My Husband Exiled Me to the Ranch of My Dreams novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Good Cups

Dina came up the lane on Friday at two, in the white rental SUV, with a tan sedan following at a polite distance.

Jed's two hired men stopped what they were doing in the yard.

Jed himself stood on the porch with his arms folded and the dog at his knee.

I had set a table in the kitchen with my grandfather's chipped cups.

Dina came in carrying a wicker basket and a box of china.

"I said I'd bring the good ones," she said, and laid out two pale cups with gold rims.

"Thank you. I'll use mine."

She sat across from me, smoothing her skirt.

Through the window, the man in the quilted vest got out of the sedan and leaned on the fender.

"I'll be brief," Dina said. "I'm a mother. I've never wanted to hurt you."

"Then don't start now."

"Six hundred thousand dollars, Audra. For the parcel behind the barn, and the water, and the ground the old well sits on. You keep the house and the pasture and a hundred acres around it."

"You'd leave me the house."

"I'd leave you something. You'd walk away with a great deal more than a forty-year-old bookkeeper has any right to expect."

"What happens if I don't?"

"On the twenty-first, I take it all. Every acre." She said it with a small, kind smile. "Redemption is two hundred and fourteen thousand now. I bought the seventh year's certificate on Monday."

"I know. Two hundred and fourteen thousand, four hundred and six dollars."

Her smile stayed where it was, but her eyes changed.

"You looked at the county site."

"I've looked at it every morning."

"You can't possibly have that. Curtis said the accounts were tied up."

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