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.
It would be weeks before we had all the houses up, electricity run, and the facilities built. But it was a start, and a big start at that.
Behind us was a little commotion as a couple of guys plopped coolers in the middle of the foundation and started passing out beers. Like moths to the moon, everyone began to float in that direction. But neither Keaton nor I moved.
I shifted to smile sideways up at him. “What, you’re not gonna take the chance to get away from me?”
One of his brows rose, but a ghost of a smile still tugged at his lips. “You callin’ me a coward?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
He humphed.
“It’s just that I’ve noticed you make it a point never to be alone with me and I thought it was strange.”
For a second, he didn’t say anything, just watched the crew laugh and chat around the coolers with a far-off look on his face. It was the look of a man who often observed and rarely participated.
Careful to keep a playful note in my voice, I said, “I don’t know if you know this, but I don’t bite.”
The corner of his mouth that I could see tugged up a little higher at the corner, but he didn’t look at me. “Really? I figured you for a biter. Jo for a scratcher.”
“I’m more of a pincher. Jo’s the biter—goes with her bark. Poppy’s the one that’ll scratch your eyes out.”
I earned an honest to God chuckle with that one. “A pincher, huh? Not very menacing.”
“I’ve never been good at menacing.”
“No, I figure you haven’t.” A pause while I waited for him to answer my original question. Just when I thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all, he said, “I hadn’t noticed, if I’m honest. So I guess it’s coincidence.”
“Oh,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the combination of disappointment and rejection holding hands and pitching themselves off my heart and into my stomach. “Well, good to know my presence isn’t your punishment.”
“I don’t know if it could ever be that, Daisy.”
I snuck a look at him, but his eyes were still trained on the crew. I couldn’t tell whether he was just being nice or if there was more to it.
Don’t get your hopes up, Daisy Mae.
“Thanks for helping out today,” he said. “I have a good feeling about this. I’m honored to be included.”
“We couldn’t do it without you.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“No, really. You were the only company in the tri-county area dumb enough to take it on.”
He laughed, and I reveled in the sound.
“That might be true. But what can I say. I’m a sucker.”
“You really kinda are,” I teased. “Main Street for cost, this project. I don’t know how you turn a profit, giving the milk away for free like you do.”
Something in him shifted at the joke, but I couldn’t figure out what or why.
“This town means more to me than just about anything,” he said. “I’ll do what I can to help, just like Dad did. It’s part of our legacy.”
“Legacy,” I echoed. “There’s a lot of that around here.”
“You’ve got one of your own. Blum’s Bees is woven into the fabric of this town.”
“So is Meyers Construction. Literally—you’re part of the physical makeup of the place. We just make honey.”
“Honey lasts forever too, I hear.”
“It does. It’ll outlive Twinkies in the apocalypse.”
He chuckled, still not having looked at me. Someone from the knot of people called his name, and he jerked his chin at them.
“Come on and have a beer,” I suggested. “You earned one.”
Instead of taking a step toward them, he took a step back. “I’ve got some work to do, so I’ll have to pass. But you should. And have fun.”
I nodded at him once, small. “All right. You have a good night, Keaton.”
“You too.”