My Father Brought a Locksmith to Sell the Ranch I Bought
Rachel, my military lawyer, clicked her silver pen three times. She did not look up from the grid.
“We need eighty feet of overlap,” she said. “If your father comes with a crew, they will not use the main drive. They will try the gap in the north fence line where the wire is down.”
I adjusted my mother’s silver watch strap, pulling the metal links tight against my wrist. The kitchen heater rattled against the baseboard, blowing thin, dry heat across our boots.
“The north wire is fixed,” I said. “I ran four strands of fourteen-gauge barb yesterday afternoon. If they try to cut it, the tension will snap the posts.”
“He will not cut the wire himself,” Rachel said. “Arthur has never dirtied his own hands when he could pay a man twenty dollars to do it for him.”
She tapped the marker against the paper, leaving a small black stain on the drawing of the well house. She had spent three days sleeping on my cot, her briefcase open on the table and her boots sitting by the stove.
