You told me this was your house, Gary shouted, pounding on the back door in his bathrobe.
Jason came out with his coffee, confused. Dad, what are you talking about.
It says right here, Gary yelled, waving the clipboard, the property owner ordered the vehicle removed. Owner. Jason. Not you.
I can tow it, I said. It is not your house. It never was.
My mother had left the house to me alone, in a trust, with my name and no one elses, and no amount of concrete poured over her roses by a man in an RV was ever going to change whose name was on the deed.
Gary looked at his son. Then what was the twenty thousand dollars for, he said. I set down my coffee. What twenty thousand dollars.
Gary pointed a shaking finger at Jason. He told me if I paid for the concrete and gave him twenty grand, I would own half this yard.
There it was. My husband had sold his father a piece of a yard he did not own, to a man desperate for somewhere to park, and pocketed twenty thousand dollars, and paved over my mothers forty anniversaries to close the deal.
And then the tow driver cleared his throat, because there was a second envelope on his clipboard, and it was from the county.
The slab had been poured with no permit, over a utility easement, inside the setback from the property line. All three at once. The county letter ordered the concrete removed at the owners expense, and since the owner was me, and I had not poured it, the cost rolled downhill to the two men who had.
So the RV was towed. The illegal slab was broken up and hauled away within the month, at Jason and Garys expense, by order of the county. The backyard was bare dirt again, raw and ugly, and I had never been so glad to see dirt in my life. Because dirt you can plant in.
The twenty thousand dollars became a problem between a father and a son that was not mine to solve, though Gary wanted it back, and Jason did not have it, and that is a conversation the two of them are still having.
Jason and I are not together anymore. A man who paves over your dead mothers garden to sell his father a yard that was never his has told you everything you need to know about what he thinks a promise is worth.
I kept the one cane I pulled from the dumpster, the one in the coffee can on the windowsill. It rooted. That spring I put it in the ground where the concrete had been, in the raw dirt, the first of my mothers anniversaries to come home.
I am up to eleven bushes now. One a year, the way she did it. It will take me a while to get back to forty. I have time. It is my house. It always was.