Chapter 17 - THEY WEREN’T BUYING DIRT
Stonebranch sent another letter before I came home.
New offer:
$710,000.
Expiration:
ten business days.
My father forwarded it with one sentence.
This is starting to feel wrong.
That relieved me more than it should have.
Old Dad might have signed first because the bank was calling.
The last four years had changed him.
Not into a different man.
Into one who asked uncomfortable questions before money made the answers inconvenient.
Dr. Ortiz looked at the offer.
“Water resources company?”
“Yes.”
“Do they operate locally?”
I had already searched.
Stonebranch was barely three years old.
Registered in Louisville.
Two officers.
One attorney.
Its projects involved groundwater rights, industrial water contracts and what its website called strategic hydrologic asset acquisition.
“That sounds like rich people saying water,” I said.
Dr. Ortiz smiled.
“Basically.”
Then she pointed toward the parcel coordinates.
“South-central Kentucky is karst country.”
Limestone.
Sinkholes.
Caves.
Groundwater moving through conduits that do not respect property fences.
A high-capacity well could be connected to a much larger system.
“If they want water,” I asked, “why not just drill somewhere else?”
“Maybe they did.”
That answer became important.
Public records showed Stonebranch had leased exploration rights on three neighboring farms.
One belonged to Wade Mercer.
The same farmer who spent years telling everyone my tree rows were a waste of land until a drought made his own exposed field look terrible.
Wade and Dad were not enemies anymore.
Not friends exactly.
Rural relationships have categories city people don’t appreciate.
They had settled old drainage problems.
Shared equipment once.
Argued over fence posts twice.
Wade bought tomatoes from our roadside stand and complained about every price.
Normal.
I called Dad.
“Did Wade lease groundwater rights?”
“He didn’t mention it.”
“Would he?”
“Probably not.”
Fair.
Private contract.
Still.
At Thanksgiving I came home.
The farm looked smaller.
College does that.
Molly met me at the truck wearing one of my old hoodies.
“You stole that.”
“You left.”
Apparently possession law in our family had become efficient.
Dad waited by the porch.
He looked older than he had in August.
Not weak.
Just more gray.
After dinner we walked north.
The orchard had once held thirty-seven pear and apple trees.
Disease took most.
Ice took others.
Two pears remained.
My windbreak crossed the western edge.
Leaf litter covered ground that used to crack open every August.
Dad stopped near an old concrete ring half buried beneath honeysuckle.
I had passed it hundreds of times.
“What’s that?”
“Thought it was an old cattle cistern.”
We cut vines away.
Underneath sat a steel cap.
Stamped:
BH-04-771
My well.
Dad stared.
“I swear to God, I forgot.”
I believed him.
That scared me more than a lie would have.
“How do you forget someone drills 186 feet into your farm?”
“Your mom had started chemo.”
There it was.
Hospital.
Insurance.
School.
Farm.
He continued.
“Some university people came. Watershed grant. Your mother handled most of it.”
“Why was she doing groundwater work?”
“She was worried about the spring.”
“What spring?”
Dad looked toward Cedar Hollow.
The town took drinking water from a large limestone spring two miles south.
Everybody knew that.
I had never connected it to our land.
Then Dad said:
“Your mom thought the old orchard drained toward it underground.”
I looked at the capped well.
“What happened?”
“She got sicker.”
The project stopped.
Or at least Dad thought it did.
Then his phone rang.
Bank.
He let it go to voicemail.
Progress.
We walked back.
On the porch sat another envelope from Stonebranch.
Hand delivered.
Offer:
$825,000.
Molly read the number over Dad’s shoulder.
“Are we rich?”
“No,” Dad said.
“Could we be?”
He looked toward the north field.
“For about five minutes.”
I asked:
“Why are they raising the price this fast?”
May you like
Dad folded the letter.
“Because they know something we don’t.”
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