Page 14 of The Goat Next Door

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.

4

Brooks

“Dear Diary, today I ate a shirt.”

— Kevis

My truck is a twenty-year-old F-250 that rattles like a bag of loose bolts, and the radio is nothing but static. Honestly? It’s the most peaceful part of my day—the rumble of the engine and the long, familiar stretch of the valley road as I head home.

It’s been a hell of a day.