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 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Date on the Check

Travis and Ginny walk into the kitchen with a buyout and a $50,000 check, and Casey sees it is dated three weeks before her grandfather died.

Nobody knocked.

The kitchen door swung open, and Travis walked in with his keys still in his hand.

Aunt Ginny came in behind him carrying a store-bought pie.

"Family meeting," she announced.

Then she saw Colby at the end of the table, and the pie stopped halfway to the counter.

"Well," she said.

"Evening, Ginny," Colby said, and stood up.

"This is a family meeting," she said again, slower.

"He's staying," I said. "He's at my table."

Travis wasn't listening.

He crossed the kitchen and pulled out the chair at the head of the table.

Grandpa's chair.

It had a cushion in the seat the shape of him, and nobody had sat in it since the funeral lunch.

Travis sat down and spread his hands on the oilcloth.

Colby didn't say anything.

I watched a muscle move in his jaw, and then I watched him decide not to let it.

"Case, I'll make this easy," Travis said.

"Prairie Wind will pay one point two million for the place. Plus ten percent of the lease for the first ten years."

"For six hundred forty acres."

"For a farm you don't want."

"Travis, you don't know what I want."

"You left at eighteen and never looked back."

"I came back."

"For a funeral," he said, pleasantly.

That one went in under the ribs, because it was partly true.

He slid a long envelope across the oilcloth.

"That's good faith, so you know we're serious. Fifty thousand, today. The rest on Friday when you sign."

Ginny put the pie down and came around to my side of the table.

"Sweetheart, I know it's a lot with Dad barely in the ground. But think about your life."

She laid a hand on my shoulder.

"You don't know what a man will do once he's on the title."

"He isn't on the title, Aunt Ginny. I am."

"Ask yourself why any man hands over a quarter section."

"I did. He said he didn't want you telling the county he was after the farm."

Ginny's hand went light on my shoulder.

"Well, I never said that."

"You said it at two o'clock this afternoon. With a microphone voice."

Travis cleared his throat.

"Nobody's asking you to marry anybody, Case. Sign Friday, take the money, buy a house in Wichita. Everybody wins."

"Everybody who isn't me."

"You'd have a life."

"I have a life. It has cows in it."

Colby made a small noise behind me, and it might have been a cough.

I took the envelope.

I wasn't going to open it.

I only wanted something to do with my hands.

I was figuring out how to throw my cousin out of my grandfather's chair without a scene.

The flap wasn't sealed.

A cashier's check slid halfway out into the light of the kitchen.

Pay to the order of Casey M. Stiles.

Fifty thousand and 00/100 dollars.

The name in the corner said Prairie Wind Energy.

I read the date at the top.

I read it again, because there had to be a typo.

April 4.

"Travis."

"Hm?"

"Grandpa died on the twenty-fifth."

"I know when he died, Case."

"This check is dated three weeks before that."

Nobody said anything.

Ginny took her hand off my shoulder.

"Banks print dates when they print them," Travis said. "It's a clerical thing."

"A bank printed a check payable to me, for my farm, while Grandpa was still sitting on his porch swing drinking coffee."

"Case."

"I wasn't the owner on April 4. I'm not the owner now. So who was Prairie Wind buying it from?"

Travis opened his mouth.

Ginny put her hand on his arm, and he shut it again.

Her smile hadn't gone anywhere.

It just wasn't warm anymore.

"We wanted to be ready," she said. "For the family. In case."

"In case of what?"

Colby had been standing by the stove with his arms folded.

He didn't raise his voice.

"Ginny," he said. "Finish that sentence."

She didn't.

I folded the check in half along its crease and pushed it into my shirt pocket and buttoned the flap.

"I'll hang on to this."

"That's company money, Case."

"Then they can ask me for it."

I stood up.

"Travis, you're in my grandfather's chair."

He looked at the chair, and then at me.

For a second I thought he'd make me say it twice.

He stood up slowly, brushing his pants like the seat had been dirty.

"You'll be sorry about this tone," Ginny said at the door.

She'd collected the pie, and her voice had gone back to sugar.

"I'll see you at church Sunday, honey. Everybody will."

They went out.

The screen door clapped behind them, and two engines started up in the yard.

I stood there with my hand flat over my pocket.

Behind me, Colby pulled out Grandpa's chair, looked at it, and pushed it back in without sitting.

"Twenty-one days," he said quietly.

"I can count."

"I know you can."

I could feel the check through the cotton, one small square of paper.

Whatever Travis and Ginny had planned, they'd started planning it while Grandpa was alive.

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