“I want to make the garden bigger,” he said. “On my side. If that’s okay with you. My mother says if we put in pole beans along the property line, we can double the yield. And she’s got opinions about squash.”
My father looked out the window at the torn-up lawn.
“Your mother’s right about the squash,” he said.
They put a gate in the fence that fall. A real one. Wooden, with an iron latch. Brent built it himself. He’s terrible with tools. It took him three weekends and he hit his thumb with a hammer so many times it turned purple. But he built it.
It hangs a little crooked. Dad says that’s how you know it’s handmade.
June moved in with Brent in November.
She didn’t want to. She fought him on it for weeks. She said she didn’t want to be a burden. She said she had her own life. She said she liked her little apartment by the Dollar General.
