She was working off her court-ordered community service fifty feet from where I stood.

There was no comfort and no triumph in watching a young woman pick up trash beside a highway.

I got into the driver’s seat, turned the key, and backed out of the space without looking toward the fence again.

By two o’clock the afternoon sun had warmed the garden bed along the back wooden fence, where the old dog kennel used to be.

Clay had turned the topsoil with a heavy shovel, breaking up the hard red clay until the dirt was dark and loose.