Disconnect, by Don Tassone

He drove to the end of a street which did not exist forty years earlier, when he was a boy.

Then it had been a field. He had trekked through it countless times, willing to risk a scolding for the thrill of reaching the creek just beyond.

More than anything else in all his life, playing in that creek — wading in the cool water, jumping from rock to rock, finding crawdads — had made him feel connected to the earth.

Now he got out of his car and looked around to get his bearings. There was no sign of the creek.