“That’s right,” Jo started. “Meyers construction saved the day. There was no way we could revamp Main Street without your help. And now we’ve filled up more than half the closed stores, thanks to your hard work. Very generous.” Her tone indicated that she was speaking more for my benefit than his.
“We were glad to help.” He paused awkwardly, his eyes darting to his truck, which was parked almost in within his arm’s reach. “Well, I should be—”
“I said get outta here!” came an angry male voice from behind Keaton.
Keaton’s eyes narrowed as he turned to find Doug Windley arched over a homeless man sitting between building doors, one of them Doug’s liquor store. The man was an indeterminate age, with sagging jowls and shaking hands that reached for his belongings.
Keaton threw his bags in the bed of his truck and stalked toward the disturbance with the three of us in his wake.
“There a problem here?” he asked Doug darkly.
“Yeah, there’s a problem—nobody wants to be panhandled while tryin’ to get their beer, and I want him outta my doorstep. Outta my damn town.” His face was red and splotchy, his finger pointing into the distance and jabbing for emphasis.
Keaton reached to help the man up, ignoring Doug. “You all right, sir?”
“I’ll be on my way,” he said with a sandpaper voice, hurrying to pick up his dusty bags.
Keaton grabbed one. “If you don’t have anywhere to be, I’d be happy to bring you back with me, get you a hot meal and a shower.”
Stunned, the man nodded. “Yessir.”
“And if you know your way around tools, I might just have some work for you too.”
Incensed, Doug nipped at Keaton’s heels as they walked away. “It’s y’all who’re keeping all these vagrants here. It’s like feedin’ cats—they’re just gonna keep on comin’ and bringin’ their friends. These freeloaders are gonna ruin this town.”
“We get it, Doug,” he said without looking. “Pretty sure they heard you on Third Street.”
“Damn you, Keaton. Your daddy never would have stood for it.”
At that, Keaton stopped dead. Turned slowly. Took a step toward Doug, who shrank on the realization of what he’d just summoned. “If that’s what you think, you didn’t know my father at all. And if you so much as whisper an unkind word on his name, you’ll be drinking out of a straw for a month. Now, go on back inside before I change my mind and do you that favor now.”
Doug scowled but gave us his back, mumbling complaints he’d never say loud enough to make out. Because if Keaton decided to use that fist for evil, Doug really might end up shitting teeth for a year.
Keaton nodded to us as he passed, helping the wide-eyed man into his truck. He didn’t acknowledge us again until he was in the driver’s seat, offering us two fingers from the wheel before pulling away.
Jo sighed happily, elbowing me. “Well, that might just be the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, next to Grant in his tiny jogging shorts. Don’t you think, Daisy?”
“I try not to think about your boyfriend in his jogging shorts, thank you.”
They laughed and mercifully let it go since there was no lying to them.
And if they knew just how hot I thought it was, they’d never let me hear the end of it.
2
THE BUILDER
KEATON
I’d always built things.
When I was little, it was birdhouses and bug barns, carved animals and the like. When I got a little older, it was tables and shelves and woodworked art. When I was grown, I built houses and buildings just like my father.
What would start as blank planks and blocks could be made into anything I could imagine. I could build anything I wanted, shape the world the way I saw it. So I did.
I built a life.
A marriage.
Funny how quick something could fall apart that took your whole life to put together.
I glanced at the man sitting next to me as he answered my questions regarding how he’d ended up here. He’d built a whole life too, and he’d lost it all, migrating from town to town in the hopes that something would change. Lived in his truck until it broke down, then continued on foot. And he was a veteran, at that. I wondered if Doug would have watched his mouth and shown some respect if he’d known, and I hated that the answer was probably no.
When helping people became controversial, I didn’t know.
I generally stayed out of town politics and public life—work kept me busy, especially since Dad died. It was left to me to manage our family construction business with my three brothers, but they gladly let me take on the lion’s share, for which I was grateful. It gave me a worthy excuse to keep myself occupied.
When I wasn’t occupied, I thought too much. And all that waited for me there were memories. Memories of a life I once had, lost to me now. It had been more than five years since Dad died, and Mandy a few months later. Felt like yesterday. Felt like another life.
Felt like hell.
So I did my best not to feel much at all. Fortunately, I had plenty of work to do, and that kept me safer than anything else did.
By the time I reached the work yard, James—Jimmy, if I pleased—had brightened up a bit. We had facilities on site for showers and meals, so I helped him with his things and led him to our locker room. Before we parted, he held out his battle-hardened hand with shining eyes, and when I took that hand for a shake, the gratitude in his grip was louder than any words could have spoken.
We always needed people at our construction company, so finding jobs for a man like Jimmy wasn’t a problem. In fact, we’d hired a handful of vagrants, and they’d become our best workers. There was something to be said for giving somebody a hand up from rock bottom, and I wanted to help however I could. It was a family tradition, my father going well out of his way to help the people of our town however they needed, sometimes to our detriment. But we’d been a founding family of this town, and as such, Dad always said it was our responsibility to help whenever we were able.
And as for these folks who’d lost so much, I had even more compassion. That loss was too familiar to ignore.
I made my way out and across the gravel yard to our offices, wondering what happened to our town. A few years ago, things were all right. Maybe we didn’t always agree, but people were still polite enough to keep their politics to themselves. Never would Doug have run outside like he did and insult me like that. Something had changed. A line had been drawn in the sand, and everyone had chosen a side. Us and Them.
I hated everything about it.
When I pulled open the door, it was to a rush of cold air and the sound of Wu-Tang. Behind the front desk, Millie wore a grim, annoyed sort of look, her reading glasses perched on her nose and the chain on which she wore them swinging as she typed. Because my brothers were rapping along to “C.R.E.A.M.” with nearly seventy-year-old Millie in the middle, trolling her in the ultimate.
If I still knew how to laugh, I would have. The best I could muster was mild amusement.
Carson stood between the twins, Cade and Cole, who were the babies only in name. There weren’t many differences in the three of us, all near the same height—tall—and the same build—broad—but I could pinpoint a few. Like how Cade and Cole had blue eyes like Mom where Carson and I had dark eyes. Though Cade and Cole were identical, they could be told apart by Cade’s beard and longer hair, and Cole’s smile was more cavalier than anyone’s had a right to be. Carson was the tallest by a fraction of an inch, and he wielded that fact like Excalibur.