“And you’ve done wonderfully,” Melissa said in the same tone she used to sell overpriced vitamins to desperate women. “But it’s time to think about your future, Mom. A retirement home would give you friends. Activities.”
“I have friends,” I said. “I have activities.” My voice sounded distant even to myself. “This is my home.”
“It’s our house,” Brandon corrected. “And Dad left the business to Melissa and me in his will. He wanted us to take care of you, but he knew the business needed younger management.”
I stared at my son, that stranger in expensive clothes, who thought he knew something about the land that had fed him, the trees his father had cared for during the drought, the plagues, and the frosts.
“Show me the will.”
He slid a document across the table. It wasn’t the family lawyer’s letterhead, but something printed on Brandon’s company letterhead. Nicholas’s signature looked odd; too perfect, too firm for a man whose hands had trembled with pain for months.
“You made him sign this while he was high on morphine. The rage that came over me then was primal, something I hadn’t felt since I saw a fox trying to sneak into our henhouse when the children were little. I chased it away with a broom and the fury that comes from protecting what is yours.”
“He was lucid,” Brandon insisted. “He wanted us to start the business from scratch. There’s a real estate developer interested in the land.”
“I’m developing a luxury housing project,” Melissa explained, her eyes shining at the prospect of the money. “They’ll pay seven million. Mom, we can start over.”
