I haven’t forgotten so quickly.
For almost two years, I repeated the arguments in my head while fixing the fence, driving the tractor or was awake before dawn. I thought of better things I could have said. Sharper things. Kinder things. I wondered if I should have hired Ruth Ann before, lobbied harder before, I insisted on a joint first-week poll, called the county the first day. Anger is not strong forever. Eventually, it becomes a room in the mind where you keep walking rearranging furniture that no longer matters.
What ultimately resolved me was not the court order or the money or the departure of the Whitakers.
It was a conversation with Caleb.
He had moved to a rental in the city by then and found a steady job with a logistics company. He left on a Saturday to help replace a gate near the south cre. We worked most of the morning, sweating through our shirts, arguing over the hinge placement and eating gas station s sandwich on the tailgate at noon. After a while, he looked at the restored grass.
