“I don’t know, toruin my life?” Catherine cries, clearly at the end of her rope. “To ruin thisdeal, to ruin myyear, to carry on Bill stupid Robertson’s infuriating legacy of making every visit to thisarmpitof a town myliving nightmare? Do you have any idea how long I promised these people I would deliver themthis deal, okay, it wasyearsago, and when that old bastard finally went into that home, I was sure! Sure that I could get it to them in time, but you got in my way, and you made everything so difficult, and you made sure no visitors were ever allowed in, so I had to wait until hefinallybit the big one andthen?—”
Seeming to remember Will exists for the first time in several minutes, she turns to him, realizes he’s holding the paper, snatches it out of his hands and snaps, “Don’t look at that! Don’t read that; you don’t have to worry about any of that at all.” Her voice abruptly shifts tone and register, into one Will thinks might be trying for soothing, though it’s definitely, definitely not achieving that, at least for him. “Youwantto sell, right? Of course you do. You hate this place, and hated your childhood here, and you hated him”—she points to Casey without looking at him—“the second you met him, so. No-brainer, right? Help out your old buddy Catherine, and just sign the paperwork right now, and then we can?—”
“I’m sorry,” Will says, cutting her off, his voice cold, “I’m just processing—you said Casey made sure there were no visitors. Were you trying to…what, trick my father? My dementia-riddled, dying father? Into selling our family farm?”
“‘Trick’ is such a harsh word,” Catherine says, her tone quite careful now. “I just wanted to have a conversation where he was a little more receptive, maybe, to other points of view?—”
Will snorts. “Well, yeah, I’ll grant you, you would have had to wait until he was dead for that, but—Christ. That man never liked me, and to tell you the truth, I never much liked him, either. Terrible mess of a father, I’m sorry but unafraid to say, just as I’m sure he’d’ve been happy to tell you I was a real failure of a son. But you know what? If I know anything, I know that he’d rather the old place ended up with me—even estranged from him, even gay, even though we never spoke another word to one another after the day I left—then snakedout from under him by somebody like you.” He lifts his chin; he takes a breath.
It’s maybe the most Robertson act of his life when he says, “Anyway, even if I do, in general, hate doing what my old man would’ve wanted: It’s over, Catherine. I’m not selling.”
There’s a long, stretched-out beat of silence; Will can hear his own heart thudding in his ears as he waits for a reaction. But it’s not Catherine he’s looking at, for all the comment was addressed to her; he’s looking at Casey, who is staring back at him, his mouth open.
Then: “Really?”Casey’s voice is almost a whisper. “You’re… I don’t have to… You’rereallynot going to sell?”
But before Will can reply, a…noise…begins to emerge from the general area of Catherine Rose. It’s a high-pitched, nearly inhuman whining sound, just on the edge of hearing; for a real moment, Will thinks it’s maybe a car alarm, or a bomb, and looks around wildly for its source. But after a second, as it increases in volume and pitch, he realizes it is comingfromCatherine, and is the windup to a brief, wordless shriek of frustration, which she tips her head back and releases up towards the sky.
Then, with a truly wild energy slipping into her eyes, she drops her head back down to Will’s eye level and yells, “You littletwerp! Do you have anyideahow muchtroubleyou’ve caused me? Why couldn’t you justgo alonglike anormal personand accept the deal twoweeksago? Hell, even if you’d told menotwo weeks ago, that would have been better. You’re—you’re a disgusting, time-wasting—um—ingrate! Is what you are!”
“Hey, now,” Casey starts, in a warning tone. This makes something embarrassing and infantile occur somewhere deep in the recesses of Will’s heart, but he doesn’t actually need his honor defended; Selma had warned him this might happen, and told him to let her tire herself out if it did. Her exact words had been, “The more upset people are, the more they reveal.” Willdoesn’t think it’s necessarily the most morally upstanding approach in the world, but does seem like it might yield results, and he has to assume Selma doesn’t want Casey interrupting things, however noble his intentions.
Sure enough, Selma casts a sharp look at Casey and, her voice so low she’s basically mouthing the words, says, “Be cool, man.” This does seem to immediately pacify Casey, but it’s such an un-Selma thing to say that it makes Will suspect her of having researched him like a potential juror and said that specifically because it’s the sort of thing someone on the festival circuit might say. He glares at her; she ignores him.
Catherine Rose, for her part, appears to be nearing the end of her rope. The anger in her voice is already starting to slide into panic and desperation when, jabbing a finger in Will’s chest, she says, “All I wanted to do is help you make a lot ofmoney, you bastard, and, okay, also make me a lot of money, and Nimbletainmentsomuch money—oh, God, and I told them it was a sure thing. I told them to go ahead and start selling thosetickets.”
“By tickets, you wouldn’t happen to mean that Autumn Harvest Experience being hawked as a pricey add-on to this year’s Shiver?” Selma’s voice is smooth and calm, the complete opposite of Catherine’s panicked whine; perhaps it’s that, how even and prepared she sounds, that makes Catherine’s mouth snap shut. “Because I’m quite certain the owner of this property didn’t agree to that, so I was interested to note this very address listed on your website.” Widening her eyes with mocking innocence at Catherine’s caught expression, she adds, “Gosh, I sure hope your corporate overlords are the forgiving type. I mean, aside from the bad PR and the wasted money, you’ve made them potentially liable forseveraldifferent lawsuits to be brought. Are they low-key, usually? About that kind of thing?”
“No!” Catherine snaps, turning pleading eyes on Will. The desperation in them is naked and obvious, and it makes her look,suddenly, smaller to him. Less powerful; less frightening. As ever, maybe Selma had a point about his fear of her, and its true source. “I know I’ve been, ah, a little aggressive, but—oh, can’t we worksomethingout?”
“To be honest,” Will says, with an uncomfortable little shrug, “I might have been more open to that before, like, the tenth voicemail you left me? But at this point?—”
“Will’s very close to this,” Selma interrupts, her voice honey smooth all of a sudden. Fixing a very fierce look at Will, one which is completely at odds with her sugary tone, she says, “And he wants to step away now, right, Will? You and Casey have a lot to talk about, I’m sure? Casey, by the way, I’m Selma, I’m sure Will’s told you so much about me, and if he hasn’t, you have a little time to come up with a convincing way to lie to me and say he did—we’ll meet properly in a bit.”
Then, in spite of being neither the owner nor the manager of the property, she shoos them away with one hand as she puts the other arm around Catherine’s shoulder and says, “Now, the way I see it, you have a real opportunity here. Maybe you shouldn’t have sold those tickets—but does Nimbletainment need to know that? What if you went to them with a new proposal; say, having someone who already knows a lot about events like this put it on for you? For a fee, of course? I think I know just the guys.”
She winks at Will and Casey over Catherine’s shoulder, then jerks her head in the universal gesture for “Now, get lost.” And, what’s worse, theygo, both of them automatically taking a few shuffling steps away from her glare and then falling, more out of habit than anything, into an ambling walk back towards the house. Though he has so much to say to Casey it’s hard to contain it all, they walk in silence for a few minutes, Will unable to figure out where to begin and Casey seeming to be waiting for him. Impatience seems to get the better of him,though, because as they near the grove of trees in front of the house:
“So—that’s the scary lawyer best friend, then?” Casey sounds casual, or at least, he sounds like he’stryingto sound casual. “She seems…well, scary, actually, but not in a bad way, I don’t think.”
“That’s Selma for you,” Will agrees, wondering nonsensically if Casey can hear his heart thudding, sense the way his stomach is flipping over and over. “You don’t want to cross her, that’s for sure. But, you know, she’s a good friend to have, especially if you, uh, decide you want to back out of a real estate deal at the last second.”
“Yeah, about that,” Casey says, and stops under a large, wide-branched buckeye tree, the ground around it littered with the large nuts it drops around this time of year, some cracked to reveal the chestnut-brown, inedible seeds within. The whole tree is poisonous from root to fruit, but Will’s always loved them, anyway, the way they stand tall and unabashed, their enormous, unmissable leaves, the disruptive, spiked missiles they drop from above in the fall. If the apple tree is gnarled and fickle, changing mood and energy by season, holding itself small and taut, then the buckeye is its opposite: taking up space for the sake of it, just because that’s what it was born to do.
God, Will is thinking nonsense about trees again; while that might be the best possible summary of his life, it doesn’t mean this is the moment. So:
“Yes,” Will says, taking a breath. “To answer your earlier question: yes, really. I really am not selling the farm.”
Casey’s eyes, which had been focused anywhere else, abruptly meet Will’s, wide and wondering. “Why?Or did you mean that you don’t want to sell to Catherine, or to Nimbletainment, but?—”
Will holds up a hand, smiling at him. “I don’t want to sell the farm to anyone, Casey. Not Nimbletainment or anyone else.I thought…” He pauses, biting the inside of his cheek, but: This is what he came here to do, isn’t it? This is the plan he discussed with Selma, whathe, Will, wants to do, or at least wants to do today; it’s just a matter of doing it. He squares his shoulders, sets his jaw. “I thought it might be cool to, uh…set up a lab here, actually. These trees have been growing a long time, and there’s plenty of them to work with, and I’d have a lot more leeway than I do with the orchard I work with in Illinois—it’d be easier to get to, too, at least if I was living down here. I thought I might stick around a bit, do some thinking, put a funding proposal together. But, you know—” Will finds he can’t actually look at Casey for this part, even though—perhaps because—he means it so desperately, and with so much of himself. “I don’t think I’d be able to do, ah, both, so. I’d be looking for—partners, you know. Or, uh. Partner. To go in on the business with me. Someone to manage the farm, keep things running. What you already do now, basically, to be honest.”
“Oh?” Casey’s voice is so controlled that Will can’t help but look at him after all. There’s a fire winking in his eyes, Will thinks, but it’s banked, still smoldering; maybe it’s just a trick of the light. “And when were you planning on holding interviews for that position?”
“Uh,” Will says, and winces. “Right now? Because, I mean, if you don’t want it, I’m not hiring—I’m not interested in anyone else.” He swallows hard, and, weakly, trying for casual now himself, adds, “Though of course, I’m not trying to, like, force anything on you here? If you’d rather…I could always be a, um, a silent partner, if that would be better. I mean, I’d need to set up the lab, obviously, and mark some of the trees for experimenting, but I was thinking back of the third orchard, anyway, so you wouldn’t even have to see me if you didn’t want to, and?—”
Will’s voice dies in his throat as Casey smiles, and shakes his head, and steps closer, his right leg slipping into the spacebetween Will’s as though it was always meant to be there. He braces himself with one hand against the rough bark of the tree, and uses the other to lift Will’s chin, so their eyes are meeting.
Very seriously, Casey says, “Listen to me, Will: If anyone calls our names, or one of the goddamn teenagers appears from thin air, or the local water main explodes, orwhatever, we’re going to ignore it, okay? I think, after all this, we’ve earned a few minutes to ourselves.”
