4. Brooks
Brooks
“Dear Diary, today I ate a shirt.”
— Kevis
It’s been a hell of a day.
After a grueling emergency shift at the station, I headed straight to pick up Sophie from kindergarten, and my brain feels like it’s been put through a meat grinder.
The last thing I need is a soundtrack to my misery.
I pull the heavy truck into my driveway, but the exact moment I turn the key to kill the engine, it hits us. A piercing, soul-shattering, high-frequency shriek echoes out from the open front door of the farmhouse.
It’s the old industrial security system from the nineties. The previous owner must have been terrified of roving bands of teenage livestock rustlers, because this thing sounds like a goddamn air-raid siren.
Beside me in the passenger seat, Sophie winces, clapping her small hands over her ears. Her little face pinches up tight.
“Sophie, stay in the cab, roll the windows up, and keep the doors locked,” I command, throwing the truck into park and slamming my heavy door before she can even blink an answer.
I don’t run across the yard, because running invites panic, but I move fast. I round the corner of the leaning wrap-around porch, step over a discarded, neon-pink platform shoe, and push through the front door.
The scene inside the living room is exactly what I expected, only somehow worse. Which is impressive, considering my expectations were already catastrophically low.
The house is filled with a thick, swirling cloud of white drywall dust. In the center of the room, Ember is completely tangled up in a fifty-foot orange extension cord like an unlucky fly in a spiderweb.
She’s covered from head to toe in plaster debris, making her wild blonde curls look entirely gray, like she’s aged forty years since I saw her this morning.
There is an ancient, heavy brass ceiling fan lying in twisted pieces on the floorboards. One of the blades is embedded in the wall like a thrown axe.
Fucking hell.
The siren is still wailing overhead from a plastic box on the wall, and she is frantically batting at the digital keypad with the butt end of a heavy metal flashlight.
I don’t wait for her to notice me.
I shove past her into the small hallway, my heavy work boots—which I never took off after leaving the station—crunching loudly on broken light bulb glass.
I reach up, yank the plastic cover off the old security terminal, and find the main low-voltage wire bundle tucked behind the drywall casing. I wrap my gloved fingers around the copper lines and pull hard.
The metal screams as the copper snaps cleanly from the terminal, and finally, mercifully, a deafening wave of silence crashes back into the house.
My heart is hammering hard against my ribs, and my hands are actually trembling with a surge of adrenaline.
I turn back to face her.
She’s sitting flat on her ass in the middle of the plaster dust. Her wide eyes are unfocused, staring up at the empty hole in the ceiling where the fan used to live.
“You are an absolute menace to yourself and this community,” I state.
I want to be pissed. I have every right to be.
I’m a busy man, I’ve got my own problems, and I didn’t sign up to be the local handyman for some city girl who thinks a ceiling fan is a lawn ornament.
But as I look at her—dusty, shaking, and surrounded by enough glass to slice a man to ribbons—the anger just… evaporates.
It’s replaced by this cold, sinking feeling in my gut.
If that thing had hit her, she wouldn’t be sitting here.
She looks up at me through her white-dusted eyelashes, blinks twice, and clears her throat. “Oh, look. It’s the hot neighbor. Come to save me from the acoustic warfare?”
My temple throbs.
I swear, this woman is going to be the death of me.
“Don’t call me that,” I say. “And I didn’t come to save you. I came to stop the noise so I could eat my dinner in peace.”
“Right, because you just happen to patrol my driveway out of the goodness of your heart,” she huffs, struggling with the cord.
“And for the record, you are the hot neighbor. It’s a literal fact.
There’s no one else within a two-mile radius except the old guy with the snake stick. You win by default. You’re welcome.”
“I don’t want the title,” I say, stepping into her space and swatting her hands away from the cord before she ties herself into a permanent knot. “I want you to stop destroying a historic property. What the hell were you even doing with a ceiling fan?”
“I was trying to optimize the air circulation before the goats came inside!” she shoots back. “The internet said a cross-breeze is crucial for livestock integration. I just gave the chain a little pull. A gentle, perfectly reasonable tug.”
“You pulled the entire junction box straight out of the ceiling, Ember.” I shake my head. “You’re playing around with live, uninsulated electricity, rotten joists, and heavy tools you don’t understand. This isn’t a game.”
“I know it’s not a game!” she snaps, her voice cracking just a tiny bit as she glares up at me from the floor.
“I’m trying, okay? I walked a mile and a half from the general store carrying eighty pounds of supplies because I didn’t want to look like an idiot driving that giant truck into town, and then the town people treated me like a radioactive alien, and then the caulk exploded on my overalls, and now the ceiling is raining appliances. I’m handling it the best I can!”
I look down at her, the biting lecture I had prepared dying right in my throat.
Her face is flushed underneath the white dust, and the manic, aggressive optimism she’s been faking all day is finally showing its cracks. She’s exhausted, she’s covered in chemical sealant, and she’s miles out of her depth.
I drag a hand over my face, feeling the grit of the dust on my skin.
I’m going to regret this.
I’m going to regret it so hard it’s going to hurt.
But the way she’s looking at me—the manic, ‘I’ve got this’ act finally dropping to show how truly terrified she is—it hits me right in the chest.
“Look,” I mutter, my voice sounding more tired than angry. “Stop touching things. Stop playing with tools you don’t understand. If you sit still and stay out of trouble, I’ll come by after my shift tomorrow and handle the structural stuff. Deal?”
A slow little smile tugs at her mouth. She’s got no business smiling like that when she looks like a powdered donut, but she does.
“Is that a binding contract, Chief? Do we need to seal it with a kiss, or is a handshake more your speed?”
“Don’t make me regret this,” I bite out, turning on my heel.
I don’t wait for her to answer. I need to get out of there before I do something stupid, like laugh.
“I have to go check on something in my truck. Just stay right there. Don’t move.”
I march back out to the yard, the afternoon sun burning the back of my neck.
Sophie is sitting perfectly still in the front seat, her nose pressed against the window. She looks up at me with wide, intense green eyes as I open the door.
“Is the pink lady okay, Daddy? It sounded like a monster was in there.”
“The lady is fine, Soph,” I say, keeping my voice soft. I reach into the glove box, pull out her coloring book and a fresh pack of crayons, and hand them to her.
“She just had a little accident with a ceiling fan.”
Sophie gasps. “Did the ceiling attack her?”
“Something like that,” I smile. “I need to make sure the wires aren’t going to start a fire, okay? I need you to be my brave girl and hang out in here for a few more minutes.”
“Can I have a juice box?”
“You bet.” I reach into the small cooler behind the seat, hand her an apple juice, and kiss the top of her head. “Keep the doors locked. I’ll be right back.”
When I walk back into the house, Emmy has managed to stand up, brushing the white drywall dust off her knees, though she only succeeds in smearing it around the denim of her overalls.
“I’m leaving,” I say, standing in the doorway. “Eat some dinner and go to sleep. Don’t touch the electricity. I mean it.”
“Understood,” she says, giving me a mock salute. “See you tomorrow, hot neighbor.”
“Brooks,” I say, pointing a finger at her. “My name is Brooks.”
“Whatever you say,” she chirps, a tiny, playful glint in her eyes as she leans casually against her newly acquired broom.
? ? ?
My house is quiet, smelling of the baked mac-and-cheese I just pulled out of the oven. The kitchen table is perfectly set—two plates, two cups, and Sophie’s favorite pink plastic fork.
Sophie is sitting across from me, her small legs swinging under the chair, thoroughly coating a piece of broccoli in ketchup.
I watch Sophie eat, a heavy, familiar sense of relief settling over me.
This is my world. It’s predictable. It’s quiet.
And yet, I catch myself looking out the window toward the tree line, toward that disaster of a farm.
I know I’m going back there tomorrow. I’m going to spend my day off fixing a ceiling for a woman who probably shouldn’t be allowed to own a screwdriver, let alone attempt to fix a house.
“Daddy?” Sophie asks, wiping a smudge of ketchup from her cheek with the back of her hand.
“Yeah, bug?”
“Who was that pink lady?”
I pause, my fork halfway to my mouth. I take a slow bite, chewing deliberately as I try to figure out how to explain a human hurricane to a five-year-old.
“That’s Ember or Emmy,” I say carefully. “She’s our new neighbor. She just moved into the old farm next door.”
Sophie tilts her head. “Why was her truck so sparkly? Is she a princess?”
I can’t help the chuckle that escapes my chest.
“No, Soph,” I say, reaching over to wipe a stray drop of ketchup off her chin with a napkin. “She’s definitely not a princess. She’s just… a lot of work.”
“Are we gonna help her fix her house?”
“Yeah, bug,” I say. “I think we are.”