is the fire chief. And an old man who told me my lead goat is named Kevis and only eats saltines.
Mom: A fire chief?! Oh, the tension! Ember, that is brilliant. Tell him your house has a ‘spark’ that needs extinguishing. Your father is taking notes.
I groan, dropping my phone onto the porch.
They are entirely unhelpful.
Beautiful, brilliant, wildly successful, and completely useless in a structural crisis.
I force myself to my feet, dragging the groceries and supplies inside the house. The parlor is still dark, still damp, and still smelling of dead mice.
I look at the forty tubes of silicone caulk and the caulk gun.
“I don’t need a handyman,” I say fiercely. “And I don’t need a town full of judgy maple-syrup hoarders to validate me. I can seal a baseboard.”
I march into the parlor, focusing all my physical exhaustion and mental rage entirely on the massive gap between the baseboard and the rotting floorboards where the cold draft is coming from.
I slice the tip off the tube of caulk with a pocket knife, jam it into the metal frame of the gun, and square my hips—keeping my center of gravity low, just like Brooks said, purely out of spite.
I press the trigger.
Nothing happens.
I press it harder, my knuckles turning white. The metal handle groans under the pressure. I give it one final, desperate, full-body squeeze.
With a loud, wet POP, the back of the tube ruptures completely.
A massive, thick, sticky wave of white silicone sealant explodes backward out of the gun, coating my gloved hands, spraying across the front of my chest, and landing in a giant, gooey glob directly over my left boot.
I drop the gun with a sharp shriek, jumping backward.
The sticky white paste is everywhere.
It’s on my sleeves, it’s on my thighs, and as I try to frantically wipe it off with a piece of cardboard from a nearby box, I only succeed in smearing it into a massive, shiny, horizontal streak across my chest.
I look down at my ruined clothes. I look at the rotting floorboards. I look at the water stain on the ceiling that is still dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip.
The smile finally slips off my face.
I slide down the peeling wallpaper, completely uncaring about the mold or the dust, and let my head drop back against the wall.
I am entirely alone, completely out of my depth, and the whole town already hates me.
And underneath all the jokes and chaos and optimism, I know the truth.
I bought a life I do not know how to live.
Outside, from the direction of the paddock, a distant, lonely sound cuts through the afternoon air.
BARRRRRHM.
I laugh but it comes out sounding suspiciously like another sob.
Apparently Kevis and I are both having a difficult day.
I close my eyes, a single, hot tear cutting a clean line through the charcoal and dust on my cheek.
“Welcome to the farm, Ember,” I whisper to the empty room.