The Whole Valley Called Her the Plain Fiancee, So She Let the Banquet Read the Deed novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: Water Monopoly
The Aldahl farm had banked at the Pendleton office for sixty years, and my father had never once been late.
He sat at the oilcloth table that Sunday night with a ledger and a calculator and the same pencil he had used since I was a child.
He did the sum three times.
The east half-section carried a note of just under two million dollars.
It had been borrowed for the new elevator, the year my mother got sick, and my father had been paying it down ever since.
"It's three hundred and ten thousand over what I can raise in thirty days," he said.
"Without the wheat."
"The wheat's in the bin," Tobin said.
"It sells in March."
"It sells in March, and the note is due in thirty days."
My father laid the pencil down.
"They can't do this," Tobin said.
"They've done it," Rhys said.
He stood at the stove with his back to us, in the gray sweater, with his arms folded.
"It is legal.
"A note can be sold, and the new holder can call it if the terms allow.
"My mother's lawyers found a clause."
"What does she want?" my father asked.
"The water," said Rhys.
"And she cannot get the water through a marriage, so she will get it through the land.
"If your east half goes, the ditch company's easement across it goes with it, and the water has nowhere to run except through a Wheelwright pipe."
My father looked at him for a long time.
"Say it plain," he said.
"She means to put you in a position where you must sell to her," Rhys said.
"And if you will not, she means to turn the valley against Signe, so that when you sell, the valley thanks her."
"Thanks her," my father said.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Whole Valley Called Her the Plain Fiancee, So She Let the Banquet Read the Deed are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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