It wasn’t addressed to me. It was meant for her friend Gentry, whom she’d been texting in the same app, and she’d tapped the wrong conversation. I knew because a second later another message popped up: OMG wrong chat. Ignore.

Thirty seconds later, both messages were deleted.

I’d already taken the screenshot.

I read it three times under the fluorescent office lights. The cubicle walls were gray. A copier hummed. Somewhere down the hall, a man laughed at a joke about fantasy football.

He doesn’t have the nerve.

My jaw tightened. Something cold and orderly settled behind my breastbone, like the bubble in a level coming to rest.

It had never been a misunderstanding. She knew I’d said no. She’d simply decided my no was a negotiating position, something to be worn down, outvoted, or crowded out. She’d planned for fifty people because she believed fifty people were a wall I wouldn’t have the nerve to push against.

I printed the screenshot on the office printer and took the sheet out of the tray while it was still warm. I folded it once and put it in my shirt pocket.

At lunch, my coworker Shaw showed me the group chat.

Shaw Okonkwo is thirty-five, a rodman on my crew, stocky and cheerful, with a laugh like a screen door banging. His cousin Priya is married to my cousin Dev, which is how he knows my family’s business. We were eating sandwiches on a tailgate in a gravel lot outside a new subdivision when he said, “Gideon. You’re not in the chat, are you?”

“What chat?”

He handed me his phone.

It was a group thread called VOSS FAMILY COOKOUT!! with a cartoon hamburger next to the name. It had eighty-one members, and I wasn’t one of them. I scrolled up.

Naomi had posted my full street address on Tuesday, a day before she ever texted me, with a map pin.

Cookout at Gideon’s new place Sat + Sun! Pool will be open! Bring chairs, coolers, kids. Park on the street. Use the side gate!

Forty-three people had reacted with thumbs-up, palm trees, and rows of hearts. A cousin I hadn’t seen in eight years had written: So excited!!! Can’t wait to see the new house!

I handed the phone back.

“You okay?” Shaw asked.

“I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

“Property lines.”

He nodded slowly, with the grave understanding of a man who knew exactly what I meant. “Ah.”

I called my attorney that afternoon.

Elliot Brandt had handled my divorce. He was fifty-four, tall and mild-mannered, with half-moon glasses and a collection of little ties with anchors on them. His office was on the second floor above a dry cleaner in Rockford and always smelled of coffee and steam. He’d charged me a fair rate and sent me a bottle of whiskey when the divorce decree came through.

“Gideon. Everything all right?”

“My sister’s planning to bring fifty-two people onto my property on Sunday. After I told her no.”

A pause. I heard a pen start moving.

“Did you tell her no in writing?”

“Text. ‘Not happening’ and ‘My property, my decision.’”

“Saved?”

“Screenshots. And one more thing.” I read him the message meant for Gentry.

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