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No sooner had Clay disconnected did Heidi’s phone ring again.
“When it rains, it pours,” she murmured as she read the caller identification.
It wasn’t just any caller, though.
It was the woman who’d left Heidi’s house on Saturday with a nervous smile and eyes that were unnaturally round.
“Carine?”
“Hear me out,” Carine said in her excited saleswoman tone. “I don’t know if you were, like, really, seriously, super-duper-meaning-it interested in actual property here at Shora, but I have it on good authority that we’re about to open up some new lot availability.”
Heidi couldn’t help smiling, and not because she’d been eager to learn all about exclusive real estate opportunities. Carine’s voice was bright and light. It was anything but“I’m not sure I ever want to see you again.”Though not often, Heidi had been wrong about things before. She didn’t believe, however, that Carine would be bold enough to squeeze hundreds of thousands of dollars out of her if she were on the cusp of a Heidi detox.
Overthought myself into having a bad morning for nothing.
“There must be something exciting about these lots.” Heidi dropped her key fob in the cupholder and pressed the ignition button. Apparently, she was driving to Shora.
“The ones that were made available during the opening rollout are still nothing to sneeze at, but this new section was one Lipton didn’t think we’d be able to get. These aren’t parcels near the pond.”
“Don’t tell me Lipton’s doing a land grab of someone’s ancestral burial ground, Carine. Did you send someone out there who knows what they’re doing?”
“No! No cemeteries. Trust me. Valerie asked.”
“Leave it to Valerie to know what to ask.”
“She even pulled the land records and called the previous owners’ families to be sure. Plus, she had a local historian come out to survey the area. They were looking for distinctive or unusual plantings enslaved people might have used to mark sacred sites. She didn’t find any and suspected that no one would have thought the land was good enough for burials, anyway. They would have tried to bury as far away from the marshes as possible. And just to put Valerie’s mind at ease, because she said she doesn’t work where the spirits don’t want her, the historian consulted with some other experts in her network. They were assertive in their beliefs that the Chowanoke and their contemporaries interred their deceased elsewhere.”
“I’m surprised that Lipton would pay for that level of expertise and accommodate the wait times for the surveys.”
“Normally they wouldn’t. You have to bear in mind that one of the reasons Valerie is still working on this project is because some guy at Lipton’s momma sold a lot of land to the company for cheap in exchange for them building a community around her. She was going to make their lives a living hell if Valerie didn’t design it. That old lady will guarantee that Lipton jumps through whatever hoops Valerie tells them to. She certainly doesn’t want to come off as a villain down the line when all she wanted in the first place was to build something out here to connect folks who didn’t have anyone else.”
“So, the area was just farmland and marsh. No previous structures or points of spiritual significance?”
“Correct. So, getting to the good part. Because of the setbacks and such, you’d have an unimpeded view of the marsh on one side. If you choose a lot that’s on the loop, there’ll be no houses directly across from you because there’s a little hill there Lipton is choosing not to flatten. They crunched the numbers and said the lots would be more valuable if they let them sprawl.”
“How very mercenary of them.” Heidi snorted. “But how many acres are we talking about? I don’t cut grass. Let me make that perfectly clear before we drift any further into this rabbit warren.”
“Well. Two, but…you know. Make Kevin cut it or something. Or hire someone. Or, hell, just let most of it stay wild. The elegant jungle look is in right now. You just have to make it look intentional. You want me to put a hold sticky note on the lot for you?”
“You sound like you have a particular one in mind.”
“Not really,” Carine hedged. “I…” Some of the energy had drained from her enthusiasm, and Heidi suspected that was entirely her fault. She didn’t do enthusiasm the way many other people did, and, likely, Carine had misread her guarded tone the same way Heidi had misread Carine’s departure face.
“Never mind, Carine. Scratch me onto your schedule. I’ll let you know about the sticky note once I’ve seen what you’re talking about. I’ll be there in less than thirty minutes.”
“Thirty— Oh! Wait. I didn’t mean for you to miss work. I just got a little excited and wanted to dangle the opportunity of first dibs in front of you. Lord, Heidi, I wasn’t trying to disrupt your day. I can just—”
“I was already in my car. I’m already driving.”
Heading that way to find space for Nana and Fran because I trust you.
“In your car? Where were you going?” Carine asked hesitantly. “It’s the middle of the day.”
“When you are part-owner of a company you’ve been pouring your sweat and tears into for an epoch, you can make the end of the day be whenever you want it to be.”
“If you get here when you say you will, I’ll have about an hour.”
“I can be quick.”
