The Whole Valley Called Her the Plain Fiancee, So She Let the Banquet Read the Deed novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Signatories

Anders tells her to take the ring if she wants to see the papers, and the Wheelwright lawyer arrives at the farm and calls the Aldahls the signatories.

My father was waiting in the kitchen with the light off.

He sat at the table in the dark with his hands folded on the oilcloth, and the only sound was the old clock above the stove.

"You went up there," Anders Aldahl said.

"I did, Pop," I said.

My father nodded slowly.

"I could hear it from the road."

"You weren't at the banquet," I said.

"I had the radio on the elevator channel," he said.

"The Chamber broadcasts the toasts, and half the county is on the phone."

He reached over and clicked on the lamp.

He was sixty-one, with a white crew cut and a face weathered by wind, and his pale blue eyes had gone wet at the corners.

"Your mother would have walked up there in the green dress," he said.

"I wore it."

"I know you did."

He rubbed his jaw.

"Tobin called.

"He watched it on somebody's phone from a set in Albuquerque."

"Is he mad?" I asked.

"He said to tell you he'd have paid money."

I laughed, and then sat down hard in the chair across from him.

The laugh turned into something else halfway out of my chest, and my father reached across the table and held my wrist until it passed.

He is not a man who says a great deal.

He says what is needed and then stops, and I have always found it restful.

"Rhys Wheelwright left me something," I said.

I put the scale ticket on the table.

My father read the seven words twice, with his lips moving slightly.

"That's his writing?" he asked.

"I think so."

"Doesn't look like a man who's pleased with himself," he said.

"No, it doesn't."

He turned the ticket over and looked at the pad number on the front.

"He came to the scale house Wednesday," he said.

"The pad was full that morning."

"I was out on the deck with the Moreno truck," I said.

"He must have walked in and walked out."

My father said nothing for a while.

The clock ticked.

"Signe," he said at last.

"I told your mother I would never let a man marry his way onto that water.

"I wrote it into the deed, and I put it in your name, and I've kept my mouth shut for nine years.

"And now you've let a Wheelwright put a ring on you."

"I'm the one who said yes," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

I thought about how to put it.

"Helene Wheelwright came to this kitchen three weeks ago with a lawyer and a bottle of her own wine," I said.

"She told you the families should be joined, and she never once said why.

"You've known her thirty years, Pop.

"Has she ever done a kind thing for no reason?"

"No," he said.

"Then I'd like to see the reason."

He looked at me, long and level.

"Take the ring, then," he said.

"If you want to see the papers, take the ring.

"Just don't sign what they put in front of you."

"That's what the ticket says," I said.

"Then somebody in that house has some sense."

He pushed back from the table, went to the stove and put the kettle on, which is what he does when he has finished a conversation.

I sat there with my mother's glasses in my hand and a blot of blue ink under my thumb.

The next morning at nine, a black sedan came up our gravel drive.

I was on the porch in my canvas jacket with a mug of coffee, after four hours of sleep.

A man in a gray suit got out of the back seat with a leather folder under his arm.

He was about fifty, soft-voiced, with the careful politeness of a man paid by the hour.

"Miss Aldahl, I'm counsel to the Wheelwright Group," he said.

"May I come in?"

"You may sit on the porch."

He glanced at the porch swing, which had a tarp over it, and decided to stand.

"Mrs. Wheelwright asked me to apologize for last night's confusion," he said.

"She wants the families to meet properly.

"There are some arrangements that will need the signatories' attention."

"The signatories," I said.

"Yourself and your father, for the family transfer."

My father had come to the screen door behind me and stood there with his arms folded.

"What transfer?" he asked.

"A formality, Mr. Aldahl," the lawyer said.

"I only need to leave this with Miss Aldahl, and she can review it at her leisure."

He held out the folder.

I did not take it.

"I'll look at anything you like," I said.

"I won't sign it, not this week, not before the wedding, and not unless I've read every page with my own glasses."

The lawyer smiled.

"Of course."

It was the smile of a man who has been told what to say if the answer is no.

I opened the folder where it lay in his hands.

It held a thick sheaf, tabbed in yellow.

The top sheet was a cover letter, and the letterhead was not Wheelwright.

It was a clean gray crest with a line of small type under it, and the line said Denver, Colorado.

I read the name of the firm once, and the street, and the suite number.

I read the first two lines of the first paragraph, which began, "In connection with the proposed acquisition."

Then he closed the folder, gently, with the flat of his hand.

"Mrs. Wheelwright would prefer you read it in her office," he said, "with counsel."

"Tell Mrs. Wheelwright I'll bring my own," I said.

When the sedan had gone, my father came out onto the porch and stood beside me in the cold sun.

"Acquisition," he said.

"Yes."

"Of what?"

"I don't know yet," I said.

"But they don't use that word for a wedding."

He put his hand on the back of my neck, as he used to when I was small and had told a lie.

"Take the ring," he said again.

"I've been taking it all night," I said.

I looked at my left hand.

The ring had come in a green leather box with a card that said, "With the family's compliments."

It was a plain gold band with a small square-cut stone, the kind of ring a man buys when he does not want to be asked about it.

I had worn it for three weeks and not once looked at it.

I looked at it now.

Inside the band, in tiny engraved letters, was a date.

It was the date of the banquet's planning meeting, a week before Helene had come to our kitchen.

Someone had bought this ring before anyone asked me.

I took it off, turned it to the light, and put it back on.

"Pop, I'm going to need the key to the schoolhouse," I said.

"What for?"

"The farm office has the old county maps.

"I want to see exactly what the river does between the Wheelwright blocks and the road."

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