“How old were you when he died?” Randy asked.
“Fourteen. He’d been gone more than a year. Then, when we got the news…Daniel’s death changed everything.” Just recalling that awful day, when those two men in uniform knocked on the door, made her heart hurt a little. Her big brother had been her hero, but now, as an adult, she could see he’d been so much more. Daniel Powell had been the lynch pin for their entire family.
The silence lasted only a moment. Lewis ran his hand down her back. “So you took lessons. I bet you thought of Daniel the entire time.”
Lewis’s insight pleased her. “I did! It was kind of like—I don’t know, a kind of closure? I was doing something he’d meant to do with me, something I know in my heart he would have done, had he lived. He couldn’t be there, but I could. That sounds weird, doesn’t it?”
“No,” Randy said.
“It sounds sacred,” Lewis said. Then he nodded out toward the Legacy Tree. “How far does the property go beyond the tree?”
“I think the tree is the half-way point. We could look at the details in the deed and maybe figure it out that way. There’s a stream not far from the tree, and then beyond the stream, I think there’s another fence line. Or there was.”
“What were you thinking of, long term, with regard to ranching-slash-farming?”
“I haven’t thought about it overmuch. I have a lot to learn, I know that. But I’m young. I just…it’s important to me that this isn’t the end, you know?”
“There’s lots of time for you to review your options and decide.” Randy turned and nodded toward the barn. “I haven’t seen that yet. Any plans you make for ranching or farming is pretty much keyed to your facilities and the equipment you have.”
“So I guess after the house comes the barn?”
“Yes, ma’am. But that doesn’t mean you can’t start planning for ranching or farming now.” Lewis tilted his head as he looked at her. “My guess, as to how your father operated, is that he owned a small herd. From what I’m learning of the area, that would be not much more than a couple dozen head. He likely planted and sold feed grasses and corn and probably sold a handful of cows each year. Depending on the quality of the beef, he could have made a living with those two crops and the cows for his source of income.”
“So you don’t have to have a thousand acres, many hundreds-of-heads of cattle in order to make a living?”
“Not unless your plan is to get rich,” Randy said.
“What good does rich really do? What matters is the quality of the life you live, and that is not found in the material things you wrap around yourself.”
“You’re a hell of a woman, Michaela Powell,” Lewis said. “A hell of a woman.”
Michaela couldn’t recall ever feeling more complimented than she did just then.
“Beyond that,” Randy said, “what determines the size of the herd is the amount of acreage you have. Depending on your pastures and the kind of vegetation will determine how many head per acre your land can support.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“It’s not. We’ll ask around and have the answer for you within a day or two.”
They toured the barn, which both men pronounced to appear to be sound. Both Benedicts’ eyes lit up as they took in her dad’s old tractor.
“You’d want all the old straw out of here and to give the interior a thorough cleaning,” Lewis said. “You’ll also want to install a new fuel tank for the tractor. That involves hauling away the old one outside there.”
Michaela tilted her head as she looked at him.
He shrugged. “While you were sleeping yesterday, I took a quick look around on my own. I knocked on that tank outside. It sounded like it’s nearly half full. We’ll see if someone will buy it from you and cart it away. But all of those things combined wouldn’t take much time, work, or money. This is in really good shape.”
“Was this tractor running recently?” Randy asked.
“I have no idea. I do know where the key is,” Michaela said. “There’s a hook inside the back door, where, for all my life, the key for the tractor has hung when not in use.”
“We can have someone look at it. It’s an older model, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless.” Lewis grinned.
She trusted their word implicitly and gave a mental sigh of relief that not much would need to be done in here. She buried the nightmare visions she’d had of having to tear the barn down and start all over again.
“The one thing I would suggest, for right now? Lewis and I would both feel more comfortable if you had a lock on here and locked it every night. You’re storing your tools here, and since there are no animals inside, locking it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“All right. How about we stop somewhere after seeing Doc Jessop and get what we need to do that?”
“Good plan. Now…let’s go inside and you can tell us what you have in mind for your house.”
Once inside, she kicked off her boots and took one moment to enjoy the slight cool coming from her bedroom window air conditioner. With her bedroom door open, a bit of coolness reached into the rest of the downstairs.
“I live downstairs,” she said. “So I was going to see about making the bathroom bigger and maybe enlarging my bedroom, too.” She led them through the main room to the hallway.
“The other bedroom is a larger space already,” Lewis said. Then he grinned. “Yes, I peeked.” He put his arms around her from behind. “Since you have a working bathroom upstairs that can be used during renovations, why not think about stripping down to the rafters, this side, here—the bathroom
