A moment of silence, followed by a bewildered, “Wow.”
Halfway back to Second Street, I gestured to the cafeteria on the right. “Obviously, you know what that is.”
“And a little bit down that road”—she gestured the rest of the way down Second—“that’s the legal building?”
I glanced at the little wooden cabin, no different from my own, and nodded. “Yep. You go all the way to the end of that street, and you’ll get to Rhiannon’s house. It’s tucked back in the woods a little, so you can’t see it from here, but if you ever need her after hours, that’s where to knock.”
“Is that okay though?” Her voice was timid. “She seems nice and everything, but she has a lot of responsibility here. I don’t want to be a bother or anything.”
That was a tightrope to walk. Rhiannon gave us a chance no one else in our lives ever had. A free place to live, a community out of a fairytale, a fresh start.
“I don’t know many people who are comfortable begging for help at someone’s door,” I said. “Especially when they’ve already given so much. But Rhiannon would open hers at any time of the day and make you feel like you just came home.”
“I guess she would have to be that kind of person to run this place like she does.” Delilah’s eyes caught on the circular log building across the street from the cafeteria. “That’s the rec center, right?”
“It is,” I said.
Eve, the girl who’d told her story on Wednesday night at group, stepped from its entrance. When she saw the two of us, she gave a smile and a big wave. I returned it.
“What’s it for?” Delilah asked.
“I go down to play the grand piano when I’m bored, as long as no one else has signed up for a specific event that day. The kids do chorus concerts once a week. Every couple months, they put on a play of some kind for us. During the holidays, we throw big parties there. Dances once in a while. And downstairs we have the community closet.”
I stopped walking for a moment and looked at Delilah, keeping my voice soft. “Did you bring any clothes? Or did you get out in a hurry?”
“I’ve got a few things.” Her throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “But I didn’t have time to grab much.”
“Then we’ll circle back here and get you a couple bags full.”
Crossing the intersection, I gestured down the left of Second, past the rec center. There was another building down there. More like an insulated aluminum garage, really.
“On the right up there, we have the clinic. It’s not a hospital by any means, but if you ever go on a hike and take a nasty fall, that’s where you’ll want to go. We always have a nurse on staff, but she mostly just gives advice. Tells us whether or not we need to go to the hospital.”
“Yeah, Rhiannon showed me,” she said, quieter than anything else she had said so far. Before I could question why that might be, she gestured to the end of the street. A similar building stood tall across from the clinic. Also an aluminum building, but this one had a blue roof. “What’s that one?”
“That would be the garage,” I said. “Rhiannon and some of the maintenance guys store equipment in there. If you ever need to work on a car or something, Rhiannon will let you in. Let you borrow tools too.”
“No car yet, and no idea how to work on one,” Delilah said, a teasing edge to her voice. “But that’s cool. My dad alwayscomplained about having to work on cars out on the road. We never had a garage.”
Neither had I. “There’s an automotive class once a month at the rec center. They taught me how to change my oil and brake pads.”
Nibbling her bottom lip, tilted at the corner with a smile, she shook her head. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything here.”
“Give it a couple months, and you’ll never want to leave.” I gestured to the stone buildings on the left and right of Main Street. “No kids, right?”
“No. No kids.”
“Irrelevant to you then, but that’s the daycare.” I pointed to the building on the left.
It was one of the newer additions, constructed in the last ten years. It was only two stories high, roughly the size of a small apartment building on the edge of a suburb. Nothing special there either. Just stone block, a dozen or so windows wrapping around the front and sides, and an aluminum roof on the top.
“There’s a playground in the back too. On the edge of it, a nice walking trail takes you through the woods. If you follow it the whole way, you’ll come out by my cabin at the edge of the ranch.”
“You’re in one of those cabins at the front?”
“Closest one to the gate. Don’t be afraid to come knocking if you need something.” I hooked a thumb in gesture to the building we were passing on the right. “Any idea what that place is?”
It stood three stories tall, half the width of the daycare across the street. However, they were decorated the same way. A green aluminum roof, gray stone blocks, and a few dozen windows. Rather than the daycare’s metal door for the entrance, it had a set of double glass doors.
