Chapter 3 The Property
The Vance place was four miles south of Pinecrest on a road that ran along the creek, and it was, Holly concluded as Mr. Crane drove her out on the morning of the second day, entirely beautiful in the specific way of things that were beautiful because they were honest rather than because they were trying.
The house was low and weathered, built from the timber that grew on the upper slopes and aged to the silver-gray of old wood that had been properly treated and had done its job through many seasons.
It sat on a slight rise above the creek with the mountains visible behind it in three directions and a south-facing exposure that she understood, even without experience, would matter in winter.
Someone had planted a windbreak of blue spruce on the northwest — the direction the serious weather came from — and the spruce were twenty years old and effective.
"Harold built the windbreak in his second year," Mr. Crane said. "He thought like a man who intended to stay."
The barn was larger than she expected and in better repair than she expected, the boards tight and the roof sound and the smell of recent use in the air — not old, abandoned use but recent maintenance. "Mr. Breck," Mr. Crane said, when she looked at him inquiringly.
"He maintained the barn," she said.
"He maintained everything," Mr. Crane said. "As I mentioned. He is that kind of man."
She walked the property for an hour. Not with a plan — she had no reference for what a hundred and sixty acres should feel like and no prior experience of walking property with any purpose except the pleasure of walking.
But with the attention she brought to most things, which was the complete attention, the attention that registered what was there rather than what she expected to be there.
What was there was: good soil along the creek, dark with the silt of decades of flooding and recession.
Pasture that had been grazed this season and showed the signs of it in the right way — the signs of use rather than depletion.
A kitchen garden behind the house, put to bed for winter but with the organized structure of someone who had known what they were doing and had done it well.
An apple tree, old, at the corner of the kitchen garden, the branches still carrying a few frozen fruit that the birds had not yet reached.
She stood under the apple tree and looked at the house.
The house was dark because it was empty.
She thought about what it would look like lit.
She thought about what it would smell like inhabited, the way the Caldwell ranch on the way in had smelled of wood smoke and something warm when they'd passed it on the road, the smell of a house that was entirely in use.
She thought: I do not know how to farm. I do not know how to ranch.
I have been an account clerk in Kansas City for four years and before that an account clerk in St. Louis for three years before that a clerk in a dry goods store in the town in Illinois where she had grown up, and none of these things had taught her the first thing about one hundred and sixty acres and a barn and a kitchen garden and an apple tree.
She thought: I could learn.
She thought: learning requires time, and I have eleven weeks of savings and the property is already costing money simply by existing and requiring maintenance.
She thought: I could sell it.
She looked at the house and the mountains and the apple tree and the south-facing exposure that would matter in winter.
She thought: I don't want to sell it.
She had not expected this. She had come here with the open mind of a person who had not yet decided, and she had found, standing under an apple tree in the first week of December, that something in her had already decided without informing the rest of her.
She wanted to stay.
She had no idea how to stay.
She walked back to the house to wait for James Breck.
* * *
He arrived at ten o'clock on horseback, which was how she had expected him to arrive — she had formed a picture of him from the available information, which was: works land, capable, not pleased about the current situation, prefers directness.
The picture she had formed was of a large man with the aggressive quality of someone who had been wronged and intended to make this known. This was, she recognized upon his arrival, entirely inaccurate.
James Breck was perhaps thirty-five, medium height, with the lean build of someone who worked physically without excess and the weathered face of someone who worked outside in Colorado.
His eyes were dark and his expression was composed in the way of a man who had decided to be composed for this particular encounter and was executing the decision with discipline.
He was not happy. He was managing the not-happy with the contained efficiency of someone who understood that the not-happy was not the other person's problem even if they were the cause of it.
He dismounted, tied his horse to the post at the corner of the house — the post that had clearly been installed for exactly this purpose, another piece of maintenance — and came to the door.
She opened it before he knocked.
He stopped. He had not expected the door to open before he knocked.
"Mr. Breck," she said. "I'm Holly Vance. Come in out of the cold."
He came in. The house was cold too — she had not been able to get the stove going successfully, which she filed as the first of many things she needed to learn — but it was out of the wind.
He looked around the interior of the house with the specific look of a man in a familiar place, the look that registered the familiar rather than taking inventory. He had been in this house. He had been in this house many times.
"Mr. Crane explained the situation," Holly said. "I understand you worked the property this season under an arrangement with my uncle."
"That's correct," he said. His voice was even. Controlled.
"And that you expected to purchase it," she said.
"That is also correct."
"I want to be direct with you," she said, because she had said she preferred directness and she intended to demonstrate it. "I don't know yet what I'm going to do with this property. I came here to see it and to decide. I have now seen it. I need more time to decide."
He looked at her. The composed expression held. "What are your options?" he said.
"Sell," she said. "Stay. Something else I haven't thought of yet."
"Something else," he said. He said it neutrally. Not mockingly, not dismissively. He was processing it.
"I'm told the property is in good repair," she said. "I understand that is substantially your work. Thank you for that."
He looked at her. Something shifted in the composed expression — the specific shift of a person who has been thanked for something they did not do for the purpose of being thanked and are deciding how to receive it.
"Harold asked me to," he said. "I would have done it regardless. The property should be maintained."
"You do things that should be done," she said.
"Yes," he said. Not as a boast. As a fact.
They looked at each other in the cold house with the stove that she hadn't managed to light and the mountains outside the windows, and Holly thought: he is not what I expected.
He is less angry and more correct, and the less-angry-more-correct version is considerably harder to handle than the angry version would have been, because the angry version could be managed and the correct version simply is.
"How long do you need?" he said.
"I don't know," she said honestly. "Less than a month. I came with enough time to see and decide before Christmas."
He nodded. A single, brief nod of a man who has received a timeline and is filing it. "All right," he said.
"Would you — " She stopped. She was going to ask something she wasn't sure was reasonable. She asked it anyway. "Would you be willing to tell me about the property? While I'm deciding? I know nothing about what it requires or what it's worth or what staying would involve. You know all of it."
He looked at her. The dark eyes were assessing — not unkindly, but completely.
"That's an unusual request," he said.
"I'm an unusual situation," she said.
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "Yes," he said. "I'll tell you about it."
She thought: well. That was not what I expected.
She thought: nothing about this is what I expected.