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"Here's what you do," he said. "You bring them both somewhere. James sees you with Angelica, James sees you with Zoe, the world doesn't end. Kids his age are concrete thinkers, yeah? He's working off a category. Girlfriend means a girl he likes that Dad is nice to. So show him you can be nice to both of them. Put your arm around Zoe. It'll read as natural to him, especially if you're all relaxed about it."

"And then when we get home?"

"Then you explain it." Renzo's voice was easier now. "You tell him you're friends with both women, but that Zoe is the kind of friend where you hold hands and put your arm around her. He'll get it. Kids understand more than we think when we're straight with them."

I thought about that. It was not the worst advice I'd ever received. "When did you get good at this?"

"I have seventeen siblings. You develop skills." He glanced at me. "Also I'd like to add, for the record, that my sister is a genuinely excellent human being who would make an incredible friend for you and James and nothing more than that, so you can rest easy."

"Good."

"She's also a big ole gossip, so I’ll know everything that’s going on in your life, so suck it up."

I was going to have to tell Zoe not to tell Angelica everything. Yeah, me telling Zoe who to talk to and what to say would go over great.

We reached Lot Eight, back to where we had started. I pulled out the site drawings, rolling them out over the hood of my truck and weighting the corners with a rock and my coffee thermos. Renzo came around and stood beside me. We stood shoulder to shoulder for a minute, looking at the drawing then looking at the lot, doing the back-and-forth of reconciling paper with ground that was the real work of a day like this.

"Okay," I said. "Lot Eight. The Planter house."

"Higher-end of the two," Renzo confirmed. "Five-bed, four-bath, the ones with the view corridor we're protecting on the south elevation."

I oriented myself. Found the ridge on the drawing, found it on the horizon, found the angle. "The view corridor's good. That's actually better than I expected." I traced the site with one finger, then walked off the line of the rear elevation, counting paces. Renzo walked parallel to me, tablet up.

I stopped.

Something was wrong.

I walked back, slower. Looked at my drawing. Looked at the ground. Walked it again.

"Renzo."

"Yeah."

"Where did the septic field get flagged?"

I heard him pull up something on his tablet. A pause. "Southeast corner. Forty feet off the rear foundation line, angled to clear the view corridor on⁠—"

"Come here."

He came over. I pointed at the ground without saying anything else, and watched his face as he saw it.

There were flags in the ground. Orange survey flags, the kind the civil engineer used for the septic layout. They were in the right general area. But they weren't forty feet off the rear line. They were twenty, maybe twenty-five at the outside, and they were angled wrong—cutting directly across what would be the rear yard drainage swale.

"That's not right," Renzo said quietly.

"No."

"That puts the drain field inside the setback."

"Yep. And directly in the path of the swale." I crouched down, looking at the nearest flag. It was freshly placed. The ground around the wire was barely disturbed. "This wasn't here Wednesday."

Renzo crouched beside me. When he spoke, his voice had changed. "I was here Wednesday."

"I know."

"These flags were not here Wednesday."

We looked at each other.