Roger Lathbury

Rescuing the Crospey

“And what are you going to do with all this money, once it’s in your account?” Mia looked up expectantly. The money had been a surprise. My uncle Francesco, a school administrator in Haymill, had left me $20,000 in his will. I remembered, of course, having looked after his property after a fire had gutted his barn and partially damaged the farmhouse ten years ago after Aunt Maria had died. I came to love that farmhouse and the scraggly land with its dried riverbed. It had an unemphatic beauty, spare and unadorned flat ground, with willow oaks at the western perimeter and sweetgum and tulip poplars on the eastern. In the two months I had become close to Uncle Fran. Since then I had visited him at least once a year, the last two times with Mia, as our engagement ripened; I never expected to be in his will.