My parents sold the eighty acres my grandfather had promised my sister and me to pay for her extravagant $60,000 wedding, but two years later, after working three jobs and saving every dollar I could, I bought back the little pond where Grandpa taught us to fish—and uncovered a secret about his final will that my family had hidden from me.
Mom told me about the sale during Sunday dinner, between the roast and the pie.
I’d just finished a twelve-hour night shift at a care center in Creston, Iowa, and I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open.
“We sold Grandpa’s ground to Vern Akers,” she announced casually, passing the mashed potatoes.
I put down my fork. Grandpa Earl had died just four months earlier, at eighty-seven, after farming that land since 1956.
He was born in the farmhouse, worked the fields his entire life, and built a small pond near the back corner where he’d taken my sister Brittany and me fishing every summer.
We sat on overturned buckets with cane poles while Grandpa baited our hooks and told us stories. “This is for you girls,” he always said. “Both of you. Someday.” But when his will was read, the property went to my parents instead. They were legally entitled to sell it, and that’s exactly what they did.
My mother explained that Brittany was getting married at a beautiful lakeside resort in Okoboji, complete with a tent, live band, flowers, and two hundred guests.
Across the table, my twenty-six-year-old sister stared at her plate. Dad kept buttering the same dinner roll without looking at me. “Your sister only gets one wedding, Jess,” he muttered. When I asked why nobody had discussed selling Grandpa’s land with us, Mom smiled and patted my hand.
“You were always fine, Jessie. You’ll be fine.” Then she went to get the pie. I sat there thinking about Grandpa’s pond, the cottonwood tree beside it, and the two fishing poles he’d labeled with our names. My parents had traded away the one place that still made me feel close to him. And apparently, they expected me to smile and forget about it.
