Hundreds of acres. They’d parted with hundreds. We only had half of that left. Maybe less. And now she wanted to sell it all? Now, though, was she that desperate?
“No, momma, don’t sell. We can figure it out.” I held up my hand, ready to rebuke the both of them. I wasn’t going to lose this home. I wasn’t going to let him and his father walk away with more of it than they already had.
“What the hell am I going to do with all this land, Rosey? I can’t work it all. Don’t want to. It’s too damn much for me, and besides, I was never the farmer. That was your father. No, I wanna sell it. And I wanna sell it to Wyatt Graves.” My mother could be as stubborn as a mule when she put her mind to it.
One of the biggest agricultural farmers in the freaking state. He’d gobble this land up and then some.
They filled the soil with pesticides and destroyed the environment, and she wanted to sell to him?
“Momma—“ I started, but she shushed me, reading through the letter of proposal he gave her.
“This looks like a fair offer, Wyatt. Your daddy okay it?” I knew his father. He was a tough son of a bitch, and unless someone was getting the raw end of the deal, he wasn’t happy.
“He did. He even upped it after we got the appraisal. But what he isn’t aware of is that I increased the price again,” he winked at me and then handed the paperwork over to my mother.
I can’t believe this was happening right in front of my eyes.
She was selling it all, all my father’s hard work. Everything that was left of him.
“Where you even going to live?” I asked. Had she lost her damn mind? Was she just going to part with everything my father worked for? I wouldn’t let that happen. There was no way in this world I would allow that to happen. Not while I was still here.
I’d left this place for what I thought was greener pastures, but I was home now, and I would make sure that my father’s legacy wasn’t tarnished. What was left of it.
“Oh, I’m keepin’ the cabin and a little bit of the land. Want a garden, and a place for Sadie to run around.” She smiled. “I would never leave this place.”
I looked at her skeptically. What I needed was time. Time to convince her that she didn’t want to do this. We could work the land. Turn it back into a business. I had ideas, business strategies. I just needed her to let me formulate them and show her how we could make this place work.
I couldn’t bear to see it ripped away from us and stripped of all the good soil for some agro-business company that didn’t give a shit about the chemicals and the erosion it brought onto the area.
“You have to give me some time, okay? Let my lawyer look it all over?” I asked my mom.
“It’s a fair offer, Rosey,” Wyatt assured, but I ignored him.
“Please, mom?” I asked.
“Fine. You can have a lawyer look it over. Do what you need to do, but you aren’t going to be able to change my mind. I’m too old to work the land, Rose. I can’t do this anymore. It’s better to give it to someone who can.” All of a sudden my mother looked tired. She looked like the sixty-year-old woman she was. The lines stretching across her face, the sadness in her eyes.
This was hard for her. But I couldn’t just let her give up. Not yet.
“I just want to make sure that you are not being taken advantage of, mom,” I said as I grabbed the papers. “I’ll let you know what the lawyers say, Mr. Graves.” I had to keep it professional. I couldn’t let Wyatt get to me.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you, Mrs. Shannon.” He wasn’t looking at her, but at me. “Shannons are known to drive a hard bargain. I have no doubt you’ll get the upper hand on this one.”
My mom just smiled sweetly and looked from me to him. “That’s the idea, Wyatt.”
“I have a feeling that the two of you together will drive a hard bargain,” he said. He kept his tone light, his eyes happy.
I wasn’t sure how he could do that when all I wanted to do was smack him across the face.
He was a damn asshole, and he knew it.
I don’t know what it was about her, but the look in her eyes when I showed up lit a fire somewhere deep inside of me.
And unlike with most women, it wasn’t just lust.
She was angry, she was hurt. Good. I wanted to see her irate. Wanted to see her squirm.
She looks so damn beautiful when she’s angry.
I wasn’t cruel, not unnecessarily so, but I wasn’t going to let her off the hook. I didn’t hold grudges, but this deserved, at least, a little bit of torture.
Then she’d know one-tenth of the way I felt after she left me. Not so much as a goodbye.