They Sold Me, Then My Dead Mother Came to Take Me Home novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Saturday Week

In front of the ranch hands, Thea sets a deadline for Mara's signature, then tells her Jonas has known she was alive for two years.

The man who got out of the truck was Jonas Makinen.

He did not run, because he never ran, but he crossed the yard faster than I had ever seen him cross it.

Three ranch hands climbed out of the truck bed behind him.

They stopped at the edge of the gravel and took their hats off, one after another, to a woman none of them knew.

I was still hanging off my own doorframe with both arms.

My mother looked at me there and did not offer her hand again.

"Mara," Jonas said.

His voice was low and rough, the way it always was.

"Are you hurt?"

"I'm standing," I said. "Mostly."

He nodded once, and his hand came up toward my elbow and stopped in the air.

It was the rule he had kept since my first week here, that he did not touch me unless I said.

I did not say.

He lowered the hand and turned to my mother.

He was six foot two and she came up to his shoulder, and she looked up at him with perfect calm.

"Mr. Makinen," she said. "You have your father's height."

"Ma'am, you're on my land."

"I'm having a private conversation with my daughter."

"You're having it in front of my crew."

"Then they will learn something about the family they feed their cattle beside."

She glanced at the three men.

The oldest of them shifted his weight.

"They can listen," she said. "I've nothing to hide. I am Thea Eckhart. I was told I was dead, and I am here to take my child home."

"Told by who?" Jonas said.

"By the people who needed me gone."

The old hand muttered something under his breath.

I could not stop the heat that climbed my neck.

Every man on that ranch knew who I was.

They had carried groceries to my step for seven years and never once asked what I was doing in a trailer at the edge of a cattle ranch.

Now they were hearing the answer from a stranger in cashmere.

"She's not going anywhere with you," Jonas said.

"Is that for you to say?"

"It's for her to say. She said it."

"Did she?" My mother turned her head toward me. "Say it again, darling. Louder, so the gentlemen can hear you."

"No," I said. "I'm not going."

My voice cracked on the second word.

She let the silence sit.

Then she opened her handbag and took out a folded sheet of heavy paper.

"My son has filed a petition with the county," she said. "It says that Mara is an adult who cannot manage her affairs. It names me as her guardian."

"Corbin filed that?" I said.

"Corbin is very capable. He has your father's head for paper."

"I can manage my affairs. I have a hot plate and a cane."

"Can you manage forty percent of Eckhart Timber?"

Nobody spoke.

The old hand looked at his boots.

"I don't want it," I said.

"It isn't yours to refuse. It vests on Saturday week, and if you are not fit to hold it, it goes to the person who looks after you."

"You," I said.

"Me, as your mother."

"You're not my mother. My mother has a headstone."

For the first time her smile slipped.

It was only a flicker, there and gone, and the hands would not have seen it.

I saw it because I had spent seven years looking at nothing else.

"I'll have the paper left with you," she said. "I'll be at the Eckhart house until Saturday week. After that I won't be so patient, and neither will your father."

She laid the sheet on the top step.

Jonas did not touch it.

She was already turning away when she stopped.

"Jonas," she said pleasantly. "You didn't tell her."

"Ma'am."

"It was a courtesy, I'm sure. A man in your position doesn't like to complicate things." She looked at me again. "He's known I was alive for two years, Mara. I sat across a lawyer's desk from him. We shook hands."

I did not look at Jonas.

I looked at the paper on the step, and I looked at her white glove going back on, and I looked at the driver holding the car door.

"That's not true," I said.

"Ask him."

She walked back down the gravel without hurrying.

The car door shut.

The engine pulled away, and the dust followed it down the road, and every man in the yard stayed exactly where he was.

I turned my head.

Jonas Makinen was looking at the ground, and his jaw was tight.

He did not say it was a lie.

"Jonas," I said.

My arms had started to give.

"Tell me she's lying."

He lifted his eyes, and they were the eyes I remembered from the porch the night I was brought here.

"Mara," he said. "Let me get you to a chair first."

"Tell me."

"I can't," he said. "I'm sorry."

My arms gave out.

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