Chapter 8: The Man Next Door

I took the back fence line to Keller Run at dusk on Thursday, because I could not stand another minute in my father's yard.

It was a mile across the ridge pasture, down a deer path I'd walked a hundred times as a girl.

At the bottom, a plain white barn stood under three oaks, with a lamp lit over the tack room door.

Jude was sitting on an overturned bucket outside it, with his boots stretched out and a bottle of beer in each hand.

"You came the old way," he said.

"How do you know it's old?"

"Because only somebody who grew up on that ridge knows the gap in the wire."

He held out the second bottle.

I took it and sat down on the step beside him, close enough that our knees touched.

For a minute we watched the light go purple over the pasture.

"My father hated mine," he said.

"The two farms fought over that fence line for thirty years.

"I figured when he died I'd get a peace treaty.

"Instead I got Warrick Redmond's lawyers at my door every spring, offering to buy the ridge."

"He wants your water."

"He wants everything."

He turned the bottle in his hands.

"I saw the photograph in the hall at the dinner," he said.

I stopped with the bottle halfway to my mouth.

"The one on the staircase wall," he said.

"The Queen with the silver crown, holding a little girl on her saddle.

"She's maybe nine.

"She has a front tooth missing, and she's laughing at something off the frame."

"Jude."

"The girl has your mouth."

He didn't say it unkindly.

He said it the way you say something you've been carrying in a pocket for two days, and are afraid of dropping.

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