When Clarence first noticed the unfamiliar tire tracks cutting across the far corner of his property, he tried not to jump to conclusions.

He and Harriet had spent more than forty years on that land—raising children, holding family picnics, watching storms roll across the hills—and nothing in all that time had ever disturbed the little patch of peace they called home. So when he saw a construction crew working on the newly purchased lot next door, he waved politely and hoped for neighborly cooperation. But that hope faded the evening he placed a courteous phone call to Desmond, the new owner.

Clarence explained gently that the driveway the crew was carving out overlapped onto their land by nearly ten feet—a distance confirmed by the original survey pins his father had hammered into the soil decades earlier. Instead of concern or curiosity, he was met with a shrug disguised as confidence. “We checked satellite images. It’s fine,” Desmond said. Clarence tried again, still patient, still calm. But when Desmond snapped back, “Then sue me. I’m not changing anything,” and hung up, something shifted inside Clarence. It wasn’t anger, not exactly. It was the sting of disregard—the kind of dismissal that told him the man next door wasn’t interested in being a good neighbor at all.