I stayed beside the creek after everyone else had driven away. A stone with a familiar white vein lay upside down in the mud. I remembered Pops lifting it into place when I was small, my father holding the line while he adjusted its position. I tried to turn it over, but it was too heavy. Eventually I sat on the bank and listened to the water finding its way around the debris. For the first time since Ellen's funeral, I felt the peculiar helplessness of watching something precious disappear while strangers discussed procedure.
Then I went inside, showered, made a list, and called a lawyer. That is where the story people later called my revenge really began. Not with a threat, a locked gate, or a grand speech. It began with an engineer opening a folder and deciding to find out exactly what the paperwork said.
Mitch Kowalski had known me since sophomore year, when he talked me into joining the debate club because he needed a partner who could read an argument all the way to its weakest assumption. I had gone into engineering and he into law, but the habits remained compatible. He practiced property disputes, contracts, and the occasional criminal matter in a brick office above a pharmacy. His conference table had scratches around the edges, and his secretary knew when to bring us more coffee without asking.
He spread the photographs across the table and went quiet. For a man who talked professionally, that was a useful sign. He examined the work