ONE
CHRISTOPHER
I punched the button to silence the radio in the rental vehicle.
There was nothing but Christmas music playing on the one station that came in clearly and with the holiday still three weeks away, I was not in the mood to hear it yet, if ever. But more importantly, I needed to straighten out this mess I was in.
With hopes this call would do just that, I pressed the cell phone to my ear . . . and heard the voicemail pick up.
Dammit. The one time that I really, really needed to speak to a human, no one was answering.
At the unwelcome sound of the tone prompting me to leave a message, I said, “Hello. This is Christopher Nunes. I have an appointment to meet you today at my Uncle William’s farm in Mudville, but my GPS says I’ve arrived and I can assure you, I have not.”
I stared at the parking lot and the out-of-business grocery store in front of me. I’d only visited my great uncle once, years ago, but I was fairly certain this was not the farm I’d just inherited. I wasn’t even in the right town. This was not Mudville according to the sign I’d just passed that read Bainbridge.
“I really need you to call me back and confirm the address. Thank you.” Sighing, I disconnected the call to the lawyer and glanced around me.
There wasn’t much on State Highway 7. A couple of houses. A farm here or there. The abandoned grocery store, next to an equally empty and boarded up Chinese food restaurant. The sight had my very low hopes for this property falling even lower.
I hadn’t wanted to drive to upstate New York in December in the first place. But I really didn’t want to be lost there.
Short of knocking on someone’s door, which I wasn’t keen on doing, I figured the best course of action would be for me to continue on.
Maybe the GPS wasn’t that far off. I could be close. Who knew what kind of property lines the farm had originally? Maybe sometime in the past William had sold off some land and it had become commercial retail property.
All I knew was this did not look like where I’d spent the summer twenty-three years ago when I was seventeen.
I flipped the heater another notch higher as just the sight of the snow on either side of the road made me feel colder, before I steered the four-wheel drive vehicle out of the lot and back toward the highway. I felt the wheels slip on the icy surface of the shoulder.
Hopefully the lawyer would call me back with the proper address before I ended up sliding off the road and into a ditch.
All I needed to do was see the damn property, as the will stipulated, sign some papers and then I could get back to Manhattan and my life.
Driving six hours roundtrip in one day was not my idea of fun, but it was definitely preferable to spending the night in Mudville.
Hell, was there even a decent hotel nearby if I had wanted to stay? Judging by what I’d seen so far, I’d say that was doubtful.
The first sign of activity and life after what had looked like a ghost town had me slowing and flipping on the blinker to turn into a drive marked with a sign for a farm stand, and a second sign that read Christmas Trees for Sale.
Christmas trees. That reminded me that I hadn’t had one of those since moving into my own place after graduating college decades ago and I didn’t feel all that bad about that. I made do with a fresh balsam wreath on the door. That was festive enough for me. Quick, cheap and easy, but still messy once the needles started to fall.
Mom would have a tree when I visited her Christmas Day. And Dad and his new family would definitely have a tree when I stopped by Christmas Eve. Twenty-three years later and I was still a two-holiday child of divorce.
I pushed that thought out of my mind, along with the dread of those double holiday celebrations, and parked the car.
Wrapping the scarf around my neck and pulling the sides of my open overcoat closer together, I stepped out of the warmth of the car and into the biting December cold.
It must have snowed here fairly recently. The driveway and parking area were clear, but a dusting of white coated the grass and the evergreen trees. It was just enough to be pretty but not be a nuisance.
That didn’t mean I was enjoying my excursion upstate. I most definitely was not. And the fact that Uncle William’s will had required I make the trip to claim the inheritance was annoying, to say the least.
At that thought, I felt the guilt of how ungrateful I was being. I hadn’t asked for or expected to inherit the farm when he died. I would have thought my mother’s maternal uncle would have left it to her or someone else he’d been closer to. But he’d left it to me.
Odd, to say the least.
I hadn’t seen the man in more than a dozen years, since the last time he’d visited my mother downstate—that’s how he referred to what I, and the rest of the people I knew, just called the suburbs.
It was sad that the man had no one else closer to him to leave the property to. Someone more suitable, who might want to keep it. Farm it.
That person was definitely not me.
Yes, I’d enjoyed my visit here that summer, but there had been extenuating circumstances back then. It was the summer that, unbeknownst to me, my parents were about to get divorced, and being home with them fighting all the time had been unbearable.
Then there was the girl next door to my uncle’s place . . . Lizzy Murphy.
Long blonde hair. Long lean legs. Eyes as blue as the summer sky . . . She was my first kiss and I’d bet money I was hers. A year younger than me, she’d been a tomboy in a woman’s body. I still remembered her soft curvy body and all its tempting attributes as her shorts and T-shirt got soaked while she taught me to fish in the Muddy River.
I had good memories from my time there. But that was then. This was now. Hopefully, someone at the tree lot would be able to give me better directions.
There was a lot of action happening around me. Not a surprise, I guess, given there were only a few weeks until Christmas and all the festive people would want to get a tree.
I tried to wave down a teenaged girl as she sped past, to no avail. Resigned, I trudged on toward a small wooden building. I was in the wrong shoes for hiking in snow, even this little bit, and I could feel my feet getting colder and wetter with every step.
Yeah, I couldn’t get rid of this property fast enough, because there was no doubt in my mind that I’d never want to come here again.
I opened the door and smelled the acrid scent of smoke inside, just before I felt the welcome heat of the woodburning stove tucked into the corner of the room.
Grateful for the warmth, I pulled the door shut behind me, which sent the little bells attached to it tinkling. The sound didn’t interrupt the three men I saw talking by the counter, even though judging by the matching logos on their sweatshirts, they worked here.
“I’m telling you, we should buy the old train depot before someone else grabs it,” one said.
The other one shook his head. “Boone, I’m not paying double what the guy paid when he bought it just two years ago.”
“Stone’s right. The asking price is too high. We’d have to low-ball him on the offer,” the third man said. “But it’s a great location. We could expand the farm market. Now that Brandon has the diner and the old hotel open for business, the village is getting a lot more traffic. Red says her sales are up twenty-percent at the consignment shop.”
The one he’d referred to as Stone shook his head. “Well, Cashel, then Red should buy the depot. We don’t need another location.”