“Like I said earlier,” Brett began, as he reached down into the bright red cooler with the white top and handed me a beer. “You’re just the excuse to get some of the manly things updated around here. If it were just for me, Lily would have nixed it immediately. But for you, I got the go ahead.”
“Go figure,” I mumbled as I took my first sip of the chilled beverage. The heavy wheat beer tasted thick on my tongue, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
“Have a few tosses while the sun is still shining. Once it goes down, it gets mighty dark back here. I still need to install a light across the way for some night fishing.”
Nodding, I collected my beer and headed toward the dock where I baited my hook and tossed out the line like it was second nature. Muscle memory is what Brett used to call it. We stayed silent, me throwing out my line every couple of minutes and Brett watching. Occasionally I’d snag a fish and he’d take a picture with his phone before I lobbed it back into the water.
We stayed out in the woods for about an hour before Brett’s phone rang.
“The missus says dinner is ready if we could head on back.”
“Sure. Let me just get this all put away,” I said of the tackle box and the pole.
“We can take it back in the UTV. Much easier on my knees than walking all the way out here. You can use it too if I’m at work.”
“What’s a UTV?” I asked as I gathered everything and met him at the bench.
“It’s like a two-seater all-terrain vehicle. Follow me,” he explained as he led me to an opening on the other side of the field where a black and blue vehicle sat.
He placed the cooler in the back area, then grabbed the tackle box and fishing pole from me, doing the same.
Together we rode back to the house, our bodies rocking back and forth with the jerky terrain, as I tried to come up with a way to ask them about the property I saw earlier in the day. I didn’t want them to get their hopes up in me staying in the town permanently. But I saw the house as a nice investment property if I could get it up to livable standards. I could rent it or sell it when I was finished. Or keep it as a vacation home for myself.
Now that was an idea.
Once we returned to the house, Lily immediately directed us to the sink to wash up before we could eat dinner. Not that I needed to be told. I had no desire to eat with my hands smelling of fish.
When we were seated, she served the homemade lasagna and my mouth watered at the sight over the heaping plate. I couldn’t recall the last time I had a home-cooked meal like this one.
Unless it could be cooked in the microwave, I was hopeless. Which baffled me that a cooking channel wanted me to be the face of a new show. But I was willing to learn. And I had high hopes that Lily could teach me a few things while I was here.
The room was quiet as we all ate. Brett and Lily chatted about the market that morning to fill some of the silence, but I was more than content to listen to their conversation.
“Did you see much of the town when you drove through today?”
This was it. This was the segway I needed. A clang sounded in the dining room as I set my fork on the plate. Lily went all out with the good china for the meal.
“Actually, what do you know about the house up on the hill about ten minutes from here?”
Chapter Six – Autumn
The theater was more crowded than I anticipated as I turned in my seat and watched another group of people stroll in. It took some digging, but we’d learned that the sheriff was holding the house auction in the town theater to make sure there was ample space. Our courthouse was too small for the function.
The place was something straight out ofArchitecturalDigest. It opened in 1929 and was a staple in our town, supported and funded by our community. There was even a local theater troupe that hosted two plays every year.
It was one of our town’s pride and joys. I’d forgotten how beautiful it was.
But an odd place to hold an auction. What did I know, though? The sheriff seemed to think there was going to be a large turnout, and from the way strangers were filling the seats, he wasn’t wrong.
“Mom, I don’t think we’re going to be able to bid enough. Look at all these people.” I whispered the concern in my mother’s ear, my heartbeat thumping erratically. My parents were willing to cash out everything in their name if I won the bid. They gave me a substantial number to work with, but I feared it wasn’t going to be enough.
“What are they doing here?” Aspen snarled from my other side. I turned to look in the direction she was staring and found a few men in suits, congregating against the wall.
“Who is that?”
“They’re the land developers that keep snooping around the farm. Dad’s had to call the cops on them for trespassing twice in the last month. They’re relentless dirtbags.”
“The sheriff said the land and property couldn’t be awarded to a developer. They weren’t allowed to bid.”
