Trevor stood in the cold rain, looking older than his thirty-six years, and for the first time in months he was not looking at Bethany. He was looking at me, and at the cabin, and at the twelve acres of land that had my name and no one else’s on the deed. “Bethany,” he said slowly, “stop.” She spun toward him, certain she had misheard. “Excuse me?” He wiped the rain from his face. “This is my mother’s property. Not ours. Not your parents’. Hers. She bought it with thirty-nine years of night shifts, and we decided, we told her, that we were moving your parents onto it without ever once asking. That was wrong. I knew it was wrong when I agreed to it, and I said nothing because it was easier.”

Bethany’s mouth opened, but Trevor kept going, the words spilling out of a man who had been holding them back for a long time. He turned to face his wife fully, there in the downpour, with her father still standing helplessly beside a trailer that would never cross that trench. “She took my truck off her insurance and my phone off her plan, and you know what? She was right. I’m a grown man who let his mother pay his bills while my wife planned to take her land. I’ve been embarrassed to look at myself for two days.” Bethany stared at him as though he were a stranger. Her father, soaked and defeated, called out from the road asking what they were supposed to do now. And for the first time, Trevor answered before Bethany could. “You’re supposed to go home,” he said. “All of you.”