18. Brooks
Brooks
“Marriage is just teamwork,
except one of you always knows where
the good snacks are and refuses to share.”
— Davis
I grab my leather gear bag from the passenger seat, kill the ignition, and haul myself out into the humid, sticky night air. It clings to my neck, thick with the scent of pine and damp earth, and it doesn’t do a damn thing to clear the fog in my head.
Inside the station bay, the concrete floor has already been hosed down by the night shift, the water pooling in the iron drains with a faint, metallic gurgle.
Davis is sitting at the pine table in the corner, his heavy boots propped on a milk crate, a mug of black tea steaming between his thick, scarred fingers.
He’s twenty-nine, my best friend since we were kids, and he has the annoying habit of noticing everything I’m trying to hide.
He’s also currently trying to convince his wife, Sarah, to let him buy a jet ski, which is currently going about as well as a house fire.
“Ridge road clear?” he asks, not looking up from his phone. He snorts, likely reading a text from his wife that probably involves the word ‘divorce.’ “Sarah says if I buy that jet ski, she’s going to use it to flee the country. She has zero chill, man.”
“Two hemlocks down near the old culvert,” I say, tossing my gear bag into my locker. “County crew took it. It’s passable if you’ve got high clearance.”
Davis lets out a low, knowing sound, finally looking up. He’s got that look on his face—the one that says he’s about to be a massive pain in my ass.
“Saw you took the utility truck out around eight on Thursday. You’re playing a dangerous game, Chief. If you’re trying to stay under the radar, you’re doing a piss-poor job.”
My fingers pause on the zipper of my light work jacket. “The church basement sump pump was sticking. The float valve was clogged with silt.”
“Uh-huh. Sure. A real ‘sunk-in-the-mud’ situation, huh?” Davis wiggles his eyebrows, his grin widening.
“And I suppose the city girl’s driveway was sticking too?
Because Mel saw the big municipal Ford nose-down on her porch steps right around nine-thirty.
Sounds like you were looking for some… high-clearance action. ”
I feel a slow, tight heat creeping up from my collar. “The hollow road was under six inches of moving water, Davis. Her truck has four cylinders and tires the size of donuts. It was a public safety decision.”
“Nobody’s arguing the logistics, man,” Davis says, his mouth twitching.
“Just surprising to see you executing a private extraction for a girl who doesn’t even know where the main water shut-off is.
Usually, you just send the junior guys with a couple of sandbags and a pamphlet.
You’re really putting in the work here. Like, literally. ”
“The junior guys were out on the ridge,” I say, the locker door shutting with a sharp ring. “I was already mobile.”
“Right. Mobile. And very motivated.” Davis drops his boots off the crate and stands up, stretching.
“Whatever you’re doing out there, just make sure she knows how to bleed her propane lines before the summer heat hits.
That old furnace is going to act up with the humidity.
You don’t want to be over there all night… or do you?”
“She doesn’t even have the pilot light lit,” I mutter. “She’s been using kerosene lamps.”
Davis stops in the doorway, his teasing look fading into a rare, genuine softness. “She’s a city girl, Brooks. They come up here for the vibes, but the humidity doesn’t care about aesthetics. If she’s still here by autumn, she’s going to need more than a cute aesthetic to keep that house running.”
“She won’t be here by autumn,” I say. “She’ll be back in Manhattan the second the air turns crisp and the grocery store stops carrying those little organic avocados.”
“Maybe,” Davis says, clapping me on the shoulder. “But until then, she’s our neighbor. And we look out for the stock. Try not to get too attached, man. Or do. I’m not your boss.”
? ? ?
By ten o’clock, I’ve swapped my uniform for a pair of grease-stained Carhartts, picked Sophie up from her grandmother’s house, and driven out to the timber frame I’ve been trying to finish for two years.
Sophie is sitting in the middle of the unfinished living room, her small sneakers dangling over a plywood sheet, her tongue sticking out as she lines up three plastic triceratops.
“Daddy,” she calls out. “Can dinosaurs live in the mud?”
“If it’s deep enough,” I say, reaching into my tool belt for a handful of staples. “Why?”
“Because Emmy said she has a big mud hole by her barn. She said Kevin went swimming in it and turned into a monster.”
I stop, the stapler hovering in the air. “When did you talk to Emmy, Soph?”
“Yesterday,” she says. “Nana took me to get a cookie.”
“She asked if you were still grumpy,” Sophie continues, completely unbothered. “I told her you’re always grumpy when the weather is hot because your neck hurts.”
“Sophie,” I say. “You don’t need to be giving the public a medical report on your father.”
“She’s not the public,” Sophie says with that absolute, terrifying logic of a five-year-old. “She’s our neighbor. She told me she has a goat that can jump over a wheelbarrow. Can we get a goat, Daddy?”
“No,” I say, hitting the stapler against the wood with a sharp thwack. “Goats are a disaster. They eat siding and they smell like wet wool.”
“Emmy’s around them all the time but she doesn’t smell like wet wool,” Sophie mutters, her attention shifting back to her plastic valley. “She smells like lemons. Like the ones in the yellow bowl at Nana’s.”
I don’t answer.
My mind is instantly back in the cab of the Ford—the smell of rain, the vanilla-lemon scent of her hair, and the small, wet smudge her breath had left on the glass.
She’s already infecting my kid.
She hasn’t even been in this valley for two months, and she’s already got the grandmas running logistics for her, Marge giving her the front counter, and Sophie talking about her like she’s some kind of magical creature who dispenses cake and goat facts.
I look at my tool belt, then toward the ridge lane.
The propane line, I remind myself. It’s an official safety check. Entirely within the district grid.
“Come on, Soph,” I say, unbuckling the belt. “Pack up the lizards. We’ve gotta go run an inspection.”
The lane down to the Gilded Goat is a mess of deep, gray ruts. When we clear the tree line, the old farmhouse looks smaller in the bright morning light, the paint peeling in long, curly ribbons.
But the porch is different. The U-Haul boxes are gone, replaced by a pair of rusty iron milk cans filled with wild ferns and those big, bright pink peonies that grow along the creek.
Ember is sitting on the top step, knees pulled to her chest, wearing an oversized gray sweatshirt and faded denim shorts. Her gold curls are piled on top of her head in a messy knot held together by a green plastic clip, and she’s holding a thick book.
When the truck rumbles to a halt, she looks up, her dark eyes blinking against the glare.
“Well, look at this,” she says, her voice bright as she stands up. “My favorite firefighter has arrived. Am I being cited for unauthorized porch decoration, Chief?”
“The ferns are within regulation,” I say, reaching into the back seat to haul Sophie down. “I heard your propane lines are probably air-locked. If the regulator sticks in this humidity, you’re going to have pressure backing up into a forty-year-old manifold.”
Ember looks at the heavy pipe wrench in my left hand, then down at Sophie, her face breaking into a wide, easy smile. “Sophie! Hello. Did you bring the triceratops to inspect the premises?”
“He’s in the truck,” Sophie says, marching up the porch steps like she owns the place. “Daddy said Kevin smells like wet wool. Does he?”
“Kevin smells like rainbows,” Ember laughs, giving Sophie a high-five.
She looks up at me, her eyes full of that sharp, teasing light. “You brought a lot of hardware for a simple check, neighbor.”
I cut my eyes toward the side of the house, where the big silver propane tank sits in the tall grass.
“The regulator valve on these old installations requires a heavy torque. Where’s the cellar key?”
“I don’t have a key,” Ember says, following me down the porch, her bare feet clicking softly against the old wood. “The door’s just held shut by a piece of wire. I haven’t been down there yet because it smells like spiders and old turnips.”
“It’s a cellar, Ember,” I say, kneeling in the damp clover beside the tank.
The copper line is green with oxidation. I fit the jaws of the pipe wrench around the nut, my muscles stiffening, as I lean into the metal. The wrench resists, then lets out a sharp crack as the thread gives way. A small hiss of propane gas escapes.
“Is it supposed to make that sound?” Ember asks, leaning over my shoulder.
She’s close enough that I can feel the heat coming off her.
“It’s clearing the air lock,” I say. “If I didn’t clear this, the pressure drop would have tripped the safety diaphragm in this heat. You would have been sitting up here with no way to cook.”
“So you’re my savior,” she says, her voice smooth and teasing. I can hear the smile in her words. “Again. The local grandmas are going to start thinking we have a routine.”
I tighten the nut with one last, heavy, aggressive turn. I stand up, wiping the grease and clover off my palms, and finally meet her gaze.
She’s standing way too close.
In this bright, unforgiving summer sun, I can see every detail—the freckles on her nose, the way her eyes are searching mine. She looks like she belongs in a boutique, not a rotting farmhouse.
“There is no routine, Ember,” I say. “You’re young, you’re from a city where people pay twenty bucks for a cup of coffee, and you’re living in a structure that’s one good windstorm away from becoming a pile of kindling. This isn’t a game. You don’t have the callouses for this place.”
Ember’s smile doesn’t disappear, but the teasing light in her eyes shifts into something cooler and more analytical.