“An absent soldier has no standing in a local property matter.

If you want to be somewhere else, go be somewhere else.

It makes everything simpler.”

“Go on and say the rest of it.”

“There isn’t any rest of it.

The house sits empty half the year while some man in Columbia decides what Ruth meant.” He turned his ring again.

“You’re not the daughter of this family, Diana.

You’re a tenant in a uniform.”