Grandpa's Will Said Marry Within a Year or Lose the Farm, and the Neighbor Everyone Called a Land-Grabber Had Already Deeded Me His Own Land novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Condition
The lawyer reads Walt Stiles's will aloud: Casey gets the farm only if she marries and lives on it, and Colby Henning stands up with a paper for the lawyer to read before she answers.
My grandfather left me a farm, and the lawyer read the condition out loud with the whole county listening.
There were eleven of us on folding chairs in the back room of the Pratt County Farm Bureau office.
The room smelled like burnt coffee and Pine-Sol.
A feed store calendar on the wall was still turned to April.
I sat in the front row because Grandpa always made me sit in the front row.
Walt Stiles had died twelve days earlier, on his porch swing, with his boots on and his coffee gone cold.
I was in Wichita that morning, adjusting hail claims for an insurance company.
I drove home for the funeral and never drove back.
The lawyer wore a bolo tie and read in a dry, flat monotone.
"To my granddaughter, Casey Stiles, I leave the home place, all six hundred forty acres, the cattle, and every piece of machinery on it."
Somebody in the back said, "Amen," and got shushed.
"On one condition."
The lawyer cleared his throat.
"She must be married, and living on the place, within twelve months of this reading."
"She must stay married and stay on the place for one full year after the wedding."
Nobody coughed.
"If she does not, the farm passes in full to my grandson, Travis Stiles."
I looked at the lawyer.
He kept his eyes on the paper.
I had worked that ground beside my grandfather since I was twelve years old.
In sixteen years I never once heard him say the word "married" about me.
My cousin Travis sat in the second row with his ankle on his knee, in boots that had never met a cow.
He didn't look surprised.
He looked at his mother.
My Aunt Ginny already had her hand in her big purse.
She'd put it in there before the lawyer got to Travis's name.
I noticed that, and set it aside, because I was busy being angry.
"Honey." Ginny leaned over and patted my knee. "Nobody expects you to go find a husband by Christmas."
"I wasn't looking for one."
"Of course you weren't. That's why Travis took care of everything."
She pulled out a blue folder with little colored flags sticking out of it.
"A company wants to lease the ground for solar panels, and they'll buy you out too."
"You sign where the flags are, and you walk away with more money than Dad ever saw."
She said it in one warm breath.
"You already have papers drawn up," I said.
"We just wanted to be ready, sweetheart. For your sake."
"Before today."
Her smile didn't move.
"Dad told Travis a long time ago, honey. Everybody knew but you."
I looked around the room for somebody who'd say that wasn't true.
Nobody said anything.
Then Ginny turned in her chair and spoke to the whole room in her Lions Club voice.
"And we all know who'll turn up with a ring."
Every head swung toward the back row.
Colby Henning sat against the wall in a pressed shirt, with his hat on his knee.
He was thirty-three, and he farmed the quarter section north of ours.
He'd come to three Christmas dinners at Grandpa's table and said maybe forty words in all of them.
He was also the one who found Grandpa on that swing, and he stayed until the ambulance left.
By the time I got in from Wichita, he was gone.
"The Hennings have wanted the creek bottom since 1987," Ginny said. "A Stiles girl with a deadline is the best gift they'll ever get."
Somebody sucked in a polite little gasp.
A woman leaned over and whispered to her husband.
Travis grinned at his boots.
Colby didn't say a word.
He turned his hat a quarter turn on his knee, and he looked straight at me.
I looked at the folder in my aunt's hand.
Then I looked at every face in the room, all waiting to see which story I'd choose.
In one I was the girl who sold her grandfather's land in a hurry.
In the other I was the girl who got taken by the neighbor.
Ginny had written both of them before I ever sat down.
So I stood up.
"I'm not signing anything today, Aunt Ginny."
"Casey, sweetheart, the offer expires Friday," Travis said.
"Then it expires."
I turned to the lawyer.
"I want until tomorrow to answer. Does the will let me have that?"
He looked relieved to be asked something he knew.
"It does. You have twelve months."
"Then I'll give you my answer tomorrow, and not before."
Chairs creaked as people started to stand.
Then one chair scraped louder than the rest.
Colby Henning rose from the back row and walked down the aisle with his hat in one hand.
He didn't look at Travis.
He didn't look at Ginny.
He took a folded paper from his shirt pocket and laid it flat on the lawyer's desk.
"Read this one," he said, "before she answers."
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