For one cracked second, Eli had thought it was good news. Not because he was stupid. Just because fifteen-year-old boys were allowed one second of stupidity before the world corrected them.
The envelope held a deed to thirty-two acres of steep mountain land Eli’s grandfather had owned above the Bitterroot drainage. There was no house on it. Just timber, rock, an old spring, and what the tax papers called an “unimproved structure.”
Worthless ground, Daryl had said. A joke inheritance from a stubborn dead man.
Tonight, after two beers and a phone call Eli wasn’t supposed to hear, Daryl had finally stopped pretending.
“The bank’s taking the house in six weeks,” he said. “I got enough to deal with. You got land. Go use it.”
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