Chapter 6: No

Gran didn't take the check.

She didn't tell him to put it away, either.

She looked at it in his hand for a long time.

"Come inside," she said. "I'm not doing business on a porch."

At ten o'clock on my wedding night, I sat at the kitchen table in my wedding dress.

Across from me sat the man who'd come to buy my home.

Megan sat on the counter in a borrowed sweatshirt, eating pie out of the tin with a fork.

Gran put the check face up on the oilcloth.

It lay next to the bank's envelope.

"It's a fair number," Luke said. "It's a generous number. It pays the bank in full, and you never pick another cherry in your life."

"She likes picking cherries," I said.

"I'm seventy-seven," Gran said.

I turned and looked at her.

She wouldn't look back.

"Libby," she said, "I could pay off every cent and leave you two million dollars. You could open a bakery in town. You could sleep past five."

"I don't want to sleep past five."

"I'm tired, honey."

That one went straight through me.

Gran has never said she was tired.

I reached across and put my hand on top of hers.

"What happens to the trees?" I asked Luke.

He took off his reading glasses and folded them.

"The trees aren't in Phase One."

"Where are they?"

"Phase One is a hundred and forty rooms, a spa and a marina."

"So the trees are in the dumpster."

"Some get kept for the entry drive. For the look."

Megan made a noise into the pie tin.

"For the look," I said.

"I'm being honest with you. I thought you'd prefer it."

"I do. It's very rude, but I do."

He almost smiled again.

"How much do we need?" I asked Gran. "Really."

"Three hundred and ten. By September first."

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