Page 123 of Once Upon a Fall

Dean

The prince finally got his answer. The indigestion cleared up.

I can’t sell the farm.

Owen called me two days ago about a potential buyer who’s been out to see the property twice. The second time, he brought a contractor with him. He assumed an offer would be coming through any time.

He was happy about it, as he should be. He was hired to do a job, and he did it well and quickly.

I should have been relieved, but all I felt was unsettled. And a lot of that irritating indigestion.

Then my mom called that afternoon while I was back in the hotel room.

“So, there’s a buyer?” she said, trying to tamp down her excitement, but I could hear it.

“Yes,” I told her.

She knew about the money. I told her when it officially went up for sale that whatever was made off the farm would be hers. The part she wasn’t happy about was my plan to have my lawyer put it into a trust so she could use the money to supplement her income without Ed being able to empty the account.

Should I have just let her have it? Maybe. But I know how this goes. The first time Ed would need rescuing, she’d take the money out and hand it over. Eventually, there’d be nothing left. Protecting it was the only way I could make sure she’d still have something years from now.

“How long until it sells?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” I told her.

She sighed. “It’ll be weird that someone else will own the farm. It’s been in my life for longer than it hasn’t. I wonder what the new owners will do with the place?”

She was talking as if the deal was done.

“Probably tear it all down,” I told her, the words making me feel even worse. Imagining someone buying the farm, tearing everything down, and removing all the character my grandparents had put into it made me feel like I’d failed them somehow.

Living in a hotel was driving me crazy. Most of the in-person meetings I’d been having could have been handled via email. I had the same kinds of breakthroughs doing the video meetings while taking care of Rosie that first week. Being there in person wasn’t producing any better results.

Eating takeout and room service got old after two days, even in a city that has some of the best food in the world. I missed cooking for myself. I missed eating dinner with Rosie.

I even started looking at apartments. I looked around Boston since I already had a storage unit in Worcester. What I found were mostly sterile, overpriced boxes with no character.

I didn’t want that. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but the small-town appeal had grown on me. I missed running on quiet roads that smelled like leaves and woodsmoke instead of busy streets where I had to dodge people and bags of trash that seemed like they’d been sitting out since July. I missed waking up to birds and wind in the trees instead of sirens and traffic below my window.

The city offered me none of those things.

“I hope they don’t tear it down,” my mom said. “That would be sad.”

“Well, it’s a run-down house with a dead orchard and a partially burned barn,” I said. “I’m not sure what else someone would do with it.”

Rosie’s vision of the property had gone through my head then. The house painted white, the large kitchen, cozy couches and throw pillows. The new barn and orchard. It made the indigestion worse.

“You used to love that farm so much,” my mom said, a note of nostalgia in her voice that surprised me. “I remember how hard it was to pick you up, how much you’d cry about leaving.”

“Yeah,” I said, not really wanting to take a trip down memory lane right now.

“You’d tell me on the drive home that your grandma wanted you to have the farm someday,” she said.

“What?” I said, not sure I heard her right.

“Apparently, she told you someday the farm would be yours and you could live there.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That wasn’t what she said.”