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Twenty-seven in total. Far more people to house than the number of tiny homes I thought we could get. But between Grant’s money and Keaton’s connections, we were able to get twenty-five. It felt a lot like making a basket of fish and bread feed a hungry crowd. But it wasn’t all smiles and cupcakes. There had been a few thefts in town linked to the homeless, and for the first time in Lindenbach’s history, someone had found hypodermic needles in the park. The drug problem was a tricky one, something we were figuring out how to handle in the community we were building. We’d have to drug test, and we were under no illusions—some of the population would be excluded, and they’d be left afloat. We could offer them mental health services and the clinic, even job placement, but they wouldn’t be able to live here.
I hated the thought.
I’d heard every side. Helping an addict would only enable them. It was their fault they were addicts, and they didn’t deserve free resources. They should have made better choices and they wouldn’t have ended up here. The list went on and on. But in my opinion, it could have happened to anyone, under the right circumstance. Anybody who didn’t believe so had far too much faith in themselves.
So we were leaning toward a self-governed community that would serve as their own council with the support of a social worker. This, along with everything else, made people mad. They can’t govern themselves! They’re clearly not responsible enough! Didn’t matter that people had been governing themselves thus since the dawn of man. It was as tried and true a system as there ever was.
Fortunately, we were more interested in results than we were in placating disagreeable townsfolk.
I shifted my tool belt on my hips as we headed toward the palettes. The concrete was marked where each house would stand, and at the back of two of them were prefab walls and floor. All we had to do was hoist, screw, and nail the suckers together.
Keaton started to group everyone off, but he didn’t get far before Carson jumped in.
“Six people to a house, six hours to put one together. Jimmy, Hank—you two come with me. Andy, you go on with Daisy and Keaton. Brian, how about …”
Carson kept talking, but I quit listening. I was exerting all my energy on deciphering Keaton’s reaction.
He’d stiffened, paused for a split second, then kept moving for our palette. Andy nodded at me and smiled.
“Mornin’, Miss Blum.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to call me Daisy?”
He laughed, scratched his neck. “Prolly a hundred more.” He jerked his chin at the stack. “Don’t look like much, does it? But it’s the whole world for some of us.”
“It looks like hope to me. Smells like it too.” I drew a long breath through my nose. “Fresh lumber on a fresh morning for a fresh start.”
“I like that. Looks like it’ll be kinda big.”
“Eight by twelve, big enough for a full-sized bed and a desk with a little front stoop. It’ll have electricity and a window unit, propane for heat in the winter. I wish we could have given each a bathroom, but that’ll have to wait. What are you most excited for?”
For a moment as we walked up to the spot, he said nothing. When we stopped, he said, “I can’t remember the last time I had a door. I think I’m most looking forward to that.”
He said it as if he worried saying it too loud would make it disappear.
“Well, we can do a door, my friend. And hopefully much more than that.”
Keaton had already moved for the cinderblocks and was setting them in their spots, two by two. So Andy and I headed to the stacks, and Keaton directed us on what to do first.
I wondered over why he was so disinclined to talk to me. Clearly his brothers didn’t care for his aloofness either—they tried to leave us alone whenever possible. But Keaton would just follow them out or find a reason for one of them to stick around.
Seemed like today he wasn’t going to get away with it.
I spent the day doing my best to blend in, like a woman trying to get a unicorn to eat out of her hand. Maybe if I was still and quiet enough, he’d quit ignoring me. Otherwise, it was gonna be a long project.
Somewhere around lunchtime, I succeeded. We sat around eating sandwiches Bettie, the owner of the illustrious Bettie’s Biscuits, had supplied. Keaton sat near enough to me that I could have stuck my foot out and brushed his, which was its own miracle. I’d even managed to make him laugh, twice. With eye contact.
It was a big day.
The sun was on its way down when we’d finished raising our houses. As we watched Andy walk through the door of the house and close it behind him, Keaton beamed. Well, for Keaton, which only meant his brow smoothed, his eyes crinkling a little at the corners with the slightest of smiles on his lips.
