Page 42 of The Goat Next Door

“Termites are just nature’s architects,” she quips, stepping aside as I heave the stove over the threshold.

It takes us forty minutes of sweating and maneuvering through the narrow hallway to get the green stove out and the new one in. Mostly because Emmy insists on narrating the process like we’re competing on a home renovation show.

At one point she calls me “emotionally repressed Bob the Builder.”

The old floorboards are covered in fifty years of grease, which Emmy insists on scrubbing down with a lemon-scented cleaner before I can slide the new unit into place.

I’m on my knees behind the stove, tightening the cap over the gas pipe, when she sets two mugs of black coffee on the counter above my head.

“So,” she says, her voice echoing in the small alcove. “Now that the kitchen is modernized, I’m launching phase two tomorrow morning.”

“What’s phase two?” I ask, holding the flashlight between my teeth. I give the wrench one last tug, checking for leaks with soapy water.

“Tomorrow, I’m tackling the barn,” she says, her voice full of that ambition that usually ends with her bleeding or crying on a porch step. “I found a local supplier who has twenty sheets of industrial tin. I’m going to rent a flatbed, haul them over, and re-roof the north lean-to. I watched a tutorial. It’s just a giant jigsaw puzzle with screws. Super simple.”

I pull myself out from behind the stove and stand up, dusting off my pants. I set the flashlight down and look at her.

“You’re not doing that tomorrow,” I say.

She pauses with her mug halfway to her mouth, her eyebrows snapping together.

“Excuse me? Is this the local patriarchal veto? My core strength is adequate. Or are you just looking for an excuse to come over and flex your rescue-worker muscles again? You can just ask, Brooks.”

“It’s not about your core strength,” I say, my voice dropping.

My right hand feels stiff—a phantom throb that always starts right around the first week of June. I reach for the coffee mug, the ceramic warmth soaking into my skin.

“The town is closed tomorrow. The hardware store, the lumber yard, the rental place. None of them are opening.”

She frowns, setting her mug down with a clink. “Why? Is it a local holiday?”

“It’s June sixth,” I say.

I don’t look at her. My eyes drift out the kitchen window, tracking the sharp line of the ridge where the old timber mill used to sit.

Even three years later, you can still see the jagged, blackened tops of the pine trees that caught the fire. My stomach does a familiar, ugly turn—the same weight that settles in my chest every time the calendar flips to this week.

“Did something happen?” she asks.

“Three years ago tomorrow,” I say, my thumb tracing the rim of the mug. “The old lumber mill went up. Dust explosion. Structure was ninety years old and dry as tinder. We were a volunteer outfit back then and there wasn’t enough water pressure.”

I stare out the window at the ridge line, but I’m not really seeing the mountains anymore.

I’m seeing orange.

Smoke thick enough to choke on before you even made it through the mill doors. Radios screaming over each other. Men running hoses that felt useless in their hands because the pressure kept dropping every time another line opened.

We were hauling portable tanks in with pickup trucks and praying the relay pump would hold.

It didn’t.

“Chief Miller—Tommy—was inside looking for two night-shift kids who hadn’t clocked out. The roof collapsed. Tommy didn’t make it.”

Tommy didn’t make it but I did.

The words still feel wrong in my mouth.

Like saying them enough times should eventually change the ending.