6. Brooks
Brooks
“LOCAL FIRE CHIEF SEEN SMILING.
TOWN DEMANDS EXPLANATION.”
— Suncrest Hollow Newspaper
The afternoon sun catches in her curls, turning every strand into something annoyingly golden.
She’s standing there with a brown paper bag from Marge’s bakery clutched against her chest like she’s just won a championship trophy, grinning at me with the kind of hyperactive triumph that makes my jaw start aching from clenching it in advance.
“You’re late, Chief,” she calls out. “I was beginning to think you’d abandoned me to the elements. Or worse, to the local social registry. I’ve already been thoroughly snubbed by a random woman and a man with an antacid dependency.”
“Shift ended at ten,” I grunt. “I had to drop some things off at the house and prep some gear. And I’ve already heard all about it, news travel fast. And that woman is the head of the historical society, which means you’re officially on their watch list now.”
She waves a dismissive hand as she walks toward her sagging front porch.
“The point is, I survived the village gauntlet, I secured a strategic economic foothold at the bakery—more on my upcoming career as a flour bin technician later—and I am ready to construct a definitive structural plan. I have my own tools, Big Guy.”
I stop at the base of her porch steps, looking at the pile of supplies she’s accumulated.
Beside a heavy five-gallon water jug and a box of goat feed, there is a brand-new, entirely plastic tool kit that looks like it was manufactured by a toy company, along with about forty tubes of white silicone caulk and a ruptured caulk gun that is currently glued to a piece of cardboard.
“Is that the tool kit you bought at the store?” I ask, my voice deadpan.
“It’s a starter kit, hot neighbor. It has a level with green liquid in it and a very cute little claw hammer with a pink rubber grip.
” She steps up onto the porch, her white overalls stretching as she turns to face me.
“And don’t look at the caulk gun. We’ve had an internal operational failure. The tube suffered a structural breach.”
“That is not how normal people describe exploding caulk.”
“It is when you’re trying to preserve morale.”
“You didn’t cut the tip wide enough, so you didn’t puncture the inner foil seal,” I say, stepping onto the porch. “You’re lucky you didn’t break your wrist. Silicone doesn’t just wash off canvas.”
“Whatever. Now, where are we starting, Captain Firefighter? The ceiling? The flooring? The plumbing? I want to learn everything. Don’t just do it for me. Teach me. I need to know the physics.”
I stare down at her.
She’s a full head shorter than me, her curls bouncing slightly as she tilts her head up to look into my face.
She’s entirely serious.
Beneath the sarcasm and the designer denim, there’s a strange, fierce current of determination in her eyes that I don’t know what to do with.
It’s annoying. It’s deeply inconvenient.
And God help me, it’s the most entertaining thing I’ve looked at in three years.
“We’re starting with the kitchen floor,” I say, dropping my heavy canvas bag onto the porch with a solid thud. “Because if you step through that rot in the parlor again, I’m going to have to fill out a medical extraction report, and I’ve already done enough paperwork this week. Put these on.”
I reach into my bag and toss her a pair of heavy work gloves. They’re old, broken-in, and entirely too big for her small hands, but they’re better than her bare skin against seventy-year-old splinters.
She pulls them on, her fingers swimming in the leather, and gives me a small, ridiculous thumbs-up. “Lead the way, Ranger Rick.”
For the next three hours, the Gilded Goat ceases to be a quiet money pit and becomes a noisy classroom.
I don’t do the work for her.
I try to, multiple times, because my internal clock is ticking and my brain is hardwired to just complete the task efficiently, but every time I reach for a tool, she physically shoves her shoulder into my ribs to nudge me out of the way.
“Get back, Cowboy,” she says, wrestling with my heavy crowbar as we try to pry up a water-damaged section of pine flooring near the kitchen sink. “You said you were teaching me. Tell me what to do.”
“Keep your hands lower on the shaft,” I say, stepping up behind her. I wrap my gloved hands over hers, guiding her grip down the cold iron bar.
She’s warm, her back nearly pressed against my chest, and that cinnamon-and-sugar scent from the bakery is completely overriding the smell of damp rot beneath the sink.
“Square your feet. Don’t pull with your arms. Lean your body weight into it. Let the tool do the heavy lifting.”
She shifts her weight, her hip brushing against my thigh, and gives a sharp downward push. The ancient nail lets out a screeching, rusty protest as the rotted plank pops cleanly out of the subfloor.
“Ha!” she shouts, spinning around in my space, her face inches from mine, her golden curls tumbling out of her bun. “Take that, Marcus!”
“Who the hell is Marcus?”
“My ex-boss,” she says carelessly, tossing the crowbar onto the floor with a loud clatter.
“A man who wears glasses without lenses and once spent three hours explaining to me why a logo for a luxury kombucha brand needed to represent ‘the existential dread of the modern consumer.’ He told me I was just a conceptualist. He said I couldn’t handle the actual execution of a physical structure. ”
“Your ex-boss sounds like an idiot,” I say, bending down to examine the exposed joists below.
“Thank you,” she says solemnly. “That is the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me during manual labor.”
“But he wasn’t entirely wrong about your execution. The joist underneath this sink is split. If you had filled that five-gallon water jug and set it here, you would have ended up in the cellar.”
“Well, I didn’t,” she says, leaning over my shoulder. “Because you’re here. My guardian angel. My incredibly grumpy, highly practical savior.”
“I’m your neighbor,” I correct. “And tomorrow, I’m billing you for a new mailbox. Speaking of which, how exactly do you plan on paying for a twenty-five-acre farm and twelve purebred dairy goats when you’re currently volunteering to scrub flour bins? I know this place cost a fortune, Ember.”
Ember hops up, sitting on the edge of the old laminate counter, her legs swinging back and forth. She pulls off the oversized leather gloves and drops them into her lap, a small, secretive smile playing on her red lips.
“I won the lottery,” she says casually.
I stop clearing the wood shavings. I straighten my spine, locking my knees, and look up at her. “You what?”
“The Powerball,” she says. “It was a Tuesday. I went down to the bodega to buy a diet soda and a pack of sour gummy worms, and I had two dollars left over. So I let the machine pick the numbers. And then… boom. Confetti. A very big check with a lot of commas. Twelve million! It turns out, when you win that much money, people expect you to do things like buy a vineyard in Tuscany or invest in a tech startup that manufactures smart water bottles. But I didn’t want Tuscany.
I wanted to build something real. With goats. Like Kevis out there.”
I blink, catching the name. “Wait. Huh? Who is Kevis?”
“My goat,” she says, pointing out the kitchen window. “That guy told me his name is Kevis. It’s an unusual, elegant name. Very Euro-chic.”
I look out the window at the goat, then look back at Ember’s entirely sincere, proud face. A wave of intense amusement hits my chest, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek so hard I nearly taste copper to keep from laughing out loud.
“Ember,” I say, my voice straining under the pressure of containing my laughter. “That was probably Arthur and he was messing with you. That goat’s name is Kevin. He’s just a regular goat named Kevin.”
Ember’s jaw drops. Her eyes go completely round. “What? No. He distinctly said Kevis. With an S!”
“Arthur has a heavy lisp and a missing front tooth,” I say, the grin finally breaking through my defenses. “And he’s a notorious prankster. He told the city people who bought the parcel down the road that the local deer required a crossing permit. You bought a goat named Kevin, Ember.”
“Kevin?!” she gasps, horrified, looking out the window at the animal. “That is a human accountant’s name! He doesn’t look like a Kevin! He looks like a majestic, mystical creature of the valley!”
“He looks like he’s eating a piece of your U-Haul box,” I point out.
“Oh, shut up, hot neighbor,” she groans, covering her face with her hands, though her shoulders are shaking with a laugh of her own. “My life is a joke. A literal, cosmic joke.”
“It’s an entertaining one,” I say, reaching into my tool bag to pull out a heavy iron sister-plate and some heavy-duty lag screws. “Come here. Hold this bracket against the timber while I drive the screws in. Don’t drop it on your toes.”
She slides off the counter instantly, dropping to her knees on the floorboards beside me.
For the next thirty minutes, we bicker through the installation.
She complains that my impact driver is too loud; I tell her she’s holding the bracket upside down. She tells me my technique is “visually uninspired”; I tell her her technique is going to result in a structural collapse.
By three in the afternoon, the kitchen floor is reinforced, the sink plumbing is temporarily clamped, and we’re sitting on her front porch steps, sharing the cinnamon roll she brought back from Marge’s.
“Tuesday morning,” she says, licking her fingers. “6 AM sharp. Marge told me if I’m a minute late, she’s locking me out. I think she secretly loves me, handsome.”
“Marge doesn’t love anyone under the age of sixty,” I say, taking the cup of coffee she hands me. “But she respects grit.”
“I’ve made a decision,” Ember announces not even a second later, leaning back against the porch railing.
“That sentence has never ended well.”
“It will this time.” She points a finger at me. “I’m going to make goat cheese.”