My Stepmother Sold the Farm, So I Married the Man Who Left novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Pink Tape

Solveig and Nels pull the surveyors' stakes, Travis threatens them, and Delores demands the wedding Friday at the courthouse with her watching.

We started with the stakes.

There were forty of them along the east fence, each with a strip of pink tape.

They ran in a straight line through my father's corn stubble.

I walked to the first one and pulled it out of the ground.

Nels took the second.

The man in the orange vest stopped fiddling with his tripod.

"Ma'am, you can't do that," he said. "That's a survey marker."

"It's my field."

"The owner of record said we had access."

"The owner of record never did learn the word no," I said, and tossed the stake over the fence.

Nels pulled a third and a fourth, one in each hand, and carried them to the truck bed without hurrying.

Travis came across the stubble with his hat pushed back and his hands in his pockets.

He was a big man in a clean shirt, and he had never in his life been the one to pull a stake.

"Little sister," he said. "You're upsetting the men."

"I'm not your sister."

"Legally you are. Ask your boyfriend."

"Husband by Friday," Nels said, from the fence. "You can call me Mr. Torkelson."

I did not look at him, because I would have laughed.

Travis grinned at the surveyor.

"He's a hired hand, and he's a runaway," Travis said. "My mother's the owner of record until the paper says otherwise.

"She says you've got no business on her land."

"Then call the sheriff," I said.

"I might."

"Call him. Tell him a woman pulled a stake out of her own father's field."

He took a step closer, and he was very large.

I had known Travis four years, which was exactly as long as I'd needed.

He smelled like hair gel and last night's beer.

"You think a deputy is going to pick your side?" he said quietly. "My mother has coffee with the sheriff every Thursday."

"Then it's a good thing I'm not asking him."

I turned to pull the fifth stake and put my boot on the edge of the bank.

The bank was wet from the creek, and the stubble slid, and for one second I was going over backward down eight feet of slope.

A hand closed around my wrist.

Nels had crossed the gap without a sound.

He pulled me upright and I came against his chest, and my free hand landed on his arm, which was hard with muscle.

He did not let go.

His thumb lay across the inside of my wrist, where my pulse was going hard from the fall, and I knew he could feel it.

He knew it too.

I watched him go still.

His eyes were on my face, and then on his own thumb, and then he opened his hand.

"You all right?" he said. His voice had gone rough.

"I'm fine."

"You were always going to go over that bank."

"I'm fine, Nels," I said.

I stepped back and rubbed my wrist, though it did not hurt.

He had always been quick.

Of course he had caught me, and anyone would have.

I told myself so twice in the time it took to cross to the next stake.

Behind me Travis said, loudly enough for all of us, "Mom's going to love this."

She came up the lane in her white sedan ten minutes later.

She parked behind the surveyors and got out slowly.

She stood with one hand on the car door in her good church coat, looking at the heap of pink-taped stakes in Nels's truck.

She did not raise her voice.

That was the thing about Delores, and I'd learned it the hard way.

"Solveig, honey, you're upset, and I understand," she said. "It's been a hard year."

"Tell your men to leave," I said.

"They'll leave when they have what they came for. They have a contract with this ridge, and it's signed, and so am I."

"You're not signing anything of mine."

"It's mine until the day you marry." She tilted her head. "Which is when?"

"Friday," I said.

"Friday." She looked at Nels, at his hands and his boots and the stakes. "I think I'd like to be there."

"You're not invited."

"I'm family. And I'm your witness, honey."

She smiled.

"Unless you'd rather a judge decide next month whether a woman can marry a man she hasn't spoken to in six years, three days after she stood up in church and lied."

The wind moved the dead corn.

Nels shifted behind me, but he said nothing, which meant he was waiting for me.

I could feel the whole farm on my back.

"Fine," I said. "Friday."

"At the courthouse. At ten. With Travis and me in the room, where I can see you sign."

"I said fine."

"Wonderful," Delores said, and for the first time all day she looked truly pleased.

She turned to go, and then she turned back.

"Oh, and Solveig? Wear something nice. I'd hate for the clerk to think it wasn't a love match."

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