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contracts, conservation easements. Crawford had them. Now, sugar pie, they look good, but any decent lawyer will spot the loopholes. Sounds like Wheeler’s Mill Estates to me.” He laughed.
    â€œThat’s a lot of money.”
    â€œI’m too goddamned old to enjoy it but I like the action. Used to love to make deals in my youth—my sixties and seventies.”
    â€œDo they know they’re competing?”
    â€œThey do.” He laughed louder. “Lord, it’s fun. Those two boys hate each other.” He wrapped his arm around her. “Come on to the house. You look peaked, honey.”
    â€œI was scared you might sell.”
    â€œCome on.”
    They went inside, drank a little sherry, and laughed at all the things people know about one another and their community when they’ve lived together a long time.
    She checked her watch. “I’d better head out.”
    â€œJanie, I still love you. I want you to know that.”
    â€œI love you, too.”
    â€œEver wonder what would have happened if we could have married?”
    â€œI’d be feeding chickens.” She laughed, then said, “Life’s strange.”
    â€œIt is that.”
    The fleeting image of the Grim Reaper jolted Sister. She said, “Peter, if I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t change a thing. You know when Ray Junior died I thought God was punishing me for our affair. Then time passed and I thought differently.”
    â€œGod doesn’t punish us for love. Only people do that.”
    â€œWell, I loved you. I’ll always love you. I guess I was a good wife but not a faithful one.”
    â€œYou were a good wife. I just wish I’d found you before Ray did. I never hated him. He was too good a man. He had his Achilles’ heel. We all do. But he was a good man.”
    â€œYou, too.”
    â€œI guess we took what we could. Maybe that’s all anyone can do.” His voice grew stronger. “My time is coming. I feel well enough but I know my time is coming. I wanted you to know I love you.”
    She kissed him good-bye and cried the whole way home.

CHAPTER 11
    The rain finally stopped Sunday night. The grays emerged from their den, making straight for the cornfield on the east side of Hangman’s Ridge. The year, rich in gleanings, kept everyone happy.
    In a few weeks the young would disperse to find their own territory, their own mates. Males might travel as far as 150 miles. Females usually remained closer to their place of birth.
    Butch and Mary Vey had a small litter this year, only four. One little gray male had been carried away by a large hawk its first time out of the den. The other was sickly and died. Inky and Comet, half-grown, stayed healthy. Both parents taught them how to hunt, what to hunt, how to dump hounds, how to cross the road. In preparation for leaving home they now hunted on their own.
    Inky traveled to the edge of the cornfield. She’d eaten so much corn, she sat down. A rustling through the corn, not the light wind, made her crouch low.
    A huge male red fox appeared, saw Inky, and said,
“Oh, it’s you.”
Without further conversation he moved on.
    Inky sat up and blinked. The red fox,
Vulpes vulpes,
as he preferred to be called, felt the gray inferior. This particular male, Target, had an especially splashy white tip on his tail. He was easily recognizable to humans, too. He’d been around for years.
    Target’s entire family, four kits, also half-grown, were out hunting, as well as his mate, his sister, and her mate. The reds—a numerous, querulous clan—kept themselves busy, so they rarely spoke to anyone else. They feared no one, not even the bobcats, mountain lions, and bears, quite numerous in central Virginia, since the Blue Ridge Mountains provided food and safety.
    As to foxhunters and their hounds, not only did the reds have no fear, they delighted in exhausting and then maiming their foe.