“Ask him why he sold the plot my grandfather promised would be mine.”
And slowly, painfully, the old story came out.
When Gideon was nineteen, he’d wanted to start a business — auto parts — with a partner, and his grandfather had made him a verbal promise of a small parcel of land to build on.
But before any of it could be put in writing, Wendell had discovered that the partner was running forged paperwork and was tangled up with men who had long criminal histories.
To keep his teenage son out of a disaster that would have followed him for life — and, in the same hard season, to pay for Deborah’s emergency surgery — Wendell had sold the land.
“I got you out of something that would have ruined you,” Wendell said, exhausted.