Seeds of Trust

by Cynthia Reese

  Selfish. It was selfish to want that same thing from Ryan.

  She glanced toward the door where Ryan stood. Their eyes met. His were cool and impassive.

  The flicker of hope in her heart went out. She’d been stupid to think he’d ever be able to forgive her. She’d lied to him, kept pressing until Mee-Maw had lost her homeplace.

  J.T. and Charlotte made their way to the porch where Mee-Maw sat. He knelt in front of her, his eyes full of concern.

  Seeing that compassion, Becca couldn’t believe she’d ever thought J.T. a common criminal in it for a quick buck.

  “Mee-Maw? They told me…about the farm. I sure am sorry. I shouldn’t have run, should I? I should have stuck it out. But I—I just couldn’t face prison again.”

  Mee-Maw patted J.T.’s hand. “I shouldn’t have let you run. I should have talked you out of it, should have told you we’d back you, no matter what. But I wasn’t thinking too straight.”

  Now Ryan closed the gap and stood near J.T. He held out a hand. J.T. took it and gave it a brisk shake.

  Anger rattled through Becca. How could Ryan accept J.T. back with a handshake, when J.T. had been the one to start the whole mess?

  J.T. surveyed everyone assembled on the porch. “I just want to say how sorry I am that I’m the cause of all this. If I’d known…I honestly thought me going away was the best thing for everybody.”

  Becca held her breath. Finally she’d hear the whole story, not someone else’s version.

  “Miss Becca…” J.T. nodded his head her way. “She and Ryan figured out that I was the one who brought those vines here. I didn’t want to. But Murphy…well, he told me he’d jam me up with the local law. He said he’d make sure that I got found with drugs or a gun if I didn’t get him the vines. I worried over it, and finally just figured, what could those vines hurt? The insurance company was rich enough—they’d sure not minded paying out all Murphy’s claims before.”

  “Did Gramps know?” Ryan asked.

  J.T. gave him a bewildered look. “That I was bringing those vines back? No. He didn’t know until I came back with ’em. He saw ’em on the back of my truck, figured something was up…”

  Now misery etched even more deeply into J.T.’s features. “I talked to Murphy, asked him how he figured the insurance company was gonna believe something wasn’t up when he was the only one with those vines in his fields. Murphy just laughed. He said…he said I was gonna make sure that his wasn’t the only land it was on. When I caught his drift, I said no. Mr. Mac had been real good to me. No way was I gonna let that vine anywhere near Mr. Mac’s cotton. I wouldn’t let Murphy have the vines after that.”

  Nobody made a sound as J.T. told how he’d gone to Mac, told him everything. Mac and J.T. had met with Murphy, the vines on the back of the truck—that’s when Murphy had shot that picture.

  “Mr. Mac was sure giving him a telling-off, I’ll say that. I ain’t never seen a man so angry. Told him he was gonna go to Ag-Sure, tell them what Murphy was up to—” J.T. broke off and stared down at the beat-up brogans he wore. “He got so worked up. And then standing there, Mac just grabbed his chest. Murphy wouldn’t help me—wouldn’t call an ambulance—just stood there. I don’t guess an ambulance could have helped, but I’ll never forget the way…that man died in my arms. And it was ’cause of me. ’Cause I was too scared to say no to Murphy in the first place.”

  Mee-Maw made a low hiss under her breath. “I knew he was no good, I just didn’t know he was that low.”

  Becca wrapped her fingers around Mee-Maw’s. “You didn’t know?”

  She shook her head. “No. J.T. brought Mac back up to the house. Said he was in trouble with Murphy and that Mac had found out. J.T. said he needed to leave right away, or else he’d wind up back in prison, but I didn’t know anything about what Murphy was planning. I didn’t ask J.T. what the trouble was—didn’t want to know, tell the truth. Later, of course, I figured it out. And I knew J.T. wouldn’t have done it if not for Murphy puttin’ a squeeze on him.”

  J.T. picked up the story again. “Murphy got the vines off the truck while I was trying to help Mr. Mac. He told me that if I wasn’t willing to help him plant those vines, he’d fix it where I’d wind up in trouble with the law. He told me I had three days to make up my mind—made a big deal out of being generous about it. Generous!” J.T. spat the word.

  “So you left…” Becca trailed off.

  “Figured… I don’t know what I figured. I just couldn’t face planting those vines—not on Mr. Mac’s land—or going to jail again. I knew I’d made a big mistake. I had no idea what Murphy would tell on me. That’s why I laid low all this time. If I’d known…I guess I never dreamed that Murphy’d dare plant it on someone else’s land without inside help, you know? But if I’d known what all had happened… Oh, Mee-Maw… Mee-Maw, I’m sure sorry.”

  In the ensuing silence, Becca’s dad cleared his throat. “Mrs. MacIntosh, it’s small comfort for you now, but Murphy will wind up in federal prison. Not only do we have J.T.’s testimony, but we have the corroborating testimony of the man who supplied the vines—he sold them to Murphy, not to J.T. I’ve tracked down the crooked insurance adjustor. A buddy of mine in the U.S. Attorney’s office is driving up here tomorrow and we’re going to present him a nice, tidy package—Murphy tied up with a bow. Becca’s got some people from the state revenue department looking into the way your land was foreclosed. Eventually, eventually…you will get your land back.”

  Mee-Maw managed a tremulous smile, a dim version of what that smile usually was. “I am glad there are good people like you and Becca here.”

  “Well…” Now it was Becca’s father who stared down at the rough floorboards of the porch. “When Ag-Sure first gave us this case, I sort of figured you’d all been tarred by the same brush. But…I should have trusted Becca’s judgment. She thought your grandson wasn’t involved from the start, and that should have been good enough for me. I just wish I’d come down here sooner to lend her a hand. After all, Murphy could have gotten my daughter killed.”

  Becca blinked in surprise. Her dad? Saying he’d been wrong?

  Her gaze moved from her dad’s bent head to Ryan’s.

  Ryan’s expression didn’t lighten. His arms folded across his chest, his jaw hard, he spoke up. “I take responsibility for that, sir. I was in over my head. I guess I was in over my head even before all this mess. I had no business thinking I could save this farm.”

  He met Mee-Maw’s eyes. “Mee-Maw. You should know. I called my old boss. He said to give him a week or so to figure out where to put me back to work. Guess selling ag chemicals is what I’m supposed to do with my life. I’m sorry that while I was chasing my dream, I let you down—sorry I let Gramps down.”

  With that, he spun on his heel and let the screen door slam behind him as he went inside.

  Becca’s heart, which she thought was broken already, splintered as she saw defeat in the bow of his retreating back. Now she understood his earlier bitterness with her. Maybe she hadn’t been the sole reason his dreams had gone up in smoke, but she’d definitely played a part in it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE SPRINGS IN Jack’s sofa bed jabbed into Ryan’s back like hot pokers.

  Or maybe it’s your guilty conscience.

  Ryan sat up and rubbed his eyes. He’d had plenty to feel guilty about in the week since J.T. had come home.

  For one thing, Mee-Maw had no roof to call her own.

  And Becca.

  Especially Becca.

  A noise on the stairs made him look up. Jack stood at the foot of the stairs.

  “Couldn’t sleep, either?” he asked his cousin.

  Jack shook his head. “Nope. I don’t care that the cast is off—leg still hurts. Want to see what there is to eat?�
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  Ryan followed him into the kitchen. He nursed a glass of milk while Jack poked through the fridge, finally satisfying himself with a wedge of apple pie.

  “One of the benefits of Mee-Maw living here is that she’s a good cook.” Jack forked up a bite of pie. It didn’t look as if the pie went down that easy, though.

  “She’s pretty depressed, isn’t she?”

  Jack nodded. “Not surprising. But I see signs of life there, unlike you, buddy.”

  “Me?”

  “I don’t know who’s the worst sad-sack—you or Wilbur. At least I know how to fix Wilbur—just take him out to the country and let him chase some rabbits. You? I don’t have an earthly clue—except…”

  At the sound of his name, the dog roused from his spot under the table and wagged his tail hopefully.

  Ryan couldn’t think of a reply. He stretched out an arm and dumped the last of the milk in Wilbur’s dish. He watched in silence as the dog lapped it up.

  “You heard from Becca?” Jack asked him.

  Hearing her name from someone else’s lips shook Ryan. He shoved back his chair and took his now-empty glass to the sink. “Nope. No reason to. Not with the feds taking over the investigation.”

  “The investigation isn’t the only reason you’d hear from her.”

  “Figured you’d be glad I hadn’t heard from her. You were right about her, I guess.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows. “Funny. I’d sorta come to the opposite conclusion.”

  Ryan finished rinsing his glass and set it carefully on the counter. “That’s a change.”

  “Well…she’s worked nonstop to get J.T. an immunity deal. And she can’t help it if the state revenue guys can’t presto-change-o fix what Murphy and Melton did, but she did kickstart an official investigation on the tax commissioner’s office. That’s something. Plus, Mee-Maw wasn’t wrong about J.T.”

  “So by extension she’s not wrong about Becca?”

  “Sure you’re not overreacting, buddy?”

  “Me? Overreact? Oh, I don’t know. The woman I thought I knew turned out to be another woman I thought I knew. Forgive me if it’s taking me a few days to wrap my head around that little predicament.”

  “No need to get angry about it.” Jack savored another bite of apple pie. “Me? I think Becca reminds you of losing the farm. You see her, you think about everything that’s happened. It’s all knotted up somehow.”

  “Aren’t you the philosopher tonight.”

  “And aren’t you the jerk.”

  “She’s the one—”

  “So she lied to you about the e-mail thing. Look at it this way, would you have ever gotten to know her if you’d known from the get-go she was an investigator for an insurance company?”

  “I did get to know her.”

  “I’m talking about the e-mails. I mean, it’s kind of like getting warm and fuzzy with a gal from the IRS. Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you still think, ‘Hmm…’”

  Ryan braced his elbows on the counter. “It’s not just the e-mails. She wouldn’t help. I just needed her to—I needed a little time. If she’d only sat on it—”

  “Right. We sat on it and that turned out to be a flaming success, didn’t it?”

  “What’s changed your mind about her?” Ryan narrowed his eyes. “You were so anti-Becca you didn’t even want her at your kid’s birthday supper.”

  Jack let a wry smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “Time. Distance. And seeing how sick she looked when you blew her off that last time.”

  Ryan closed his eyes. He didn’t want to admit it, but the last glimpse he’d had of Becca, her face drawn and tired, haunted him.

  “Oh, and one other thing changed my mind.” Jack brought his plate to the sink counter and set it down with a clunk. “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Yep. You’ve got it bad, cuz. Face it. You’re done for.”

  * * *

  BECCA STRAIGHTENED UP the pile of papers on her desk with a disconsolate indifference. The walls of their Atlanta office seemed to close in on her, and not even Gert could jolly her out of her sour mood. Becca hadn’t even minded when Gert had asked for the rest of the day off.

  Becca’s opportunity to mope in private was lost when her dad came through the office door. “Hey. How’s the fort?”

  Becca shrugged. “Okay. No luck yet with the guys at the revenue department.”

  “It will take time.”

  “I don’t want it to take time, Dad. She’s eighty-four years old—”

  “Sure this isn’t about Ryan, instead?”

  She didn’t meet his eyes. “Why would that be the case?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Crazy idea I had, that’s all.”

  “I screwed up. He asked me…he asked me to hold off, and I didn’t.”

  “Good for you. And understandable in his case.” Her father seemed unperturbed. “Becca, in this business, you’re going to see a lot of desperate people. And desperation makes people—”

  “I know. Do desperate things.”

  “Okay, so you’ve heard this before and I can hit the high notes.”

  “I feel so guilty. I feel like… I’d never forgive myself if Mee-Maw didn’t get her farm back.”

  “Correction—you think Ryan will never forgive you if Mee-Maw doesn’t get her farm back.”

  “He won’t. Maybe he shouldn’t. You would have done things so differently, Dad. It wouldn’t have—”

  “Yeah, I would have. But in the end, you got the job done. You have to learn, Becca. You have to make mistakes and take the long way around.” He fiddled with a paper clip. “Remember what I used to ask you? What is the problem? What do you know?”

  Becca closed her eyes and forced her mind to quiet. The problem…

  “Mee-Maw’s farm. I need to get it back.”

  “And what do you know?”

  She opened her eyes. “That…it was done unfairly. That Murphy bought it in a rigged auction. That Murphy…” She struggled for the answer he was awaiting, knowing from his expression that she hadn’t got it yet. “What do I know about Murphy? He’s…he’ll be facing federal indictment, but the feds say that will take a while and they’re keeping it mum… I know he’s up to his neck in debt.”

  Now she closed her eyes again. “Wait. Wait…” Excitement pulsed through her, and she started scrabbling through the printouts on her desk. “His debt…there might be some way…”

  Her father smiled. “‘His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself.’ A banker or two might be interested in knowing what’s about to happen…not, of course, that I would ever go against my client Ag-Sure’s best interests and tell another party. But I might—” he winked “—let it slip.”

  Her joy flatlined. “It wouldn’t do any good. Ryan doesn’t have the money.”

  “I know somebody who does.”

  “You do?” She frowned.

  “Uh-huh. Someone who could call her lawyer and get him to offer a rock-bottom settlement to an aggrieved Atlanta bigwig—on a case I’m sure said bigwig would like to go away—if, that is, that someone didn’t want to get back in the magazine business. Someone, who I hear, does some of her best thinking in chicken coops, so she might be interested in investing in a family farm.” He shrugged. “Up to her, I guess.”

  With that, he left Becca alone with a mind swirling with possibilities…

  And choices.

  * * *

  RYAN TOOK a folded up letter from his shirt pocket and smoothed it out. He reread the bank’s assurances that they were extending a line of credit to him and Jack for fifteen thousand dollars—they’d borrowed the money against his paltry IRA and Jack’s home equity. Stupid really, b
ut what choice did they have when, once again, Mee-Maw’s farm was up for bid?

  Fifteen thousand was a fraction of what Mee-Maw’s farm was worth, but you never knew. This was an auction, after all, and the banks didn’t care how much something went for as long as they got their money out of the deal. He was just grateful that Murphy’s creditors had decided to call in their loans before the feds had let slip their plans to indict Murphy. The feds had indicated to Ryan and Jack that, once the indictment was handed down, Murphy’s assets would be frozen for the duration of the trial.

  Now that Ryan knew herbicides would work on the dodder vine, he knew a lot more money in cotton waited for them in the farm’s fields. Plus, Ag-Sure’s grateful execs were even making noises that Mee-Maw might even get a partial insurance settlement, since J.T. had fingered Murphy. If Ryan could just put down fifteen grand in earnest money today…

  More than one well-wisher came up to Ryan to assure him they didn’t intend to bid against him. The whole community seemed to want Mee-Maw to have her farm back.

  This time the auction was at the main offices of the Murphy farming operation. As the auctioneer geared up, Ryan felt himself sweating despite the cool September morning. This was it. This was his chance to redeem himself.

  Mee-Maw’s tract was the first one up—thankfully they hadn’t subdivided it the way they had the rest of Murphy’s acreage. The auctioneer started out the bid at ten grand and slowly started ratcheting up the price.

  “I have nineteen. Do I hear twenty?” The auctioneer paused, and for a moment, Ryan’s heart stopped. Had he gotten it for just that?

  But then the auctioneer indicated a bidder in the back, and let loose again with his yodeled calls. Ryan raised his bidding stick. As soon as the auctioneer registered his bid, Ryan switched his gaze to the rear.

  No. One of Murphy’s son-in-laws apparently was determined to at least raise the price so that Murphy could get the most out of the land—or maybe they, too, had figured out how to leverage the money needed for the auction.

  It meshed with the scuttlebutt around town. Murphy had been busy shooting down rumors of his imminent fall. He’d been mouthing off to anybody who’d listen that if the feds had anything on him, they’d have locked him up already.