Because every time I look at this place, I don’t just see what we built, I see what we found.
Lane’s already there when I pull up, leaning against the side of the house with a coffee in his hand. His eyes are tracking the crew without looking like he’s paying attention.
Dusty’s sitting on the tailgate of his truck, one boot hooked on the bumper, talking low with Wade and Luke like they’ve been here a while already.
My brothers don’t look up right away because they don’t need to, they know I’m here, that’s how it’s always worked between us.
“What’s left?” I ask, stepping up onto the porch.
“Finish trim, touch up paint, couple fixtures inside,” Luke says, glancing over his shoulder. “Another week, maybe less.”
Wade looks up then, squinting against the morning light. "It's looking good, Jace."
Coming from Wade, that's a heavy duty compliment.
I built the room sizes bigger than I needed for one person. Somewhere in the future I want a family, so I planned for it and it’s looking like that time might be now.
I didn't examine that too closely at the time.
But I'm examining it now.
"Couple more days," I say, more to myself than to Wade.
He comes to stand beside me, arms crossed, looking at it the same way I am.
"You know what you're doing?" he asks.
And I know he's not talking about the house.
“Yes,” I say, but my attention’s already drifting past the work.
Back to the ground.
Wade notices it first.
“Still thinking about it,” he says, not a question.
“Hard not to.”
He nods once, like that’s all the answer he needed.
Because it is, we all saw it, every last piece.
The first time was supposed to be nothing, just post holes, dirt, rock, and whatever the land’s been holding onto for the last hundred years.
Then the shovel hits metal, not scrap or something you toss aside and keep digging, but something placed, deliberately.
We pulled out a rusted box first, edges eaten through but still holding shape, buried deeper than anything natural settles. Inside was wrapped tight in oilcloth, the kind that keeps moisture out if you know what you’re doing.
Inside that were ledger pages, numbers, names, payouts that didn’t match any official record I’ve ever seen.
“Fixed rides,” Dusty mutters from the tailgate, like he’s still finishing the thought from last night.
I nod once.
“That wasn’t all,” Lane adds quietly.
It wasn’t, so we kept digging, because we had to, and the more places we dug the worse it got.
