“At least there’s that,” I repeated his words while watching the pitch of the roof cave in, finally giving up.
“Hey, do you have somewhere you can stay, Rain? Someone we can call to come get you? Anything?”
I snapped back to reality. “I just moved here. I don’t know anyone. I’ll be fine. Thank you.”
“There are a few places to stay in the towns around here. Should I call them for you?”
I sighed. He was trying to help, but I’d always prided myself in being self-sufficient. Today was no exception. “I can call them. Just processing a little bit. Getting my bearings. You guys can go. There’s nothing you can do here, and I’m fine. I promise.”
They left after shaking their heads and shrugging. They came to help, but the house was already burned to the ground.
I stood there for a while after the fire trucks trailed down the highway, considering my options. First, I had to call the insurance and take more pictures, but, this time, not happy ones.
I had to tell my parents.
And I had to find somewhere to spend the night, several nights, in fact.
I put in a call to the insurance after pulling up the policy on my laptop while sitting in my car and uploading the pictures to the claim site. Then I called my parents who asked if I needed help. I declined, although if I’d said yes, they would’ve been here in a heartbeat.
Even though I didn’t need the support, knowing it was there for me meant everything.
Maybe this was a chance to make a house my own. To choose everything from the ground up. I had made plans to add some more bedrooms and an attached garage. This was a way to get those things done. To build the house of my dreams.
That was how I had to look at all this; otherwise, I might throw in the towel and cry.
Chapter Two
Lux
City drivers could have up to two hundred stops in a day, or so I’d heard, but they didn’t have ten, twenty, fifty miles between deliveries. Mine varied, but it could be as few as fifteen or as many as fifty, if they were close enough together. The big companies wouldn’t touch this area, in the middle of nowhere, themselves, but they had to cover it somehow, so they subcontracted people like us. Rural delivery companies counted on this since nobody outside of the wide-but-thin-spread communities they served had ever heard of them.
But those who lived here? We were their lifeline, their source of things local stores didn’t carry or did but at an exorbitant price. We knew the names of our customers and recognized their regular deliveries. Pet food in particular, the large bags of kibble and boxes of forty cans of cat food. Larger animal food was generally delivered by the feed store or some other specialty service, thank goodness. But I brought the supplements. The smaller pieces of equipment and tack. Nonperishable foodstuffs and sometimes those that were—packed with dry ice. Lots of people had left to work for bigger companies with higher wages and better benefits, but I wouldn’t trade a wave from old Mrs. Wilma when she got her rheumatism tonic or a snickerdoodle from Mrs. Smith, her frenemy, when her six-month supply of dried apricots arrived for the world.
Not many people had a job that could brighten so many faces, and I was grateful to Fate and the Goddess for the twist that placed me in this position. Like so many of the young, I planned to leave the rural landscape for the bright lights of the big city. In fact, I was waiting at the bus stop in the small town nearest my skulk, all the belongings I was taking with me ina duffel bag and a prayer on my lips that my alpha or one of his betas would not catch me before I made my escape, when a woman sat down beside me and struck up a conversation. Her son owned a local trucking company and was looking for someone on a temporary basis.
“I wish I could help,” I said when she lifted a questioning brow, “but I’m leaving today.”
She was a petite woman with white hair tied up in a bun on top of her head, wearing a flowered dress and standard white sneakers. “I thought you might be. Where are you headed?”
“The city,” I asserted, just stopping myself before spouting something like “to make my fortune.”
“How exciting. You already have a job lined up? Somewhere to stay?”
“No…but I’ll be fine.”
“Of course. You must have been saving up for a long time to be able to strike out like this.”
“Oh yes.” I had about a thousand dollars in my wallet, earned doing odd jobs. “I’ll be fine.” I was getting repetitive.
“Sure wish you didn’t have to leave to soon. Bobby really needs a young man with ambition to fill this position. It’s just for the summer, you understand, but you’d be able to save enough to give it a really good start in the fall.”
“I’m not a truck driver.” I barely had my driver’s license, although I’d been operating farm equipment since I was about eleven. “And he probably needs a commercially licensed person.”
“No. It’s a small truck, just local deliveries. Filling in for another male on paternity leave. Anyway, doesn’t sound like you’re interested. You don’t need the money. Shame.”
It didn’t occur to me to wonder why she was so assertive about wanting me in particular for this temporary job until much later. I still didn’t know for sure. But that temp job rolled over in the fall into the one I had now. Bobby believed in on-the-job training and helped me get certified for the position. I truly did have plenty of money to make a stab at city living at the end of the summer, but by then, I felt so good about what I was doing, I didn’t really want to go. The seat in the truck with its perpetually open passenger-side door felt right.
On this particular day, the locals would be receiving a bumper crop of goods, my little truck piled to the ceiling with their bounty. The approaching holidays increased our business, and unlike those national companies, nobody was giving me a helper.
