I had said no because I intended to leave that land to my grandchildren, so that they would have something solid under them in a hard world — the way Harrison, all those years ago, had needed something solid.

There is an irony in that I did not see until much later, and it is a bitter one.

The land was never really for my children at all; it was for their children, my grandchildren, the next ones down the line.

I had learned long ago not to expect much back from what I gave to Trent and Bianca and Wade, though I had not yet admitted how little; but grandchildren are the place where a tired heart lets itself hope again, and I had let myself picture those young ones inheriting a piece of ground that no landlord could take from them, a foothold, a start.

And my three children — the parents of those very grandchildren — had looked at the land I was keeping in trust for their own sons and daughters, and they had seen two million dollars they wanted to divide three ways before sundown.