Page 124 of Once Upon a Fall

I remembered all the times I cried when I’d have to leave, not wanting to go, and she’d tell me maybe someday I could stay with her. It was a platitude, nothing more. Something a grandma says to a tearful grandson.

“Oh, no, you were very adamant,” my mom said. “Grandma had promised you the farm.”

This didn’t make any sense. The farm was always going to go to my mom. The will was changed after my grandma met Ed, so I could protect it. That’s what I was told.

But it wasn’t my grandma who told me that; it was my mom.

“Did she ever say anything like that to you?” I asked.

“About the farm? No,” she said. “Why would she?”

“But she told you she changed the will, right? The farm was supposed to be yours?”

She went quiet for a second. “You know, I don’t remember when she told me about the will.”

We said goodbye, and I hung up, but something about that answer kept bothering me.

I remembered how shocked my mom was when they read the will. She hadn’t known it was coming; she was just as confused as I was.

“She changed the will after she met Ed,” she’d said that day. “I can’t believe she did that.”

I needed to verify this information, though. I found the number for the estate planner in my email and gave him a call.

He wasn’t available, but I left a message.

Owen called me later that day with an offer on the property. I told him to give me twenty-four hours.

I heard from the estate planner the next day.

“Can you tell me when the will was changed?” I asked him.

“Changed?”

“Yes. In the original version, my mother was to inherit the farm.”

There was a pause on his end, and then the sound of papers shuffling. “Mr. Alden, this will was signed twenty years ago. There’s only ever been one.”

I thanked him and hung up and then sat there staring at the wall.

I was a thirteen-year-old kid when my grandparents made their will.

My grandma’s words, He’ll know what to do, had been sitting there for twenty years.

The farm was mine. The only home I’d ever known, and she had made sure I would always have it.

I’d thought she’d left me a problem to solve. Something to protect, sell, or somehow make right for my mom. But she hadn’t. She’d left me the farm because she wanted me to have it. Because somehow, even when I was thirteen, she knew how much that place meant to me.

I wasn’t expecting that to hit me so hard. I sit there for a minute, staring at nothing, grateful that I figured it out before it was too late.

I call Owen and tell him I won’t be accepting the offer and to take the FOR SALE sign down.

I know what to do now. I’m keeping the farm.

The decision comes with its own set of problems. I promised my mom the money from the sale, and I think I’ve figured out a way to keep that promise. I just need to iron out a few details before I tell her.

The other problem is, the place is a wreck. It’ll take some time and money to even get the place livable. Owen’s listing described it as “full of potential,” which is what you say about a house that used to be infested with raccoons.

But I’m up for the task, and maybe even excited about it.