“It was forty-two hundred dollars for four hundred feet of chain link,” Kim said.

“Worth every single nickel,” Ron said from the grill.

Nate reached down and picked a piece of crushed gravel out of the lawn.

He tossed the rock over the top rail into the ditch along the alley.

“It looks sturdy,” Nate said.

Nobody answered him while the charcoal popped under the meat.

Three months later, Jeff moved his sectional sofa into a three-bedroom ranch house on Birch Lane.

The new concrete driveway in the subdivision glowed bright white in the four o’clock sun.