“Your father used that exact same pen when we built the county library in eighty-nine,” he said.

He didn’t wait for an answer and turned back to his desk to print the weekly payroll sheets for the eight site workers.

I stepped out into the gravel yard and listened to the haul truck idling near the tool shed.

The air smelled of fresh diesel exhaust and wet stone.

I drove the Ford back down the lake road at one o’clock, past the empty front gate where the foreclosure tag had hung three weeks before.

Christopher Pembroke was sitting in one of the green wooden porch chairs when I pulled into the brick circular drive at two o’clock.