“But we can buy it from him,” I said.

Luke finally looked up at me.

His face looked tired, the lines around his eyes deeper.

“With what?” he asked.

“We’ve got barely eight thousand dollars in savings.”

“We could do an installment contract,” I said.

“He acts as the bank, we pay him every month, and he gets the security of knowing the farm stays exactly the way it is.”

Luke shoved his hands back deep into his coat pockets.