“Because I’m hungry.”
For one flicker of a second, I thought I saw something like recognition in Patricia’s face from the shadow of the doorway.
Then it vanished.
Chloe stepped forward. “Mom, send him away.”
But Elizabeth held up a hand.
“No,” she said slowly. “If he wants food, he can earn it.”
She led me around the back of the property.
The field behind the house was bigger than I expected—overgrown, half-cleared, ugly work in summer heat.
“I need this cut back and turned before the storm front this weekend,” Elizabeth said. “You finish enough of it, I’ll feed you.”
I studied the field. “That’s a full day’s labor.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Then work fast.”
“And what’s the pay?”
Both daughters laughed openly.
“The drifter wants to negotiate,” Madison said.
I met Elizabeth’s stare. “Yes, ma’am. I do.”
“What do you want?”
I named a number high enough to make her blink.
She scoffed and cut it nearly in half.
We went back and forth until we landed on an amount she clearly had no intention of paying.
Then I picked up the tools and got to work.
For six hours I sweated under a punishing sun, chopping weeds, hauling brush, breaking the hard summer crust of the earth with muscles that had spent more time in tailored suits than on open land these last ten years.
Every so often I’d glance toward the house.
Chloe and Madison sat on the porch with iced drinks, phones in hand, discussing men as if wealth were a personality trait.
Patricia moved in and out of the house constantly—laundry basket, grocery bags, wood for the stove, dishwater, trash, feed buckets. She worked harder than anyone on that property, and not once did anyone thank her.
At sunset, when I was finally done enough to count the day as complete, Elizabeth told me to wait by the porch for food.
Madison came out twenty minutes later and dropped a plate in front of me without looking me in the eye.
It was barely edible. Dried-up beans, stale cornbread, and meat so gray it looked like a punishment.
I stood.
“Not hungry anymore?” Madison called with a smirk.
I turned to leave.
Then I heard a voice behind me.
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