“Yeah, the absolute sooner the better. Bridget’s uncle is really excited about this business opportunity. He genuinely thinks we could break ground by fall if we move quickly enough.”
Break ground. Bulldozers and construction crews and concrete mixers systematically destroying everything her family had built over generations. Her grandfather’s treasured oak trees cut down without thought. Her father’s handbuilt barn demolished. The meadow where Marcus had proposed to her decades ago paved over with asphalt.
“Mom, are you even listening to me?”
“Do you remember your great-grandfather’s funeral?” Karin asked quietly. Her voice was steady and calm. “Your grandfather’s funeral service. You were twenty years old.”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“You gave the eulogy that day,” Karin continued. “You stood in front of two hundred people and talked about how much this land meant to him personally. How it represented everything good and honorable about our family. About legacy and sacrifice and protecting what truly matters in life.”
More silence. Just breathing.
“You promised you’d take care of it,” Karin said. “You looked directly at me and your grandmother and promised you’d protect what he’d built with his own hands. Do you remember making that promise?”
“Mom, that was completely different.” His voice had changed now, gone defensive and irritated. “I was just a kid back then.”
“You were twenty years old. Old enough to understand what a promise actually means.”
“Yeah, well, people say emotional things at funerals. It’s an emotional situation. You can’t seriously hold me to—”
“You also said your grandfather would be proud of you,” Karin interrupted firmly. “That you’d make absolutely sure his legacy lived on through you. That this land would stay in our family for many generations to come.”
“And it will stay in the family,” Dominic shot back defensively. “It’ll be mine eventually anyway. I’m just trying to make it actually work for us right now. Make it profitable and useful. Turn it into something valuable instead of just letting it sit there doing nothing.”
Just letting it sit there. Doing nothing.
As if forty acres of protected natural land was completely worthless. As if preserving family history was wasteful and foolish. As if everything her grandfather and father had worked for was just an inconvenience waiting to be liquidated for cash.
“So you’re saying no?” His voice went cold and hard. “You won’t send the papers.”
Karin could hear Bridget’s sharp voice in the background, demanding and entitled. “Is she being difficult again?”
Difficult. That’s what she was. Difficult for wanting to keep her family’s legacy intact. Difficult for not immediately agreeing to let them destroy seventy years of history for quick profit.
“Dominic, I need to go now.”
“Wait, Mom, hold on. We really need those papers urgently. This is a huge business opportunity for us. Don’t you want me to succeed in life?”
She’d wanted him to succeed since the very day he was born. She’d wanted it desperately. She’d sacrificed absolutely everything for it. Her career advancement, her social life, her physical health, her entire savings account. Everything she had and everything she was had gone into making sure Dominic had every possible opportunity to succeed.
And this is what it got her. A son who kicked her out of his wedding and called the next day demanding she hand over her family’s land.
“I’ll call you back later,” Karin said.
“When exactly?” Impatience sharpened his voice considerably. “Mom, this is genuinely time-sensitive. We can’t just wait around indefinitely while you—”
She hung up.
The phone buzzed immediately with another incoming call. She declined it. It rang again. And again. And again.
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