My Husband Exiled Me to the Ranch of My Dreams novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Closing File

Audra's POV

Jed told me at his kitchen table, over coffee, and he did not leave anything out.

The headgate, the Colorado buyer, the fifty thousand dollars.

He said Curtis had told him to ask me about the ledger.

"Is it true?" he said. "I'm not asking if you're clean. I'm asking what's in it."

"I don't know yet."

"All right."

"You're not going to ask me anything else?"

"You've been honest with me every day since the gate," Jed said. "That's the whole of what I know about you."

I took his hand across the table and held on a minute.

Then I drove to Buffalo with my laptop on the seat.

The weekly paper had come out that morning.

I saw it at the feed store, on the counter, folded to the back pages.

The legal notices ran in small type, in a column no one reads.

NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR TAX DEED, it said.

Under it was the parcel number, the amount, and two names.

ASHDOWN HOLDINGS LLC.

AUDRA DUNNING, OCCUPANT.

The woman at the register saw me read it.

She was seventy, with a gray braid and reading glasses on a cord.

"That's your place," she said.

"Yes."

"You're old Dunning's girl."

I had to swallow before I answered.

"His granddaughter."

"I went to school with your mother." She turned the paper around and read it again. "Six years of taxes. That's not his doing. He paid in cash every November till the day he died."

"I know."

"Does anybody in this county need to know who bought that paper?"

"My lawyer's finding out."

She looked at me over her glasses for a long moment.

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