But the anger wouldn’t come the way he expected it to. What came instead was worse. a low, terrible awareness that maybe Clare hadn’t told him for reasons that made sense. That maybe the version of himself that existed seven years ago was not someone a woman would want to call when she found out she was pregnant and alone and scared. He’d stayed on the farm.
She’d asked him to come with her, and he’d stayed. What had she been supposed to do with that information? He walked back to the house slowly, like a man moving through water. He sat at the kitchen table with his cold coffee and his phone and the weight of a name. Sophie. Sophie Whitmore. Or maybe maybe Sophie Brooks.
He didn’t know how long he sat there before he picked up the phone again. He knew who he needed to call. He didn’t know what exactly he was going to ask. He only knew that Friday was 3 days away and the state of Oregon did not consider I didn’t know to be a particularly compelling argument for leaving a child in the foster system.
He needed help and not just any help. Thus, there was a name that came to mind reluctantly because Ethan was the kind of man who struggled with asking for help under normal circumstances and this was very far from normal circumstances. But desperate situations had a way of burning through pride. And by the time he had driven the 20 m into Dunore and was sitting in the parking lot of the county courthouse trying to understand what stable home environment meant in legal terms, he had concluded that he needed someone with resources and
credibility and connections that he simply did not have. He needed Victoria Langford. He almost laughed at the thought sitting there in his truck. Victoria Langford. The Victoria Langford, as the local papers always put it, with the unnecessary emphasis that came from small towns dealing with someone who had outgrown them and then inexplicably returned.
She was 30 years old, Oregon, and the founder of a logistics and supply chain company called Langford Capital Group that had in roughly 6 years of operation become one of the most significant private firms in the Pacific Northwest. She owned a house outside of Dunore, a restored property on the hill above town that everyone called the Langford Place.
Though she spent most of her time traveling between Portland, Seattle, and whatever city currently required her attention. Ethan knew her the way most people in Dunore knew her, by reputation and occasional sighting. They’d spoken exactly twice. Once when she’d hired him for a season’s worth of pear deliveries to a restaurant group she was apparently involved with in Portland, and once when she’d appeared unannounced at his farm stand during a fall market, bought three bags of apples and said, “You should charge more for these.” before getting in a car
that probably cost as much as his tractor. He had no idea why she came to mind now, except that she was smart and she was powerful and she clearly did not make decisions based on sentiment. And those were exactly the qualities he needed beside him in a courtroom in 3 days. He found her contact through the pair delivery paperwork from 2 years back, held his breath, and made the call. She picked up on the second ring.
Victoria Langford. Ms. Langford. He cleared his throat. This is Ethan Brooks. I run Ridgeline Orchard outside of Dunore. You bought pairs from me a couple years back. I remember. Her voice was brisk, clear, the kind of voice that didn’t waste time on pleasantries. What do you need? He took a breath.
I need to meet with you today if possible, and I need you to hear me out before you say no. A beat of silence. That’s an interesting opening, Mr. Brooks. He couldn’t tell if she was amused or merely assessing. Where do you suggest we meet? She agreed to see him that afternoon at the Langford place. Driving up the hill, Ethan tried to organize his thoughts into something coherent and found that most of them were still sitting back in the muddy field next to the broken tractor.
He was operating on about 3 hours of mental clarity, surrounded by a fog of shock and grief. Grief, he realized that he hadn’t even acknowledged yet. Clare was dead. A woman he’d once loved, who had made him laugh and fight and feel more alive than he’d felt before or since, was gone, and she had died without telling him that he had a daughter.
The Langford property was everything the farm was not. Precisely maintained, quietly expensive, tasteful in the way that required both good aesthetics and serious money. The main house was a craftsman revival, dark cedar and stone with a wraparound porch and actual landscaping that looked like someone was paid to think about it. He pulled up in his muddy truck and sat in it for a moment, aware of exactly what he looked like.
Then he got out because he didn’t have time to feel embarrassed. Victoria Langford answered the door herself. She was taller than he remembered, or maybe he just hadn’t looked closely enough at the farm stand. mid-height, dark-haired, wearing a charcoal sweater and dark jeans, and the specific expression of someone who had agreed to this meeting, but had not yet decided whether to regret it. “Mr.
Brooks,” she stepped back. “Come in.” The interior of the house was warm and considerably less intimidating than the exterior had led him to expect. “Books everywhere, actual books, not decorative ones, the kind with bent spines and sticky notes in the margins. a massive pine table in the main room covered with papers and two laptops.
A halfeaten bowl of something on the kitchen counter. She was working. She had been working. He had interrupted actual work. I appreciate you making time, he said. You sounded like you needed to talk to someone and were out of other options. She gestured to two chairs near the window. Sit down. Tell me what’s happening. So, he told her.
He told her about the phone call, about Karen Reeves and the Lane County DHS office, about Sophie and the foster placement in Friday’s hearing. He told her about Claire, not the whole story, not the long version, but enough. He told her about the farm and his situation and the legal requirement for a stable home environment and his fairly rapid realization that a single man living alone on a financially marginal farm was not what family court considered ideal.
