Easton was a lovely town. The only run-down building in the town of 11,000 was a brick building that took up two blocks next to Dresden’s home. It was a pottery factory in the late 1960s and closed its doors after going bankrupt in the late 1990s. It sat vacant with scraps of plywood over its windows. The homes in Easton were far from dilapidated. Even if some of the homes were old, nobody could tell. Homeowners took pride in exterior maintenance and, really, most of the perfectly-landscaped front yards looked like they came straight from a Sears catalog. Mayor Bago used the tagline, “The grass is always greener in Easton,” to win the last election, and for good reason. Easton was sure to blossom and double in size over the next few years. It was surrounded by farmland and empty fields, but there were rumors that big-time technology companies were scouting those fields as building sites for new branches of their businesses. Easton, surely, would soon be thriving. “So I’ll take the first check,”
