The newly completed cedar fence, solid and smelling of fresh sap, blocked my path like a wall.

I stood there behind the vibrating mower, looking at the pristine cedar boards that stretched from the back corner of Tyler’s house all the way to the edge of my garden shed.

A fence like this, custom-built and sturdy, easily cost eighty-two hundred dollars.

My mind kept returning to the cost of a proper county survey, which my friend at the library told me would run about nine hundred and fifty dollars.

If I paid that money, would the surveyor find that the new fence was actually sitting on my property?

The silence after I shut off the mower engine was heavy, broken only by the sound of a car door shutting next door.

Tyler was home.

He was lifting two plastic grocery bags out of the back of his clean SUV when I walked over to the edge of his asphalt driveway.

“Hi, Tyler,” I said, keeping my voice level and slow.

“I wanted to talk to you about the new fence.

It seems to have come quite a bit over onto my lawn.”

Tyler did not look up immediately; he adjusted his grip on the bags and jingled the loose change in his pocket, a fast, metallic rhythm.

“Joan, great to see you.

The fence is top-notch, isn’t it?