My Three Kids Voted to Sell the Farm Without Me. They Forgot Who Actually Owns the Deed.

Part 4: December

Derek left first, about an hour after. He took Amanda and drove back to Chicago that night instead of staying over the way we’d planned. He hugged me at the door and said “we’ll talk soon, Mom” in the voice he uses when he’s not going to talk soon.

Colin stayed until Sunday. He slept in his old room. He came into the kitchen Friday morning while I was making coffee and he sat down at the table and he said, “Mom, I really am sorry. I let him talk me into it. I should have called you.”

I said, “Yes. You should have.”

He said, “Are you going to forgive me?”

I poured him a cup. I set it in front of him. I sat down across from him and I looked at my youngest child, who is forty-one years old and still has his father’s cowlick, and I said, “Colin. I’m going to work on it. That’s what I can promise you right now.”

He nodded. He drank his coffee. Then he asked if he could help me clean out the gutters, because the leaves were bad this year. And we spent Friday afternoon on ladders together, not talking about any of it, and that was worth something. Not everything. Something.

Marla called Saturday. She cried on the phone for a long time. She said all the things you’d expect. She said she’d been stressed about money because Tom’s job was uncertain. She said she’d let Derek push her into things. She said she never really thought I would end up in Sunnybrook, she just wanted “options on the table.”

I let her talk. When she was done I said, “Marla. I love you. I’m not going to hang up on you. But I need some time.”

She said, “How much time?”

I said, “I don’t know yet.”

She was quiet.

She said, “Okay, Mom.”

And I appreciated that she didn’t push.

Derek has not called. It’s been three weeks. Amanda sent me a Christmas card with a photo of their dog on it and a handwritten note that said *Judith, I hope you’re doing well. I’m sorry for how Thanksgiving went. Amanda.* I put it on the mantel next to the one from Sarah and the girls.

I don’t know what will happen with Derek. He is the most like his father in some ways, stubborn, private, slow to admit he was wrong about anything. Bill would come around eventually, but it might take him weeks of not speaking and then one Saturday he’d just show up in the kitchen and start talking about the weather like nothing had happened. Derek might do the same. He might not.

Ellen came over last week to help me with the tree. I only put up a small one now, on the table in the front room, because the big one is too much to haul out of the basement by myself and I refuse to ask Colin to drive four hours to do it for me.

She said, “Have you thought about what you want to do with the place? Long term?”

I said, “Some.”

I have thought about it. I’ve thought about a lot of things. I’ve thought about calling a lawyer, a real one, not Derek’s friend, and updating the trust so that when I do die, the property goes to my grandchildren directly instead of the three kids. I’ve thought about leaving Colin’s third to him outright and putting the other two in trusts they can’t touch until they’re older than I am now. I’ve thought about giving Sarah something, because Sarah has been more of a daughter to me in the last five years than Marla has, and Sarah isn’t even technically family anymore.

I haven’t decided anything. I have time. That’s the thing they didn’t understand, my children. I have *time*. I’m not on a clock. I’m not going anywhere.

Yesterday I went out to the barn. I hadn’t been in there in a while, since it’s cold and my knee doesn’t love the uneven floor. But I wanted to see Bill’s workbench. All his tools were still hung on the pegboard the way he left them, in the order he liked, biggest to smallest, wrenches on the left, screwdrivers on the right, the little coffee can of odd screws and washers on the shelf above.

Colin had asked about these tools in the group text. *What about Dad’s tools.*

I stood there for a while. The barn smelled like it always smelled, old wood and machine oil and the faint sweet ghost of hay from thirty years ago when we still had cattle. Bill’s flannel jacket was hanging on the nail by the door. I hadn’t been able to make myself take it down.

I took it down.

I put it on. It was way too big. It smelled like him, still, a little, or maybe I was imagining that by now, it’s been two years and jackets don’t hold on that long. But I stood in the barn wearing my dead husband’s jacket, and I looked at the tools he had bought one by one over forty-five years, and I thought about the man who sat at our kitchen table in 1994 with our friend Frank and signed a piece of paper that he never told me about, because he knew.

He knew.

He knew our children. Better than I did, maybe. He knew what money can do to people, even people you raised, even people you love. And he protected me from it before I even knew I needed protecting.

I walked back to the house in his jacket. It was starting to snow, the small dry kind that doesn’t stick. My phone was ringing on the kitchen counter when I got inside. I pulled off my boots. I let it ring.

When I checked, it was Derek.

He hadn’t left a message.

I stood there in the kitchen in Bill’s jacket, and I looked at his name on the screen, and I thought about calling him back.

I put the phone down on the counter, face up, and I went to start the kettle.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

I have time.