He Sold My Mother's Farm, So I Got Engaged to His Best Friend novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Supper
At her late mother's supper, Lainey's stepfather announces the farm is sold and she's moving on, so she takes his best friend's hand and announces their engagement; then she sees his fiancee in her window holding her mother's wedding dress.
My stepfather sold my mother's farm in a toast, between the ham and the pie.
He tapped his glass with a fork, and a hundred and fifty people went quiet.
We were on the front lawn at Ashcraft, under the barn lights my mother strung up every September.
Every year she fed the buyers and the neighbors the night before the yearling sale opened in Lexington.
This was the first supper since she died.
"Y'all know Mary Ellen loved this night," he said.
He stood at the head of the long table in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
He was forty-nine, tall and weathered, with grey at his temples and a trainer's scarred hands.
"So she'd want you to hear it here first," he said. "Ashcraft Farm is sold."
I had a mouthful of my mother's corn pudding, and I couldn't swallow it.
"A holding company out of Louisville bought her," Boone said. "Every acre, every barn."
Down the table, Hayes Ransdell set his glass down on the cloth.
"The first of November," Hayes said, half to himself.
Boone glanced at him and nodded. "That's right. We close on the first of November."
Hayes had said the date before Boone did.
My great-grandfather had won the back pasture in a card game.
My mother had died in the downstairs bedroom thirteen months ago, with my hand in hers.
Boone hadn't been in the room.
He'd been down at the barn with a sick yearling, and I'd held her hand by myself.
Her will was four years old, from the year she married him, and it left everything to "my husband."
She'd meant to change it and ran out of time.
"And while I've got you," Boone said.
He held his hand out, and Kaylee stood up beside him.
Kaylee Strunk was twenty-four, two years younger than me, tiny and platinum blond.
She used to pour champagne for the sales company at the pavilion.
Around her throat was a strand of pearls with a gold clasp shaped like a horseshoe.
They were my mother's.
My mother wore those pearls to every supper on this lawn for twenty years.
"Kaylee and I are getting married at Christmas," Boone said. "Then we're going to Florida."
A woman from my mother's church looked straight down the table at me.
"Boone, what about Lainey?"
He didn't look at me when he answered.
"Lainey's moving on," he said. "She's got her job at the clinic and her own life now. She doesn't need her mama's barn anymore."
Kaylee touched the pearls and smiled at me with very white teeth.
"And her room's going to be my dressing room till we close," she said. "It's got the best closet in the house."
Somebody laughed.
Then a few more people did, the way people laugh when they want a thing to be a joke.
On every table sat a bottle of Ransdell's bourbon, the family whiskey from the farm next door.
On every label was a drawing of the old stone spring house in our back pasture.
My mother used to say the Ransdells had been trying to get that spring back since 1931.
I looked down the table at Hayes.
Hayes Ransdell was forty-seven, Boone's best friend for thirty years and our neighbor to the east.
He was broad in a tweed jacket, with a short silver beard and a laugh you could hear across a barn.
He had never once touched me.
He was looking right back at me, and he wasn't laughing.
I stood up.
My chair tipped over into the grass behind me.
I walked down the long table past the buyers and the neighbors.
I stopped beside Hayes and took his hand.
His fingers were warm and rough, and they closed around mine at once.
"I'm not moving on," I said, loud enough for the far end of the lawn. "Hayes and I are getting married."
Nobody breathed.
"Right here," I said. "On my mother's lawn."
Boone's face went white, then dark.
Hayes didn't blink.
He stood up slowly, still holding my hand, and looked around at all of them.
"Well, she beat me to it," he said. "I was going to ask her at Christmas."
He raised my hand and kissed my knuckles.
Kaylee's mouth fell open. "He's old enough to be your daddy!"
"I'm two years younger than your fiancé, sugar," Hayes said. "Do that math first."
This time the lawn laughed at her.
Boone set his glass down very carefully.
"Then kiss her," he said.
"You're marrying her, Hayes. Go on. Kiss her."
Hayes looked down at me.
His voice was low enough that only I could hear. "Last chance to back out."
"Don't you dare," I said.
He put one hand along my jaw and kissed me in front of a hundred and fifty people.
It wasn't a polite kiss.
His beard was soft, and he tasted like bourbon and peach pie.
My knees went loose, and I grabbed the front of his jacket to stay standing.
When he let me go, the whole lawn was whistling.
Boone stood there with his jaw tight.
"Fine," he said. "A woman sleeps under her fiancé's roof. Your things will be at Ransdell Hill tonight."
He turned and walked off toward the barns.
Hayes leaned close to my ear. "Well, darlin'. Looks like you're coming home with me."
I couldn't answer him.
I was looking past him at the house.
My bedroom light was on upstairs.
Kaylee wasn't at the table anymore.
She was standing in my window, swaying a little, holding my mother's wedding dress up against her body.
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