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Sale includes a herd of one hundred cattle and state-of-the-art equipment.
An opportunity rarely found in north Texas.
Inquire for further information.
Brendan flicked through the handful of images provided with the listing; photos of lush fields and tan-colored cows wandering past, and at the end a large, old-fashioned farmhouse, two stories tall with a wide porch wrapped around the front. He could feel the muscles in his chest relax just looking at it all. It was hard to believe that places like that still existed as he sat high above downtown Houston. But that was what got him into trouble in the first place, wasn’t it? Getting so wrapped up in all this city chaos, ignoring the ten billion other things that were going on in the world, that it had nearly killed him. It made him feel small, an unimportant speck on the surface of the planet, which in turn made him feel good. Better than he had in a while, in fact.
The thought of just waking up and getting to seethatevery morning, to see actual animals out in nature during the day rather than sitting at a desk and looking out over cars and buses. Brendan couldn’t even recall ever havingseenan actual cow in real life, he’d never had any reason to, but the ones in the listing’s photographs looked almost friendly, with their big eyes and soft ears.
“Would it be considered the start of a breakdown if I did something kind of extreme?”
Brendan surprised himself with the question, the words out of his mouth without him even thinking about it. Tina seemed equally surprised, a speared piece of tortellini halfway to her mouth as she blinked across the table at him. She unfroze herself and ate her mouthful, thinking carefully over his words as she chewed. Tina rarely dismissed things as a joke, turning each word that was said over in her mind from every angle.
“I think it would be a pretty reasonable response to nearly dying,” she said after a moment. “As long as you’re not, like, I don’t know, going to sell all your possessions, shave your head and go live in a monastery or something.”
“Not quite that extreme,” said Brendan, exiting out of the tab and putting his phone away in his pocket, suddenly feeling pretty dumb considering Tina wasn’t all that far off. Shaving his head hadn’t been a part of his sudden vision, but living surrounded by nature and peace was a little too on the nose.
“Why, what were you thinking?” she asked.
“Nothing. Don’t worry, it’s stupid.”
Tina shrugged, letting it slide, knowing that Brendan wouldn’t budge.
He was being ridiculous. He’d gotten too wrapped up in his own existential crisis, seen three photos of a storybook house and nearly lost his mind. What was he going to do, fly across the state and play farmer? Tina would probably have him committed — and he really wouldn’t blame her.
Determined to ignore his phone for the rest of the afternoon, Brendan ate his food, despite his lack of appetite, and tried to keep it together.
* * *
Brendan had never been one to believe in “the powers of the universe,” or fate, or whatever spiritual people called it. He was too practical for that. Life was chaos for pretty much everyone; things happened out of your control all the time, and the only way forward was to deal with it and plow on ahead. That had been his attitude thus far in life. But his heart attack had left him feeling more shaken than he was willing to admit, even to Tina.
He hadn’t been sleeping great, even though one of the doctor’s main prescriptions was plenty of rest, and he often found himself wandering around his penthouse apartment at three in the morning. As usual he was high above everything, looking down on the lights speckled about apartments and streets, separated from it all by a pane of glass, unable to feel the breeze on his skin despite being so close to the sky. Instead of staring blankly out at the few cars trickling past on the far-down city streets, he went about making himself a coffee just to dosomething, though he was now restricted to decaf unfortunately. While the machine whirred and buzzed, dribbling hot liquid into a cup, Brendan looked around his dim apartment.
He’d worked himself almost literally to death andthiswas what he had to show for it? A bunch of numbers in his bank account and a penthouse and some nice furniture. It didn’t even look like a home. It didn’t feel like a home — and what did it say that he was only just noticing now that the place he had lived in for more than five years had no traces of himself in it? It looked like a show home, a demonstration put together to sell the place. Anyone could be living here. His whole career, his wholelifehad revolved around selling spaces to people to make their own, apartments and houses and offices that they could exist in and call home. And here he was, alone in his own place, and it may as well have been a museum for all the personality it showed.
He knew people who would literally kill to be in his position. But from where he was standing, alone in his kitchen in the middle of the night, drinking decaf coffee just for something to do, it didn’t seem worth it. It all seemed empty, this palace of glass and chrome.
But being alone had its advantages sometimes, too; there was no one around to look at him with concern as he paced back and forth, wondering if he was actually going to go through with this absolutelyinsaneplan that he’d cooked up since his lunch with Tina. He opened up his phone and brought up the property listing that he’d been obsessing over for the past few days.
His laptop was on the kitchen table, and a moment later he opened it too, screen bright against the dim lights. Before he could stop himself, Brendan was writing out an email with barely a second thought.
He wanted that small farm in the north of Texas. He wanted to wake up in the morning and see grass and a blue sky stretching to the horizon, not pillars of concrete and steel. He wanted to breathe in fresh air in the morning, not exhaust fumes. He wanted toget out,to work with his hands and use his body, to have it aching from exertion and not from the stress ofpaperwork.
He’d been lost, wondering what to do with his life, what sort of person to be now that the old version of himself no longer seemed to fit. The more time that passed and the more he had thought about it, the less crazy it had seemed. He had enough money to buy that small farm a hundred times over and not even notice a dent in his account.So whatif it didn’t work out — it was minimal risk, and the only person who even had to know was Tina. So, screw it. He’d already failed beyond comprehension with the botched deal for the city block… If he was rebuilding himself from scratch, he was going to do what he wanted. Even if what he wanted might seem like he was having a breakdown.
He emailed the agency who had listed the farm, not caring in the slightest that the time indicated on his message showed that he’d sent it at three in the morning. He made an offer, signed off and closed the computer.
Maybe he’d gone mad, but he really couldn’t see a problem with that when it was the first time in months that he’d felt alive.
CHAPTER3
NICOLE
Nicole sat on the porch steps, the envelope containing the deeds to the house held so tightly in her hands that her fingers were starting to go numb. The keys were in her shirt pocket and every now and then she’d reach her hand over to touch the lump in the fabric, wanting to feel the weight there for as long as she could.
Even though she couldn’t run this place on her own and couldn’t afford to either, she had been hoping that a sale would have taken months, years even, so that she would have a reason to stay as long as possible. But it had only taken a few weeks to sell in record time for the asking price, and a few more weeks after that for paperwork to be signed and sent through. It had all happened in a blur, too fast to even process.
Scott had been able to buy a place in Nashville and set himself up, easy as pie. As for Nicole, she didn’t know what she’d do with her half of the money. It wasn’t enough to buy another farm, not one that was decent anyways. She could buy a house in the nearest town, or she could get a trailer, travel around the country, but having nowhere to put down roots wasn’t an idea that appealed to her, as if she would be wandering the highways looking for a place to call her own.
