Chapter 4

The offer arrived that evening in a white courier envelope.

I left it unopened on the kitchen table until darkness covered the windows.

Wind pushed against the old farmhouse in long, low bursts. The loose pane above the sink rattled in its frame, once, twice, then again. Evan used to wedge a folded matchbook beneath it when the weather turned.

I had never learned where he kept the matchbooks.

The envelope waited beneath the yellow kitchen light.

MERCER DEVELOPMENT was printed across the front.

I cut it open.

The first page contained one number.

$18,000,000.

I read it twice.

Eighteen million dollars would clear every debt attached to the farm. I would never again have to choose between repairing a fence and replacing a heater. I could sell before winter, walk away, and never wake at three in the morning wondering which bill could wait.

For one dangerous moment, relief moved through me.

Then I turned the page.

The offer included photographs of the property.

Not the exterior images anyone could take from the road. These showed the inside of the barn: the damaged beam above the north stalls, the water stains behind the tack-room cabinet, the warped floorboards near the loft stairs.

One photograph captured the doorframe where my father had marked my height in pencil.

I touched the image with one finger.

No one entered that barn without a key.

Evan had one.

The next pages were worse.

There were estimates for the repairs I had postponed. Notes about the decline in winter bookings. A plain summary of the farm's shrinking margin for error.

No complicated calculations. They did not need them.

Every page said the same thing.

Mara Bennett is running out of time.

I checked the dates.

The photographs had been taken four months ago. The repair summary had been prepared three months ago. Their first estimate of what I might accept had been written before Evan asked for a divorce.

Before he stood beneath those lights.

Before Sloane wore white.

This had not begun when he announced their engagement.

By then, they had already studied the leaking roof, the empty calendar, and every fear I had confessed across this kitchen table.

At the bottom of the offer, one sentence had been printed in bold.

THIS OFFER EXPIRES IN SIXTY DAYS.

I looked around the kitchen Evan had shared with me for twelve years.

He knew which winter bill frightened me most. He knew I sometimes sat in the truck before walking inside, trying to gather the courage to open the mail. He knew exactly how ashamed I was that the farm my father had trusted me to protect was slipping beyond what I could afford.

I had told him those things because he was my husband.

Now they were part of Sloane's purchase strategy.

The wind struck the window again.

I closed the offer, but I could still see the photograph of my father's pencil marks through the paper.

How much of my life had Evan given her?

And what had he told Sloane that made them both so certain I would eventually bow my head and sign?