But instead of continuing on the highway toward the larger towns where retirement communities clustered, Brandon turned onto County Road 27, a rural route that cut through farmland before eventually connecting to the interstate. Twenty minutes later, he pulled onto the shoulder beside an empty field. The engine idled as he turned to look at me.
“This is where you get off, Mom,” he said, his voice eerily calm. “The house and business are mine now.”
“What?” Melissa at least had the decency to look confused. “Brandon, what are you doing?”
“What we discussed,” he snapped. “Mom’s not going to make this easy. She’ll contest the will, make scenes, embarrass us with the developer. This is cleaner. She has her medication, some clothes. There’s a gas station about five miles up. She can call one of her quilting friends.”
He reached across me to open my door.
I looked at my son, searching for any sign of the child I’d loved, and found nothing. Then I turned to my daughter, whose wide eyes darted between us, her mouth opening and closing like a fish.
“Melissa?” I asked, but I already knew. She’d go along with him. She always had.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered. “It’s just… we need this money. I have debts.”
I nodded once, gathered my purse and the small suitcase they’d packed, and stepped out onto the gravel shoulder. The spring air was cool, scented with fresh earth and the promise of rain later. I stood there clutching my bag as Brandon drove away without looking back, Melissa’s pale face visible through the rear window until they crested a hill and disappeared.
No phone. No money. Or so they thought. Just my name, and what they didn’t know I still owned.
And that’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. I was free. Free from pretending these people deserved my love simply because I had given them life. Free from the weight of maternal obligation to children who saw me as nothing but an obstacle.
I started walking, not toward the gas station Brandon had mentioned, but toward a future they couldn’t imagine. In my purse was my passport, my medication, and a deed. The original deed to twenty acres of land in my maiden name, purchased before I married Nicholas, before Canton Family Orchards expanded. The most profitable twenty acres, as it happened, which included the water rights any developer would need.
