The Box by Jeremy Brown (ebook reader play store txt) 📕

“Arizona. Retired, I guess, but they seem busier now than they ever did here. Mostly golf and pickle ball.”

“Sounds nice.”

Nora moved her spoon around in the soup but didn’t bring any out of the bowl.

“Yes and no. I don’t think they want to be retired. I think they’re trying to stay busy so they don’t have to think about it.”

“The farm?”

She pushed the bowl away, apparently done with it.

“Yeah, and how things ended. And how I’m not taking over the homestead like they’d hoped. And, of course, how things might be different if they’d had a boy along with me. Or instead of me.”

“Whoa,” Connelly said, legitimately surprised by her candor. “That’s a whole other layer of drama.”

“Like I said. A mess.”

“You said ‘how things ended’. Not to get too personal, but was it a bank thing? Foreclosure?”

Nora shook her head.

“Nothing like that. Although the bank is being a pain in my ass right now. They won’t give anybody a loan to buy it because the appraisal keeps coming back lower than the asking price. But that’s a whole other thing. For my folks, some things changed around here in the past few years and they decided it was time to get out of the business altogether. Out of Iowa, even.”

“What, like the government wanted them to start growing weed?”

She laughed again, softer this time, and let it run its course instead of cutting it short.

“That would actually be nice compared to reality.”

“So…it’s pretty bad?”

Nora ran a finger around the edge of her laptop, not touching any keys, just clearing some bits of dust and smudges.

“When you were working in Seattle, did you ever see a corporate takeover?”

“Like, hostile takeovers?”

“Sure.”

Connelly pursed his lips.

“I commandeered the catered omelet bar once. That got pretty ugly.”

Her mouth smiled but her eyes were focused on the middle distance, looking at something only she could see. Whatever it was, it made her sad.

Connelly said, “Let me try another guess. This time I’ll get it, you watch…Okay, some corporation came in and tried to buy the farm from your folks, and they were all, Hell no, Nora’s taking it over. Then you were like, I’m doing what now? Uh, no, hard pass. And they got pissed and moved to Arizona.”

“Not quite,” Nora said. “But it’s closer than submarine captain.”

“So lay it out for me. Maybe I can help.”

“Do you want to buy my family farm?”

“How much?”

Connelly reached into his pocket for his wallet and came out with the key to his motel room.

He made sure she saw it, just a peek, then stuffed it back in.

“If it’s more than forty bucks I probably can’t afford it. But hey, I could write a song about it. Spread the word about your plight. A ballad, something about how the collapse of the nuclear family is causing fallout across the heartland.”

Nora was slightly horrified.

“That’s terrible. I mean, not a terrible song idea. But the idea of it is terrible.”

“Such is the burden of the bard, sweet Nora. Just ask John Cougar.”

“Who?”

Connelly caught movement and turned to see Rison and Bruder walking out, empty baskets and a small pile of cash on their table. They didn’t look over at him.

He turned back to Nora.

“Tell me more about the farm. I want to be able to picture it.”

Nora told him a little bit about the spread, southwest of town with enough acreage around it you couldn’t really see any of the neighbors, who were also farmers.

She seemed eager to tell a stranger about it, like she could create the version she wanted and not have to worry about any cracks or stains.

“My dad dug a pond in the front yard with a backhoe and put a fountain in it, and I used to run around it and count the frogs jumping in. And there’s this huge pine tree next to the house, and we’d use a bucket truck to put Christmas lights on it every year. You could see it for miles. It was obnoxious.”

Connelly said, “Are you sure you want to sell this place? I mean, it sounds like a Norman Rockwell painting.”

“God, yes. I’d go crazy out there by myself. And even if I leased the farmland, like I did this year, there’s a ton of upkeep. My dad loved puttering around on his tractors all day but I’d get bored in about ten minutes.”

Connelly ordered food and they talked more, bouncing around on topics like the live music scene in Minneapolis to how her folks liked the weather in Arizona but missed the fall colors to Ford vs. Chevy, which turned playfully contentious.

Nora kept one eye on her phone and dismissed a few incoming calls, a good sign for Connelly.

Marie was behind the bar clearing his basket and silverware, grinning at the two of them, then she glanced over Nora’s shoulder at the front door and the smile vanished.

“You might want to go, sweetie.”

Nora and Connelly both turned, and Connelly saw two of the same Romanians from the previous day walk past the podium and take a table near the front of the restaurant.

There was a third man with them Connelly didn’t recognize, and he was absolutely certain he would have remembered him.

The man was at least six and a half feet tall, ducking his way out of the corral, and so thin Connelly could see the angles of his skull. His cheeks were hollow triangles and his eye sockets looked sucked into his head, and when he looked around at the other tables Connelly noticed the bright, burning blue eyes of someone who, at one point in time, knew real hunger.

The eyes landed on Nora and the man smiled, his lips sliding over large teeth, a few capped with silver.

Nora turned and put the laptop and phone into the messenger bag at her feet.

She told Marie, “I need to pay. Now.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get you next time.”

Nora gave her a look of gratitude.

Connelly pretended to be ignorant of all of it.

“You