I couldn’t sleep that night. I lay awake in bed staring at the ceiling that leaks when it rains, thinking about every strange conversation from the past few months. The times Amber and Catherine would fall silent when I entered the living room. The whispered phone calls, the papers they would quickly put away when I came near.
I remembered when Amber came over 6 months ago with that green folder, insisting I signed some insurance documents I had signed without reading, trusting them like a fool. What was really in those papers?
Everything made sense now. David’s insistence that I go to the bank to update my information. the constant pressure for me to give them power over my accounts in case something happened to me. Catherine’s frequent visits, who before barely spoke to me, but now came with store-bought cakes and fake smiles.
I got up before dawn and walked all over the farm. I touched every tree I had planted. The avocado trees I planted when David was 10, the mango trees that grew up with him. The garden where I taught my granddaughter to recognize plants before Amber decided it was too dangerous to bring her here.
This land has my footprints on every meter. My sweat watered every furrow. My tears fed every seed. And they wanted to take it from me like taking a toy from a child.
The next day, very early, I walked to Helen’s house. Her chickens were clucking in the yard, and the smell of burning wood came from her chimney.
I needed to think. I needed a place where I felt safe. Her small kitchen always smells of cinnamon and freshly brewed coffee.
“Helen, I think I have to do something before it’s too late.”
She poured me coffee in that flowered mug and sat across from me. Her eyes, the color of old honey, looked at me with an understanding that only years of true friendship can give.
“What do you need, Margaret?”
