Chapter 8
Did they all know? Had Valerie told? Didn’t seem so. Still, Mason went about his chores with a strangeness he battled to shake. Cut off from the other workers somehow, as he sweated, while he dug and tilled a new field with them.
They long ago desecrated the croquet lawn. Now they ripped strange blobby hedges out of a formal garden to one side of the house. Mason worked with the other gardeners but managed to keep to himself. No one appeared to notice or care. Mason wasn’t renowned for his ability to converse. He helped with hard labour like this when not running for supplies because he had the muscle, and the work kept him from thinking too much.
When a woman came by with refreshments, stopping to kiss the man in her life to a chorus of approval and amusement, Mason didn’t kn
