The water grab was hard to swallow because I was raised patriotic. My dad fought in Afghanistan and other places he wouldn't name. Growing up, I spent Memorial Day at cemeteries, not barbecues, thinking about how freedom ain't free. I touch my heart when I sing the national anthem. I remember at least half the 4-H pledge, too, and I take it serious, something about using my head and hands for the good of my country. I believed so much in democracy and liberty and such that the first time I heard someone say that the government was going to eminent-domain our water rights, I thought it was a dangerous rumor and I said so.

My acreage had so much water attached I could never use it up, on account of my great-great-grandfather was one of the first with enough imagination to replace the eastern Colorado scrub plains with sugar beets and feed corn. I could have turned my property into a private lake, learned to jet ski. I didn't, because corn was easy to grow and a whole lot quieter than a pissy little two-stroke engine, but I could have. Then drought, panic. Public opinion was firmly in favor of stealing my water rights. Everyone who didn't own water thought that folks who did, like me, were greedy, hoarding bastards.

Smith was in charge of the grunt crew installing locks on the irrigation headgates that day. Fran's farm and mine shared a junction box, and I took my cues from her—chin up, back straight, eyes on everything, unblinking. The director of Extension, supervising Smith's crew, seemed unsettled by our presence. We could see his eyes looking our way even though he didn't turn his head.

Fran turned to me, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand. “You know this was coming? He tell you?” The men could all hear her. She meant Smith, and I could tell he knew it because he went as red as he had the first time he saw me shirtless back when we were both just sixteen.

“Seems like he should have,” I said. Smith and I had woken up together that morning, swearing at Hitchcock's incessant crowing, but out in the field he wouldn't meet my eyes. It was like I was holding the scales of justice. On one side, I put the corsage he'd gotten me for our senior prom, the earrings I knew weren't real diamonds but sparkled like they were, the promises he'd whispered, as I sobbed in his arms at my mother's funeral, that he'd take care of me. At the time, I'd taken his stone-faced solemnity for strength, but there, as he helped the government steal my water, I put it on the other side of the scale—stone face, stone heart—and I knew he and I had lost any sense of balance.

Fran frowned. “It does seem that way. Unless, of course, this is his way of telling you something else, Gracie.”