by Mia Ross
“We could help you!” Emily offered, blue eyes shining with excitement. “I like cleaning.”
Caty was amazed. She couldn’t imagine many four-year-olds actually enjoyed housework. “Really? Why?”
“Things look so nice when you’re done.”
“I appreciate the offer, Emmy, but I was thinking more like, play here awhile and then have lunch at Ruthy’s. I know she’d be thrilled to see you two.”
“We love Ruthy.” Kyle’s bright grin reminded her of John’s. “She always gives us extra fries so they won’t spoil.”
That sounded like her, and Caty said, “When I was little, she’d let me scoop my own ice cream. Maybe if we ask real nice, she’ll let us do that today.”
“Cool,” he approved. “Can we sit at the counter?”
Caty laughed. “I used to love that, too. My grandpa would spin me on the stool till I got dizzy.”
“Then you have to go the other way,” Emily informed her in a serious voice. “Falling off a stool is no fun.”
“Very true,” Caty agreed, holding out a hand for each of them. “Shall we?”
They both hugged their mother and then took her hands. After a quick debate, they decided to run in zigzags the whole way out to the playground.
While she pushed Emily on a swing, Caty asked her if she was excited about school.
“Yes,” the little girl answered with a bright smile. “My friend Jenny’s in my class. We’re going to sit together.”
“That sounds great.”
After a few more pushes, out of nowhere Emily asked, “Did you come here with your daddy to play when you were little?”
“No,” Caty managed around the sudden lump in her throat. “I didn’t see him when I was growing up.”
“Me, neither. It makes my mommy sad. Did it make your mommy sad?”
Honestly, Caty recalled nothing but bitter silence. Mom had been furious with him, but Caty had never understood what had driven them apart. Maybe the situation had made her mother sad, but she hadn’t wanted to show it.
Caty didn’t know how to explain all that to Emily, so she asked, “What are you wearing the first day of school?”
That set off a much more pleasant conversation, and Caty tucked unanswered questions about her father back into the past where they belonged.
* * *
Matt didn’t remember them having all this equipment. John had filled him in on their recent purchases, including a monstrous baler for the huge, round bales many farmers preferred for livestock. It wasn’t brand-new, but he didn’t want to think about how much it had cost. They still sold the smaller square bales to many local farms, but for dairy farmers with a hundred cows or more, it was a lot easier to drop a round bale in the pasture and let them eat it down to nothing. To keep up with the competition, you had to give your customers what they wanted, and that meant having the latest tools.
John was out with the baler now, finishing up the largest hayfield by headlights. Matt was slowly discovering that preventive maintenance around the farm had fallen by the wayside, and just about everything mechanical needed something or other. Oil changes, spark plugs, general cleaning and lubing. Then there were belts to replace, gears to grease, and a few more major repairs.
It was a lot of work, but he found himself enjoying it. While he was growing up, he’d spent countless hours here in the workshop with his father, learning how to diagnose all kinds of mechanical problems and fix them. John loved working outside all day, but for Matt it was more like torture. Farming was a never-ending proposition. At least in here, he felt a sense of accomplishment when he fixed something and it ran right.
Until the next piece of equipment broke, and he started all over again.
Dad’s toolbox wasn’t exactly organized, and Matt wasted a good bit of time hunting for the right-size wrench or socket for each job. Finally, he decided he could save his sanity if he took a break and arranged each piece by size. When he came up three sockets short, he groaned. He needed one of them to finish his current job.
A hopeless pack rat, Dad had always prided himself on never losing anything, even if he might not have been able to find it right away. Hands on his hips, Matt looked around for odd places those sockets could be. Chances were they’d ended up in Dad’s pocket and dropped out somewhere while he was working. Matt found one of them under a nearby stool, and another holding up the short leg of an old workbench.
Sighing, Matt retrieved the socket and hunted for a block of wood to take its place. As he slid it under the short leg, the floorboard beneath it rocked with a disheartening thunk. He groaned again, louder this time. He had enough to do without having to batten the old floorboards down.
Then again, he’d be in this workshop a lot over the next few weeks. One loose floorboard usually meant there were more, and he didn’t want to kill himself stumbling over anything. His sentence at the farm would be tough enough if he was healthy. He didn’t want to think about how hard it would be if he wrenched his back or twisted an ankle.
So he got a hammer and a jelly jar full of nails and started testing the boards. The loose ones were all in the same area, which seemed odd. Lifting the first one, he found a rectangular metal box in the hollow space. It had a padlock on it, and he wondered why. He shook it but heard only the rustle of paper. Another board, another box. By the time he was done, he had five of them, all the same size and apparently full of paper.
They were labeled, one for each of the last five years. More than a little intrigued, he lined them up on the workbench to get a better look at them. Folding his arms, he stared at them and wondered what on earth his father had been hiding out here. They must be important, because he’d gone to the trouble of putting them in metal boxes to protect them from mice.
The padlocks were no problem. Matt took a crowbar off the peg rack and pried the locks open easily enough. As he sifted through the contents, his excitement dimmed, and his heart sank a little more with each lid he opened.
There, under the fluorescent lights, sat his worst nightmare.
* * *
“Hey, there.” When Caty answered Matt’s call, she was holding a pile of yellow color swatches in one hand and another pile of white in the other. “What’s up?”
“You busy?”
Matt was never tactful, but he sounded even more terse than usual. “Not really. Why?”
“I need to talk to you.”
The tension in his voice reached through the grainy connection, and she put the swatches down to give him her full attention. “Go ahead.”
“I know it’s late, but can we do this in person?”
“Sure. I’ll be there in—”
“No!” Sighing, he amended his order. “Sorry about that. Can I come to your place?”
“Of course. Matt, what’s wrong?”
“Everything.”
That was her only hint before he hung up. Even more worried now, she wondered if his problem had something to do with Ethan’s estate. Or the farm. Had some developer made him an outrageous offer? While she waited for him to arrive, she ran various scenarios through her head so she’d be ready for whatever he had to say.
Not even her vivid imagination could have prepared her for the truth.
“Say that again,” she said very deliberately, eyeing the metal boxes Matt had brought with him.
“The farm’s bankrupt,” he replied grimly, jaw clenched against the harshness of his words. “It’s been headed that way for a while now, and Dad was up to his neck in debt trying to save it.”
His eyes were a stormy gray, and they narrowed as they lasered in on her. After a few seconds of that, he snarled, “Did you know?”
“No.”
It was the simple, honest truth, and it made her sick. As
Ethan’s attorney, she should have been aware of the situation, but he never gave her any indication there was a problem. Judging by the way Matt had found out, he hadn’t told anyone. “Does your family know?”
“I don’t think so. He hid all this in his workshop. John’s all over the farm, but even he doesn’t go in there.” Setting the boxes on the steps, Matt sank down beside them. “What I don’t get is how he kept it from Marianne. She’s the farm’s bookkeeper.”
“I don’t know.” Caty was just as baffled as he was. “Maybe the answer’s in these boxes somewhere. The light’s best in the kitchen. Let’s take them in there and spread everything out. If we organize it chronologically, maybe we can figure out what’s been going on.”
“I’m not sure I want to know.”
The growl in his voice warned her he was dangerously close to the edge. Forcing a smile, she picked up two of the boxes in an effort to make him feel as though she’d lightened his load a bit. “I’m Ethan’s executor, so technically this is my job. Why don’t you go on home? I’ll call you when I figure it out.”
She expected him to bolt, or at least take a minute to consider her offer. Instead, he surprised her with, “Have any sweet tea?”
“In the fridge,” she said as she went into the kitchen. “Help yourself.”
He followed her and helped her arrange the boxes in order on the counter. Pulling down the old-fashioned lever to open the fridge, he said, “This thing still works?”
“Off and on. I wouldn’t put food in there, but it’s fine for drinks. Gus is ordering a new one and letting me have it wholesale.”
Matt swallowed some tea. “In return for?”
“He wants to buy the building next to the hardware store and expand. I told him I’d handle the closing for him.”
Some of the tension left his face, and Matt chuckled as he sat down on the tall stool that was currently her only seating. “Sounds like Gus.”
“He’s saving me six hundred and fifteen dollars,” Caty commented as she sorted Ethan’s paperwork into piles on the counter. “Works for me.”
After that, the only noise in the house was shuffling papers and the soft tick of the grandfather clock. With each box she sorted, Caty’s usual optimism faded a little more. Elbows on the counter, Matt folded his hands and rested his chin on them. While she worked, she felt him watching her, but he didn’t say a word.
When she was done, she stood back, folded her arms and frowned.
“Yeah,” he muttered, “that’s what I came up with, too.”
“How on earth did this happen?” she asked, knowing Matt had probably already asked himself that. “The farm’s been failing for the past five years.”
“Knowing Dad, it was in trouble before that,” Matt said with a sigh. “That new baler cost a small fortune, and last year’s bills for maintenance were close to six figures. They’re not as much this year, but stuff’s been breaking down left and right.”
“He was neglecting the maintenance to save money,” she said to show she understood.
Matt nodded curtly. “The other problem is income. Crop prices go up and down every year, mostly down, but he always trusted things would work out for the best.”
Caty heard what he wasn’t saying and called him on it. “Trusted God, you mean.”
“Whatever.” Scowling, he spread his hands over the mess. “What can I do?”
Being male, and a mechanic to boot, Matt struck her as the kind of person who was used to assessing a problem and then fixing it. Unfortunately, it would take more than his considerable will to resolve this one.
Hoping to keep him focused on things they could actually do something about, she started with a simple one. “I don’t have any documentation on these loans or this checking account. He opened it online, so it could be based anywhere.”
“Makes sense he wouldn’t do it around here. People would know, and then they’d start talking.”
“No doubt about it, he was covering his tracks. The account number and codes are right here, so I should be able to find out what’s going on.” She picked up the most recent statement. “But there’s a balance of fourteen dollars. Judging by this, he deposited his paycheck every other week and immediately wrote out a check for the same amount.” She picked up another statement. “One check paid the installment on the baler, the other went to the loan.”
“A huge personal loan with a ridiculous interest rate,” Matt added gloomily. “And that’s not the first one he took out. I don’t get it. If they needed money so bad, why didn’t he just mortgage the farm?”
Caty thought that one over, because he was right. It didn’t make sense. Considering what she knew about Ethan and the changes he’d recently made to his will, she came up with a logical explanation.
“I think he wanted to pass along the farm free and clear, in case something happened to him. Then you could sell it, pay off the debts, and Marianne and John would still have their houses to live in. For the rest of you, the life insurance would be your inheritance.”
“Forget about paying it off,” Matt grumbled. “Until we start getting some harvest income, we can’t make the regular payments. Even if we hauled everything in tomorrow, we wouldn’t get paid for at least a month.”
Caty glanced at the terms printed at the bottom of the loan contract. “The penalty for missing a payment is atrocious. The way things are with the economy right now, the bank might even call in the loan.”
Muttering under his breath, Matt swung himself off the stool and stalked to the window. Hands shoved into the back pockets of his oil-stained jeans, he glared out at the town with a disgust she could almost feel. “What should I do?”
Sensing he didn’t really want pragmatism right now, she asked, “What do you want to do?”
“Sell the place and go home. It’s a great spot, and two developers have called me already. They offered me way more than enough to pay everything off.”
“You can do that. I’m sure once you explain what’s going on, John and the girls will understand.”
She used a soothing tone to calm him down, so that he’d realize he really didn’t want to do that at all. She hoped. This was the kind of thing that looked good on paper, but when the bulldozers and construction crews showed up, people often regretted their decision.
“No.” Turning to face her, his expression took on a different quality. Not softer, exactly, but not quite so furious. “I can’t tell them about this debt.”
Completely stunned, it took her a few seconds to come up with something reasonable to say. All she could manage was a very lame, “You have to.”
“The father they just buried has been lying to them for years,” he reminded her curtly. “You really think they want to hear that right now?”
“Protecting them,” she corrected, moving to stand in front of him. “Whenever he could, he made extra payments on the loan. To me, that says he was confident he could pay it off and avoid worrying them.”
“You think if I tell them now, they won’t worry?”
She sensed that she was losing this argument, and she searched for a way to shock him into seeing reason. “If you don’t, they’ll think selling the farm was all your decision, and they’ll hate you.”
“That’s better than them hating Dad.”
“They still have a right to know. This is your family’s legacy you’re talking about,” she added, hoping the reference to the Sawyers’ history would get through his thick, stubborn skull.
He just folded his massive arms and stared back at her. Refusing to let him get away with that, she tried switching tactics.
“Based on the conversation we had about Ethan’s will, I think the girls would agree to sell,” she said, taking a sip from the open water bottle she’d left by the sink. “But what
about John?”
“He’ll still have a place to live, and everyone knows what a hard worker he is. He could have a job at any farm within ten miles.”
Using a courtroom tactic she’d learned in law school, Caty waited patiently for Matt to look at her. When his eyes met hers, very quietly she said, “He’s happy working his family’s farm. It means everything to him.” After considering how far to push him, she decided to go for broke.
“And you know it.”
Anger blazed in Matt’s eyes, and then the brilliant blue darkened to an ominous slate color. Hard, unbending, it was more intimidating than the fury she’d seen a few seconds ago. But she was right, so she held her ground, refusing to look away, even though her tired, gritty eyes really needed to blink.
After what felt like forever, his anger receded just a little, the rigidity giving way to something resembling respect.
“I’ll think about it,” he finally said, the grinding tone telling her it wasn’t easy for him.
Caty wasn’t accustomed to losing arguments, but she knew that she’d win this one only if Matt gave in. That didn’t seem likely right now. Once he thought it through, he just might make the right choice. Then again, this was a guy who’d avoided everything related to Harland for the past fifteen years. The precarious financial situation at the farm was his out. She prayed he wouldn’t take it.
Keeping her voice even, Caty opted for a very professional response. “I’ll call the bank tomorrow and start the process for getting this checking account closed.”
“Okay.” Fishing his keys out of his pocket, Matt glanced at the papers stacked on her counter. “Can I leave those with you?”
“Sure,” she agreed as she walked him to the front door. “I’ve got a fireproof cabinet for all my legal work. I’ll put everything in there and keep it safe for you.”
“Thanks.”
Being so clinical about everything simply wasn’t her style, so she dropped the act. “Matt, I’m so sorry. You have so much to deal with already, this must feel like another weight on your shoulders.”
