When the last machine went out, the silence felt heavier than the engine noise.
Brent stood by his truck, looking at the crushed dirt.
“You’ll regret this,” he said.
Maybe he was talking about the legal fight. Maybe he was talking about neighborhood relationships. Perhaps I simply needed to say something that sounded like power because all the visible evidence of his power was now loaded into trailers or buried under clay.
I looked at the stone fence along the ridge.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think he will.”
For a week, there was peace of mind.
Too quiet.
No contractors. There are no landscapers. They do not crawl side by side along the boundary. Only the raw earth dries in the sun and spring is found again. She knew better than trusting her completely. Pride does not drain like water. It leaks out elsewhere.
Ten days later, I was served papers.
