Harold’s eyes changed again.
This time one of the farmhands noticed too.
“What stones?” the man asked.
Harold turned.
“Nothing.”
Everett reached down and picked up his grandfather’s notebook.
Harold watched the movement.
The boy tucked it inside his shirt.
Then lifted the bucket.
“I have school.”
Harold blocked his path.
“Listen to me.”
Everett stopped.
Harold leaned closer.
“This is Briggs land.”
“My father used it.”
“My father fenced it.”
“I’ve paid taxes on it for thirty years.”
Everett looked up.
“Have you?”
Harold’s nostrils flared.
“Boy—”
Everett walked around him.
Behind them, one willow cutting leaned in the mud while the swollen creek pulled at its roots.
Harold stared after him.
The farmhand who had asked about stones said quietly:
“What was that about?”
Harold did not answer.
That afternoon Everett came home from school to find three of his willow cuttings lying beside the creek.
Pulled out.
Not broken.
Removed deliberately.
He stood in the mud staring at them.
His mother called from the farmhouse porch.
“Everett!”
He did not answer.
“Everett!”
He turned.
Sarah Cole stood with one hand shielding her eyes against the low sun.
She was thirty-nine, exhausted in the particular way people became exhausted when they inherited both grief and debt at the same time.
Five months earlier, her father had died in the north pasture after a heart attack.
He had been seventy-one.
Healthy enough that morning to argue about a tractor belt.
Dead by lunch.
Sarah had inherited the farmhouse, sixty-seven registered acres, fourteen cattle, one tractor that started only when insulted correctly, two barns, a grain loan, unpaid veterinary bills, and a son who had stopped talking about his grandfather because talking made the death feel new again.
She had also inherited Harold Briggs as a neighbor.
She called again.
“Supper.”
Everett picked up the uprooted willows.
He replanted them first.
At the table, Sarah watched him eat.
He had mud in the lines beside his fingernails.
Again.
“You were at creek.”
“Yes.”
“Before school too?”
He nodded.
She sighed.
“Everett.”
“I got chores done.”
“That isn't point.”
“What is?”
“You’re going down there alone before daylight.”
“I know creek.”
“It’s running high.”
“I stay back.”
“You come home looking like you crawled through it.”
He took another bite.
Sarah looked at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Planting willow.”
“I know what you're physically doing.”
“Why?”
Everett hesitated.
He had not shown her notebook.
Not because he distrusted.
Because every time she saw something belonging to her father, she became quiet.
There were boxes in the hallway she still had not opened.
His boots remained beside mudroom door.
His coat still hung on peg.
Everett had taken the notebook from the barn desk two weeks after funeral.
He had never put it back.
His mother noticed hesitation.
“What?”