He believed speed, money, and a finished project would change the moral weight of the thing. If they made it beautiful enough, expensive enough, emotionally valuable enough to them, maybe I would hesitate. Maybe I would accept a check. Maybe I would be made to feel unreasonable for defending what had been mine before they ever saw it on a real estate listing.
He did not understand the kind of man my grandfather had raised.
Harold filed a boundary affidavit with the county. He helped me submit a land disturbance complaint and a request for injunctive relief. We hired a local attorney named Ruth Ann Pell, a woman in her early sixties with steel-gray hair, practical shoes, and the conversational warmth of a locked gate. She had grown up on a farm two counties west and had been making arrogant men regret underestimating her since 1987.
At our first meeting, she read everything in silence. Brent’s attorney letter. Harold’s report. The old plats. The photographs. The certified notice. Then she looked at me.
“You want money or restoration?”
“Restoration.”
She nodded once, as if that was the answer she had hoped for. “Good. Money gets messy. Boundaries are cleaner.”
Caleb came with me to that meeting. On the ride home, he said, “She scares me.”
“Good. We’re paying her to scare other people.”
The preliminary hearing was scheduled in county court. The courtroom was small, paneled in dark wood, smelling faintly of floor polish, old paper, and coffee that had been burned for too many hours. The judge was Honorable Elaine Porter, a woman in her early sixties with sharp eyes and the tired patience of someone who had heard every possible version of “I thought it was mine.”
