Reborn Before the Bloom: I Grow the Last Fortress

Chapter 9: Hearing

Nell Fairweather filed the injunction at 8:02 on a Monday morning, and by noon Dalton was on the radio.

Jonah heard it in the nursery truck, parked behind the cold room with the windows down. The station was the local one, the kind Marguerite kept on in the kitchen. Dalton's voice came through the speaker, warm and sad and perfectly steady.

"We love Jonah. We've always loved him. But since that video, he's been talking about spore clouds and the end of the world. He's been buying property with his savings and hiding in libraries. Honestly, we're worried. He's an outsider to the estate, he's never had a hand in running it, and I think he's confused."

The host asked, gently, whether the family planned to fight the injunction.

"We'll do what's best for Jonah. That means protecting the land from a very painful mistake."

Jonah turned the radio off. His hand was clenched on the wheel so hard the knuckles were white. His phone said 73 DAYS, and it felt like a joke.

"Delusional." Nell said it the next evening in her kitchen, with her reading glasses pushed up in her gray hair and a thick binder open in front of her. "That's the word he's going to use in front of the judge. He's already tested it on the radio. Smooth boy, your cousin."

"He's good at it."

"He's practiced. Doesn't matter." She flipped a page. "Marguerite hired Preston Hale."

Jonah's stomach dropped. Even he had heard of Preston Hale. "The Preston Hale?"

"Thirty years of putting people in their place. I've known him since law school, and I'll tell you a secret. He cheats at golf." Nell grinned, wide and mean. "Sit up. We're starting."

They drilled for four nights.

Nell sat across the kitchen table with a legal pad and a bad attitude, and she was a terrifying cross-examiner. She fired questions at him until his mouth went dry.

"Article Nine, Section C. Read it."

He read it.

"Who are the five heirs?"

"My aunt, my uncle, one cousin, Dalton, and me."

"How many signed the affirmation?"

"Four."

"How many signed it knowing what it was?"

"I don't know."

"Wrong." She threw a pencil at him, and it bounced off his forehead. "You don't know, so you don't say. You say, 'I can only speak to my own signature, Your Honor.' Again."

He said it again. She made him say it eleven times. By the third night he could recite every clause in the trust without looking, and she still found something to pick at.

"You're sweating through that shirt."

"It's warm."

"It's sixty degrees." She leaned forward, and for the first time her grin disappeared. "Jonah. Look at me. Dalton's lawyer is going to ask you why you read the deed in the middle of the night. He's going to ask who told you about the clause. He's going to try to make you say something that sounds crazy. You cannot let him."

"I won't."

"Say it like you mean it."

"I won't." His voice came out harder than he expected. Nell studied him for a second, then nodded once and went back to her binder.

Priya showed up on the fourth night with a cardboard tube under her arm and dust in her hair.

"County archive," she said. "Basement. I'd been going through every document filed under the Pike estate since 1920." She pulled out a roll of brittle paper, curling at the edges, and flattened it on the kitchen table with the saltshaker and a coffee mug. "I almost missed it. It was stuffed inside a tax appeal."

It was a survey drawing, drafted in faded blue ink, dated 1962. The Pike property was laid out in careful lines. Barn, house, greenhouse, east orchard.

And beneath the east orchard, a rectangle.

Jonah leaned over it. It was drawn in dotted lines, about thirty feet under the surface, marked with a tiny hand-lettered note. Cold store. Sealed.

"That's not on any map," he said slowly. "I grew up there. I've never heard of it."

"It's not on the family map. It's not on the county plat. Somebody removed it from every copy except this one." Priya tapped the rectangle. "The survey crew must have filed this by mistake."

His heart thumped. Under the east orchard, right where the pulse had pointed. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. Priya was already watching his face.

Nell took off her glasses. "A sealed cellar under land your family wants to sell in a hurry."

"Yes."

"Under a very large, very expensive orchard." She tapped her pen on the binder. "Funny thing. I'd like to know who's buying it."

Nobody had an answer.

The night before the hearing, Jonah couldn't sleep.

He lay on the guest room bed with the lamp off, staring at the boot-shaped stain on the ceiling. The thorn vine under the bed rustled when he moved. The house was quiet. Down the hall he heard Dalton's door click shut, and a minute later the soft clink of ice in a glass.

At 11:40 his phone rang. An unknown number.

He let it ring four times, and then he answered.

"Mr. Pike." The voice was a man's, smooth, unhurried, cultured. "My name is Aldous Quill. I represent the Canopy Compact. I apologize for the hour."

Jonah sat up slowly. "What do you want?"

"I'll be direct. My clients are prepared to make you an offer. Three point two million dollars, wired tomorrow morning, in exchange for withdrawing your injunction and signing a simple release."

Jonah's whole body went cold. He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

Three point two million. It was nearly ten times what he had paid for the seed bank. It was more money than he'd ever imagined. It was the difference between a hedge and a fortress. It would pay Sorrel and Mateo for years. His thumb hovered over the red button, and for three long seconds he honestly wanted to say yes.

"That's a staggering amount," Quill said, as if he could hear him thinking. "I'm sure you understand. We wouldn't ask for anything unreasonable."

"Why do you want the orchard so badly?"

"My clients are investors. They see potential." There was a pause, and the voice softened, almost kind. "Take the money, Mr. Pike. Go somewhere sunny. Enjoy it. I strongly advise you to do so."

"And if I don't?"

"Then you'll find yourself in a very difficult position, and I'd hate that for you." Another pause. Then, so lightly it could have been an afterthought: "Before you go down into that cellar."

The line went dead.

Jonah sat in the dark, holding the phone against his chest, and he realized he hadn't told anyone but Priya and Nell.