I did work behind a laptop. Dale had never cared much about what I did there, and I wasn’t going to explain it while he waited for me to pick up his pen.
“When did you have this deed prepared?” I asked.
He looked at Arlene. “That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
Dale shut the folder. He said I was too upset to make practical decisions and that he would come back after I’d had time to think. I told him he could leave with the check and the unsigned deed.
After they left, I put on my coat and followed the tracks from the surveyor’s pickup. They crossed the barnyard, continued through the lower pasture, and headed toward the bend in the creek. Frost-covered grass crackled beneath my boots.
In the far meadow, four wooden stakes marked a boundary I had never agreed to survey. Pink ribbons fluttered in the cold wind. I knelt beside the closest stake and read the tag attached to it.
It listed the survey company, a job number, and the date the work had been completed. I checked it twice to make sure I had read it correctly.
The surveyor had marked our land nineteen days before Luke died.
