Chapter 3 - Family Land
Vivien called first.
Not to apologize.
Not to ask how Sienna had survived.
She said, “I saw an article.”
Sienna stood in the distillation shed with lavender oil on her hands.
“Hello to you too.”
Vivien ignored that.
“You never told us the farm was doing so well.”
“You never asked.”
A pause.
Then Vivien laughed lightly.
“Don’t be dramatic, Sienna.”
There it was.
The old family word.
Drama was anything Sienna felt that inconvenienced them.
Douglas visited a month later with Garrett.
They arrived in a black SUV, not dressed for dust.
Garrett wore sunglasses, boots too clean for farm work, and the smile of a man already spending money that was not his.
He looked across the lavender fields and whistled.
“Well, damn. You really turned the dump into something.”
Sienna wanted to say, You mean I did.
Instead, she said, “Yes.”
Douglas walked the rows in silence.
He touched one lavender stem and looked toward the farmhouse.
“You have irrigation?”
“Yes.”
“Insurance?”
“Yes.”
“Labor contracts?”
“Yes.”
His questions were not pride.
They were assessment.
Sienna understood too late that he was not seeing her work.
He was seeing value.
Garrett clapped her shoulder.
Too hard.
“Little Dirt Girl made good.”
She stepped away.
“Don’t call me that.”
He grinned.
“Still sensitive.”
By the following spring, the requests began.
Not demands at first.
Suggestions.
Garrett wanted to host a fundraiser at the farm.
Then a product launch.
Then a “family investor weekend.”
Then he wanted to use the farm as collateral for a short-term bridge loan.
“No,” Sienna said.
“It’s not a big deal,” Garrett replied. “Paper only.”
“No.”
“You don’t even understand finance.”
“I understand no.”
Douglas called the next day.
“You embarrassed your brother.”
“He asked me to risk my land.”
“It’s family land.”
Sienna went very still.
“What did you say?”
Douglas corrected himself too slowly.
“I mean land that came through the family.”
“No. You gave it to me because none of you wanted it.”
Vivien joined the call.
“We gave you an opportunity.”
“You gave me a problem and hoped it would shut me up.”
Vivien’s voice hardened.
“That is a disgusting way to speak to your parents.”
Sienna looked out at the rows she had planted one by one.
“You should hear how you speak to your daughter.”
After that, the kindness stopped.
Garrett sent emails.
Then texts.
Then came to the farm unannounced.
He walked into the shop during bloom weekend with two men in expensive shirts and introduced himself as “co-owner.”
Sienna corrected him in front of customers.
His smile never reached his eyes.
Outside, near the parking field, he grabbed her arm and whispered, “Do not humiliate me in front of people I need.”
“You humiliated yourself.”
“You think this little soap business makes you untouchable?”
She pulled her arm free.
“It makes me busy. Leave.”
He did.
But the next day, a county clerk called asking whether Sienna had authorized a lien inquiry.
She had not.
Then her bank flagged a document request.
Then her insurance agent said someone identifying himself as family counsel had asked about policy limits.
Sienna called a lawyer.
Not the family lawyer.
That mattered.
Her name was Mara Ellison, a real estate and agricultural business attorney in Albany with blunt emails and no patience for people who said “just family paperwork.”
Mara reviewed everything and said, “Your brother is drowning.”
Sienna sat across from her in muddy boots, hands clasped too tightly.
“In what?”
“Debt. Private loans. Bad ones.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough that people are looking for assets he can pretend to control.”
Sienna thought of Garrett’s hand on her arm.
The men in expensive shirts.
The word co-owner.
“My parents know?”
Mara looked at her.
“I suspect your parents are helping him look.”
May you like
That sentence hurt more than it surprised her.
Pain does not need surprise to be real.
