5. Junie
JUNIE
Ruth Dwyer was a ghost, appearing on a legal document only to vanish into the history of the valley three months later.
Every instinct she possessed urged her to search the attic and pull down every dusty box of tax records, but the realities of the fall harvest required her presence behind the pine counter.
She reached for another jar of clover honey, her fingers tightening slightly as she heard the sound of an engine idling near the main driveway.
A sleek black utility vehicle had parked near the edge of the public parking lanes.
She watched as Sam Hollis emerged from the driver's side, his tailored woolen jacket and neat pressed trousers looking remarkably out of place against the rustic backdrop of the farm stand.
He carried no folders or clipboards, but his posture held the focused energy of a manager accustomed to directing operations.
Junie adjusted the tie of her white apron, her knuckles pressing against her palm as she waited for him to approach the sales counter.
She felt her hackles rise the closer he got.
A year ago, he'd offered to buy the farm and his reappearance was a pressure they didn’t need, especially with the boundary dispute going on right now.
But Junie wasn't about to let him see how unsettled his presence made her.
When he paused on the opposite side of the counter, she forced a polite smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Good morning," Sam said, his voice level and smooth as he rested his hand on the polished wooden railing. "The morning crowd is keeping you busy."
"We have a steady stream of families selecting their pumpkins," Junie replied, keeping her tone even as she folded the linen towel into a neat square. "If you are looking for a table, the seating area over there is open. But if you're here to make another offer, we’re still not interested."
Sam watched her for a long moment, his expressive eyes holding her gaze in a way that made her alert.
He didn't look angry or impatient; instead, his demeanor carried a reserved focus that was difficult to read.
"I just wanted to check in. Have you found any resolution regarding the county map’s boundary discrepancy on the southern pasture? "
Junie's chest tightened, her grip on the linen towel tightening as she met his gaze.
How did Sam Hollis even know about that?
She felt a sharp prickle of irritation. The memory of her intense office exchange with Micah was still fresh, and the realization that their legal vulnerability was now common knowledge made her defenses rise even higher.
"The boundary is our private affair," Junie countered, her voice dropping to a tight whisper to prevent her words from carrying toward the customers near the squash bins.
"If you're here to use our deed problems to put pressure on us, you're wasting your time.
We still have no interest in a corporate offer on our acreage,"
"I can understand why you’d make that assumption," Sam noted, his tone remaining calm and polite as he leaned his shoulder against the support post. "It’s true that my company is interested in investing in the future of this valley, but I'm not here to take advantage of your current difficulties."
"Well, your timing is remarkably convenient," Junie insisted, aware that she sounded annoyed but too irritated to care.
"The county registrar flags an unrecorded parcel, and suddenly the prominent developer in the valley is hovering around our farm again, waiting for us to falter.
We spent the last year fighting to save the fields and orchard.
We aren't selling this land, regardless of how messy our public deeds might look to an outsider. "
Sam looked down at the pine counter, his fingers tracing a faint knot in the weathered wood before he looked back up at her guarded face.
He seemed to recognize the pride that kept her standing so rigid behind her counter, but his expression remained sober, a contrast to the aggressive corporate persona she had expected.
"The county records are a matter of public registry," Sam explained, his tone direct and stripped of any corporate jargon.
"Any land developer in the state interested in this area would monitor those filings.
But my presence here today isn't actually about a corporate buyout.
Believe it or not, I'm not looking for a loophole to force a sale. "
Junie crossed her arms, her fingers pressing into the fabric of her sleeves as she watched him.
She wanted to believe his polite reassurances, but her mother had spent a lifetime shielding them from the outside world, and she had learned that promises rarely came without a cost. "Then why are you here? "
"Because the legal history of this farm is more complicated than a simple boundary discrepancy," Sam answered, his voice dropping as he leaned slightly closer to her side of the counter. "And some of those complications are personal."
Junie stared at him as she absorbed his words.
The fall sunshine was bright, but the shadow of the farm stand ceiling seemed to grow heavier, leaving her standing in a place where she felt strangely vulnerable.
She looked at his expression, realizing that the corporate developer was obviously holding a secret of his own.
The question was, what did that have to do with their boundary discrepancy?
Junie rested her hands on the clean wood of the sales counter.
She looked at Sam, trying to peer beneath his polite exterior to find whatever threat he was hiding.
He stood with his hands tucked into his pockets, his posture relaxed, but there was an intensity in his dark eyes that made her skin prickle.
She was used to dealing with aggressive land developers who arrived with neat brochures and spreadsheets, but there was something in Sam’s eyes this time that was different.
"If you are not here on behalf of your investment group," Junie said, her voice dropping to a low whisper as she looked toward the driveway, "then why are you asking about the county maps? The boundary lines are our private concern. What does it have to do with you?"
"The land itself is my company's concern," Sam replied, his tone remaining smooth and even as he leaned against the cedar post. "It’s not the boundary lines themselves that I’m concerned with. I’m more interested in who owned that specific acreage forty years ago.
It has nothing to do with contracts or corporate acquisitions. "
Junie crossed her arms, tucking her fingers into the soft denim of her sleeves, trying to make sense of what he was saying.
"That doesn't make any sense. Why would a corporate developer spend his afternoon looking through old registry deeds unless there was a profit in it?
You said some of the complications are personal. What exactly does that mean?"
Sam looked out at the rows of sugar pumpkins glowing in the sun, his expression turning sober.
"This is about my mother. She was raised in Massachusetts, but she refused to discuss her childhood with me.
She changed her name before I was born, and she kept her past so deeply buried that I didn't even know her maiden name until I found a box of her old correspondence after she passed away last winter. "
Junie felt her chest tightening, a cold weight settling behind her ribs.
She thought of her own mother's eccentric files in the attic, the recipe tins crammed with unrecorded cash and the handwritten deeds scribbled on seed packets.
She remembered the yellowed 1982 transfer deed Micah had shown her, and the unfamiliar name of the woman who had transferred the six acres as a gift.
"People change their names for many reasons," Junie noted, keeping her voice level as she tried to piece together what that had to do with them. "What does that have to do with this farm?"
"Her maiden name was Sterling. Sarah Sterling," Sam said, turning back to face her, his eyes holding her focus.
"And according to the public registry index I pulled from the town hall annex this week, a woman using that name signed as a witness on the original transfer deed for those six disputed acres.
It was recorded in the summer of nineteen eighty-two. Does that name sound familiar?"
Junie's fingers curled into fists. She had lived in Harvest Hollow her entire life, raising her children and helping with the harvest, and she knew every family from the covered bridge to the county line.
But she had never heard of anyone named Sarah Sterling.
It was just as unfamiliar to her as Ruth Dwyer.
"I don't recognize that name," Junie admitted, her chin rising as she met his gaze. "I’m still not sure why that matters. Even if someone by that name signed as a witness to a deed forty years ago, it doesn't mean she lived here."
"I’m not suggesting she lived here," Sam corrected, his voice gentle but unbending as he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a leather-bound notebook. "I’m asking if you’ve ever encountered her signature or her name in any of the old letters, diaries, or records kept in the farmhouse.
She was a private person, and she spent her entire life running from something she couldn't face. I’m simply trying to understand what my mother was hiding. I’m trying to piece together her past."
Junie froze, her mind flashing to the locked cabinet in the cider barn and the ancient brass key Nell Vance had dropped on the farmhouse floor.
She thought of the rusted address plate for Seventeen Hollow Road that Micah had pulled from the damp earth under the elderberry bush.
There was a secret buried on those six acres, something that had been protected for decades.
She might not know what that secret was, but she wasn't about to expose it to a stranger, regardless of his sincerity.