He Ditched Our Wedding, I Married His Wealthy Uncle novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Duchess on a Banner

Jody finds Duchess's face on a charity page that raised $3.1 million she never saw, and a notice says Darlene wants Ramsey removed as trustee before the refuge's lease vote.

I watched it four times sitting on the edge of my bed.

Dylan in the arrivals hall with his hand on his heart.

Me saying "No."

Then the kiss, cut so it looked like I'd run from one Gannett straight into the other.

By the fourth time it had two hundred thousand views.

The first comment said, "Girl went from the nephew to the UNCLE."

The second said, "Uncle has money though."

I pulled on my boots and went to work.

Ramsey was already in the barn.

He was in yesterday's jeans and a Pine Hollow sweatshirt he'd stolen off a hook, mucking Bunny's stall like it was any Sunday.

It was Saturday.

He'd done Duchess and Mabel already.

"You saw it," he said.

"I saw it."

"I'm sorry."

"Hand me the hose."

He handed me the hose.

Bunny took his cap off his head and wore it on her trunk.

He let her.

My phone rang at seven.

It was a retired schoolteacher from Albany who'd sent us twenty dollars a month for five years.

She sent a card on each elephant's birthday.

"Jody, honey, I'm canceling," she said. "I'm so sorry."

"Is it the video?"

"What video? No. It's the Tusk & Trail page. They're bringing your elephants home. They raised three million dollars."

I turned off the hose.

"Bringing them home from where? They're home."

"It says right on the page. I just think, if they've got three million, you don't need my twenty."

She hung up before I could answer.

It rang again.

A dentist from Saugerties, monthly, canceling.

A couple in Ohio who'd named their dog Mabel, canceling.

I sat down on a hay bale and searched it.

Tusk & Trail.

The page was beautiful.

Gold letters across the top: BRING AMERICA'S LAST CIRCUS ELEPHANTS HOME.

Under them was Duchess.

My Duchess, head-on, trunk curled, the torn left ear you could see from space.

The edge of our red barn was cropped out of the frame, but I knew the fence post she was leaning on.

I'd painted it.

Underneath it said: "Duchess, 51. Still waiting."

The total was in a green bar.

$3,104,220 raised.

I knew the day that picture was taken.

Four years ago in May, the trust sent a young man up to inspect the land.

He'd leaned on the fence in a clean shirt and taken pictures of Duchess for an hour.

Then he'd asked me to dinner.

"Jo," Ramsey said.

He was standing over me, reading upside down.

"He took this," I said. "The day you sent him up here."

"I know. I recognize the post."

"Not one dollar of this came here. Not one."

I knew without checking.

Pine Hollow had eleven thousand four hundred dollars in the bank and a feed bill due on the first.

It cost nineteen thousand a month to keep these three alive.

Ramsey crouched down so his face was level with mine.

"Let me call..."

"No."

"I haven't said who."

"You were going to say a lawyer. Or a bank. Or somebody whose job is to fix things for Gannetts." I stood up. "This one's mine."

He stood up too.

"Okay," he said. "Then tell me what to carry."

I didn't have an answer for that.

Clyde came in at eight with his mug and saw my face.

I showed him the phone.

He read it standing in front of Duchess's stall.

He read it a second time.

Duchess put the tip of her trunk on his shoulder, the way she did every morning, and blew warm air down his collar.

"Twenty-six years," Clyde said. "She's been on this land twenty-six years."

"I know."

"Still waiting." He laughed, once, an ugly sound. "Waiting for what? Breakfast's at nine."

He handed me the phone back.

His hand shook a little.

I hated Dylan for that more than for the dress.

At eleven a black town car came up the drive.

Duchess heard it first.

She swung her head toward the gate and her ears went out wide, the torn one flapping.

A man in a dark suit and a blue tie got out with an envelope.

Duchess trumpeted at him from the paddock fence.

He got back in the car.

I walked down to the gate and knocked on his window.

He rolled it down three inches.

"Delivery for Ramsey Gannett," he said, eyes on the elephant. "Care of Pine Hollow."

"She's not going to eat you. She just hates ties."

"I'll take your word for it. Sign here."

I signed.

He was gone before the gravel settled.

The envelope was heavy cream paper.

The return address was the Gannett house in Rye.

So Darlene knew exactly where her brother-in-law slept now.

Up at the barn, Clyde was showing Ramsey how to cut watermelon for Duchess.

He was laughing at something.

I didn't want to take that away from him yet.

I opened the envelope at the gate, alone.

NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING, GANNETT FAMILY TRUST.

Item one: whether to renew the lease of the Pine Hollow parcel, one hundred forty acres, at the annual renewal on 1 November.

I read it twice.

The lease that had been one dollar a year since 1999.

The lease that had never once been put to a vote.

Then item two.

Motion by trustee Darlene Gannett to remove Ramsey Gannett as trustee and chair, for conduct injurious to the family.

The conduct was typed out underneath in one plain line.

"Marrying his nephew's fiancée."

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