“That wasn’t a number.”
“Ticket sales are an HOA matter.”
“Not when the tickets are for my property.”
Her jaw tightened.
“One thousand eight hundred advance tickets.”
I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the number was so outrageous that my brain briefly refused to treat it as real.
“Eighteen hundred people?”
“Across three days.”
“At what price?”
“That varies.”
“How much?”
“General admission was thirty-five dollars. Family packages were higher.”
I did the math silently.
At minimum, sixty-three thousand dollars.
Before concessions.
Before parking.
Before VIP packages.
Before vendor fees.
Before whatever else she had sold.
“You sold sixty thousand dollars’ worth of tickets to walk through corn you don’t own.”
“The association has rights to use this parcel.”
“No.”
“Jack—”
“No.”
I didn’t raise my voice.
That bothered her more than yelling would have.
Because anger could be dismissed.
Calm required an answer.
She reached into her leather tote and produced a folder.
“I expected resistance, which is why I brought this.”
Inside was a photocopy of a document.
AGRICULTURAL RECREATION ACCESS AGREEMENT.
My name appeared at the top.
Cedar Ridge Homeowners Association appeared beneath it.
The agreement supposedly granted the HOA recreational access to thirty-two acres of Mercer Farm each September and October.
There was a signature at the bottom.
Jack Mercer.
It looked enough like mine to fool someone who had never watched me sign my name.
I stared at it for three seconds.
Then four.
Then five.
Trish mistook my silence for fear.
“You signed an agricultural-use agreement with Cedar Ridge’s development company eight years ago.”
“No.”
“It transferred with the association.”
“No.”
“You may not remember every document signed during the original subdivision negotiations.”
“I remember that one.”
She tilted her head.
“You remember not signing it?”
“I remember being in Afghanistan on the date printed at the bottom.”
Silence.
The wind moved through the corn.
Dry leaves rattled against one another.
Trish’s expression changed.
Barely.
But I caught it.
The agreement was dated October 14, eight years earlier.
I had been serving with an Army engineering unit attached to a logistics brigade at Bagram during that entire month.
There were military travel records.
Payroll records.
Passport records.
Photographs.
Emails.
Hundreds of people who could prove I was six thousand miles from Missouri.
Trish removed her sunglasses.
“Then perhaps your representative signed.”
“My representative’s name would be on the document.”
