Dryland ground in our part of Webster County had been bringing about five thousand dollars an acre. Eighty acres was four hundred thousand.
The house was old, but it was sound. I knew because Jeff helped Mrs. Wiebe put on a new roof in 2018.
The listing had come down to four hundred and thirty thousand dollars for all of it. House, barn, eighty acres.
That would leave me about seventy thousand, give or take, for everything else.
A tractor. A planter. Seed. Fertilizer. And enough to live on until fall.
I didn’t sleep at all that night.
But by the time the sun came up over Randy’s grain bins, I knew exactly what I was going to do.
The next Monday, I drove to the bank in Hastings.
The loan officer, Kyle Hoffman, came out from his office to meet me. He was maybe thirty, in a blue shirt and a tie with little tractors on it. He had the partnership’s file under his arm.
He looked at the check. He looked at me.
“Mrs. Engel,” he said quietly. “I’m so sorry about Jeff. He was always good to me when I was new.”
“Thank you, Kyle.”
“Would you like to deposit this into your savings account?”
“For now,” I said. “And then I’d like to make an offer on a farm.”
He blinked at me.
I called the realtor that same afternoon. A woman named Connie Brandt, out of Red Cloud.
“I’d like to make an offer on the Wiebe place,” I said. “Full asking price. Four hundred and thirty thousand. Cash. No contingencies. I need to close before the end of April.”
There was a long pause on the line.
“Melissa?” Connie said. “Melissa Engel? Honey, I’m so sorry about Jeff.”
“Thank you, Connie. Will you send them the offer?”
“I’ll call them tonight,” she said.
I didn’t haggle. I didn’t have time to haggle.
The Wiebe grandkids said yes the very next morning. I think they were tired of paying property taxes on a house nobody lived in.
Before we closed, I made one more phone call. To Gary Lindholm, the lawyer in Red Cloud who’d drawn up the partnership agreement all those years ago.
“Gary,” I said. “I want to make sure I’ve read this right. Once I sign the buyout papers, I don’t owe the partnership anything? I’m not on any of their notes?”
“You’re clean, Melissa,” he said. “Jeff’s share is bought out. You’re off the operating line. You’re off the land contracts. Whatever happens to Engel Brothers from here on, it’s not your liability.”
“And the house?”
He was quiet a moment. “The house is theirs. I’m sorry.”
“I know it is,” I said. “I’m just making sure the new one’s all mine.”
We closed on April 22nd at the title company in Red Cloud. I signed my name nineteen times. The title officer, an older woman named Ruth, handed me two keys on a ring with a little plastic tag. One for the front door. One for the barn.
I drove home with those keys in my coat pocket and my hand over them the whole way.
Nobody in the family knew yet. That wasn’t a trick. I just didn’t want to hear anybody try to talk me out of it.
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