Chapter 5: Brick by Brick

The old farmhouse wasn't just falling apart—it was dramatic about it. Floorboards creaked like they were whispering secrets. Pipes groaned like ghosts in the walls. The barn leaned so far left it looked like it was trying to escape.

Jasmine rolled up her sleeves anyway and got to work.

She started with the porch. One rotten board at a time. The kids pitched in where they could—handing her tools, holding beams, mostly complaining about splinters.

Sol, only five, tried to swing a hammer once. After he clipped his thumb, he stuck to handing her nails in silence. Jasmine didn't have to ask twice. Raine, age nine, wanted to paint everything lavender. Cameron, the serious one, debated structural integrity like he'd grown up reading blueprints. Robin, always quiet and watching, started sketching renovation layouts on old receipts and grocery lists. Taylor and Skyler, both twelve, used yard work as an excuse to fight. More wrestling than raking—but Jasmine counted it as exercise.

They were trying. All of them.

Jasmine wasn't new to tools. Carpentry had been a hobby once, back when she needed something that didn't involve blood. It came back faster than she expected. What she didn't know, she asked Max. What Max didn't know, she found on YouTube.

She learned how to mend fences—literal and otherwise. How to rotate soil. How to curse at broken gutters and balance a household ledger without making her head spin.

She replaced the floorboards herself. Rewired the porch light. Repaired cracked windows using salvaged panes from the junkyard. Every fix made the house feel less like a stranger's leftover and more like something she owned. Something she was shaping.

The bigger jobs required help. Not from ads or big companies—Jasmine didn't want her name on anything official. So she asked Max.

He introduced her to a few people who didn't ask questions. A retired contractor who only worked weekends. A teenage plumber with a part-time gig and no interest in paperwork. A widow who ran the hardware store and had a soft spot for women with scars and too many kids.

They didn't trust her at first. She didn't blame them. But Jasmine paid cash, on time, and worked just as hard as anyone she hired. That earned her a kind of quiet respect.

By the end of the first month, the water ran clear. The roof didn't leak. The barn had a new latch. The porch swing no longer screamed like a dying crow.

Cameron had already claimed the detached garage before anyone else thought to. He spent every spare hour there, elbows-deep in rusted parts and half-dead engines. Jasmine found him under the hood of a junked-out pickup one afternoon, grease on his jaw, muttering to himself.

"You fixing that or marrying it?" she asked.

He smirked. "Can't it be both?"

She left him to it. Cameron needed things to fix. Things to focus on. Control helped him breathe.

Jasmine learned the land as she worked it.

Chickens came first. She bartered with a neighbor—fixed a busted gate in exchange for a coop and six hens. Sol named them all after comic book heroes. Eggs came within weeks. Then goats. Then a stubborn cow that kicked like a bouncer and refused to be milked without a fight.

Farming wasn't like killing. No clean lines. No fast results. Just dirt, sweat, and stubborn living things that didn't follow orders.

She hated how much she liked it.

The kids settled into their own rhythms. Taylor built fencing with surprising precision. Skyler rigged a scarecrow out of old denim and a mannequin head. Robin cataloged every weed on the property and turned an old bathtub into a tomato garden. Raine hung wind chimes along the porch and made a fort in the hayloft. Sol ran races with the chickens.

They fought, joked, got frustrated, tried again.

And Jasmine—she let herself feel proud. Just a little.

Money stayed tight. But Jasmine knew how to trade.

She offered self-defense classes to the women's group at the local church. Bartered one-night security gigs for fresh produce and meat. Max introduced her to a rancher dealing with a "pest problem"—which turned out to be a pack of bored teenage thieves. Jasmine resolved it without bruises or gunshots and walked away with a freezer full of beef and a small wave of local gratitude.

People didn't trust her yet. But they respected her.

Spring edged into early summer. The land bloomed in golds and greens. The wind carried pollen, not smoke. The kids started calling it "home" without even realizing they were doing it.

One evening, Jasmine sat on the back steps with a chipped mug of cold coffee in hand.

Cameron tinkered with an old four-wheeler in the driveway. Raine hung more chimes. Sol zoomed around in circles with a superhero cape trailing behind him. Taylor and Skyler were mid-argument about who could outrun a horse. Robin sat under the porch awning, sketching it all—silent, thoughtful, steady.

Jasmine rubbed her aching hands. Dirt under her nails, scratches across her arms. Her back hurt. Her knees ached.

The sun dipped behind the hills, painting everything amber and soft.

And she felt… content.

She had kids, a half-finished house, and a land that hadn't rejected them.

They were building something here.

Brick by brick. Fence by fence. Trust by trust.

Jasmine looked at her hands—scarred, calloused, still steady. Pride welling up inside her.