Dad spaced them carefully.
I asked why.
“If people can’t see the mess,” he said, “they can’t complain about the mess.”
“That’s your landscaping philosophy?”
“That’s my entire philosophy.”
The trees grew.
So did the business.
By the time I took over Mercer Marine Works, the pines had become a thick green wall.
They blocked most of the equipment yard from the ridge.
They softened noise.
They caught dust.
They provided shade.
Birds nested in them.
Dad never called them a screen.
They were simply the trees.
When he died four years before the Silver Ridge dispute, I kept them exactly as they were.
Not because I thought every tree was sacred.
I had cut plenty of trees in my life.
Land changes.
Businesses expand.
Storms happen.
But those twelve pines were tied to memories in a way property records could not show.
There was one Dad leaned against every morning when we took lunch outside.
Another had a scar near the base where I backed a trailer into it at nineteen.
He made me repair the trailer before telling me he had seen the whole thing.
One stood where my mother used to park when she brought us food during long dock-building summers.
Those details mattered to me.
They did not matter to Vanessa Caldwell.
Silver Ridge was built on higher ground west of us.
The development came in phases.
The first section barely affected my property.
Then the developer purchased additional acreage and built the lake-facing section.
Six large homes went up along the ridge.
Stone façades.
Tall windows.
Three-car garages.
Outdoor kitchens.
Covered patios.
Climate-controlled wine rooms.