The Divorce He Asked For, The Empire I Took Away novel · Chapter 28 of 32
Chapter 28: The Empire
It rained the second Thursday in January.
The courthouse steps in Santa Rosa were the same steps where Dex had told me to pick twelve acres in a heat wave.
Now they were slick and gray, and there were about forty people standing on them under umbrellas.
Most of them were mine.
The growers who'd picked by headlamp. The family with the rebuilt barn. The old grower with the crew cut, in a rain slicker older than me.
The five men from the cave stood in a row on the top step, like they had at the back of the auction.
My number was written on my palm in Sharpie.
Augie had written it there that morning, at the kitchen table, under where the safe combination used to be.
It was every dollar I could put my hands on.
Half the auction lot, after the housing fund took its half.
A loan from the farm bank in Healdsburg, against the twenty-eight acres of younger vines.
Never the Old Block.
And the rest was in a manila envelope in my coat, from the people standing on the steps.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of The Divorce He Asked For, The Empire I Took Away are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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