Page 18 of The Goat Next Door

I hesitate for exactly three seconds before opening another tab.

Compact utility vehicle. All-wheel drive. Good gas mileage. Small enough to survive narrow country roads without taking out additional mailboxes.

My finger hovers over the screen.

This feels like cheating somehow.

Like admitting defeat before I’ve even survived one full week of pretending to be an agricultural woman of the people.

But then I remember carrying eighty pounds of supplies down a country road while people watched me suffer.

I exhale sharply and tap purchase. The delivery estimate pops up.

Three to five business days.

“Oh my God,” I whisper to myself. “I’m becoming practical.”

The feeling is deeply upsetting.

I sit up, pulling the blanket around my shoulders, and stare at the peeling floral wallpaper.

I could do this for the whole house.

I know I could.

I could open my banking app right now, drop six figures on a top-tier construction firm from the city, move into a high-end bed-and-breakfast down in the valley for three months, and return when the place looks like a spread from an architectural digest.

I have the capital.

I am, as I casually mentioned to Brooks, kinda rich.

Which sounds deeply obnoxious out loud, but fortunately remains factually accurate.

But as I look at the jagged, empty hole in the ceiling where the brass fan used to live, my jaw tightens.

No.

That is exactly what Marcus said I would do. “You’re a conceptualist, Emmy. You design the wrapper, but you don’t actually build the box. The second things get heavy, you hire a vendor.”

“Screw you, Marcus,” I whisper to the dusty room. “I am building the box. I am the vendor.”

I want to do this myself.

I need to know that I can look at a broken, dry-rotted, structurally compromised reality and force it into shape with my own two hands. I just need a little bit of local stabilization first.

“Step one,” I announce to the empty hallway, testing the sound of it. “Corporate outreach.”

I’m going to make one friend in this town today, or I’m going to die trying. And looking at the state of this house, it’s a toss-up which happens first.

I pull a new pair of overalls out of a box I haven’t unpacked.

After buying the farm, I panic-bought fifteen pairs of overalls online because my mother said, and I quote, “Country women always have suspiciously strong thighs and excellent denim.”

At the time, it felt charming.

Now I’m trapped inside a rural-themed costume commitment.

I march into the bathroom and aggressively apply moisturizer, trying to scrub the ‘delusional urbanite’ look off my face with a packet of luxury wipes. It’s not working.