That evening, Grant explained the plan, and it was better than any confrontation. He had spent his lunch break reading up on our state’s property law, and he had found the exact thing Warren never expected a neighbor to know. Overhanging branches, and the fruit that falls from them, are governed by clear rules. In our state, fruit that falls naturally onto a neighbor’s property, from branches overhanging that property, legally belongs to the owner of the land it falls on. Warren had it exactly backward. Every apple that dropped into our yard was ours, not his. He had stood at that fence and made two small children hand over property that legally belonged to them, and he had called them thieves for having it.

But Grant was not the type to simply shout the law over a fence. “We’re going to do this properly,” he said, “so he can never do it again.” First, he sent a calm, documented letter, drafted with a lawyer friend, formally notifying Warren of two things. One, that the fallen apples were our legal property and his demand had been baseless. And two, that under the same property law, we were within our rights to trim every branch overhanging our fence back to the property line, at his expense if it damaged our shed, which it had. Then Grant told me the second half of the plan, the part involving the apples I was no longer allowed to rake. “Leave them,” he said, smiling. “Every single one. Because this year, Warren is going to learn exactly whose apples they are.”