Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“Hmm,” Bram rumbled, rubbing his chin. “I still think I’d be scared.”
Zachary shrugged. “That’s okay. It’s not for everyone.”
“Yeah, but...” Bram scraped his heel along the ground. “I kinda want to watch one with you. You’ve got me all curious.”
“You weren’t scared by being trapped in your house by a huge ghost,” Zachary pointed out, elbowing the inflatable. “Maybe you’re not exactly what you think.”
A slow smile spread across Bram’s lips and he nodded.
“Yeah. Maybe I’m not.”
“Okay, well.” Zachary checked his watch. “Gotta get to work. Bye.”
Bram just kept smiling, a warm, appreciative smile that Zachary almost—almost—let himself hope might be for him and not just because of what he’d done.
Chapter Nine
Bram
“You know,” Rye Janssen said, “You could one hundred percent sell these for a shitload of money.”
The chainsaw carving of the cat now stood outside the front doors of the Dirt Road Cat Shelter, looking both regal and playful—exactly what Bram had been going for.
He’d returned Carl’s brother’s chainsaw and borrowed this one from Charlie Matheson’s hardware store to do the carving for Rye.
“You think?”
“Um, hell yes. People would pay so much money for this kinda thing if you marketed it right. You could take commissions and deliver them, or sell premades. Both. Whatever you want.”
“I don’t know if I’m good enough yet. I only just started.”
Rye glared and rolled his eyes. “You’re good enough, shut up.”
Bram laughed. “Thanks. Maybe.”
He loved working with his hands. He loved making things. But he craved being useful, and he didn’t know if these really fit the bill.
“Do you do other carpentry?” Rye asked.
“Oh yeah. If you can do it with wood, I’ve done it,” he said.
He flushed when Rye raised an expressive eyebrow and said, “Do tell, sailor. I couldn’t pay you that much, so feel free to tell me to screw off, but I have a project I wanted to do this winter. I was gonna get Charlie to help me but he’s already so busy.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“I want to build cat shelters that we could put around town and in the woods. There are cats who don’t want to be indoor cats. I already started a catch-neuter-release program for them so there wouldn’t be so many kittens getting born. But even though they don’t want to be indoor cats, it gets so damn cold here in the winter, and they need shelters. Any interest in building some?”
“Yes,” Bram said instantly. “I’m in. Just tell me what you need.”
Rye snorted. “I didn’t even tell you what I could pay you yet.”
“Oh right, well. Whatever.”
“Great, that’s precisely my budget. Charlie already said he’d donate the wood and that I could use the tools in his shop. So really what I need is like a sketch or something, so I know how much wood to get him to order.”
“No problem. How many do you want?”
“Let’s start with twenty and then we’ll see?”
“On it,” Bram said, and he left smiling, thrilled to have a way to help.
* * *
That night, he knocked on number 666 Casper Road. It was the first time he’d gotten any closer than Zachary’s mailbox and he found himself expecting, for a moment, a giant ax blade to swing down between himself and the front door. That was how remote and inaccessible Zachary sometimes seemed.
But no blade fell, and the door opened to reveal Zachary Glass wearing something other than a suit.
“Oh my gosh, you have casual clothes,” Bram joked. “This is such a Superman/Clark Kent moment.”
Zachary frowned down at his outfit of jeans and a black T-shirt like he’d forgotten what he was wearing.
“You would like Superman,” Zachary muttered, but before Bram could explain that he didn’t say he liked Superman, Zachary asked what he was doing there.
“You’re an architect, right? Can you help me draw up some plans for a cat shelter?”
“We already have a cat shelter. It’s over on Crow Lane, run by that guy with the long hair who always frowns.”
“Rye, yeah. No, I mean small, cat-sized shelters that will go outside. They’re for Rye. His idea.”
“Oh. Yeah, okay. Come in.”
Entering Zachary’s house felt like stepping into a museum. Every single thing had a place and there was no clutter anywhere. Every framed piece of art hung perfectly straight, and it was immaculately clean.
“Wow,” Bram breathed.
His brother, Thistle, would love this house. Of all of them, it had been hardest for Thistle, growing up in a house of seven people. There was always chaos, always noise. No chance to keep things neat because the second one thing was cleaned up another person was messing up something else. And it wasn’t just the clutter of seven people, it was all their parents’ DIYs: the kombucha mother, the sourdough starter, the herbs drying for tea and tinctures all over the kitchen, all the indoor plants and the cats, dogs, birds, and occasional goat or chicken that were always wandering in from their smallholding.