Good Faith by Jane Smiley Read Free Book Online Page A

Gordon turned and looked out the window, then turned back to me. I had a feeling he wanted to say something unaccustomed, but to be frank, given the sudden appearance of Felicity in my life, I didn’t want to hear anything unaccustomed, and so when he turned back and offered me another beer, I shook my head. I bent down over the desk and began to roll up the plans. “Are these the ones I can take? I’ll show them to Bobby if you want.”
    “Nah. He and Fernie are coming over tonight, Betty says. I’ll show him. But wait a minute, Joe. I got this other deal too. That’s what I really wanted to talk to you about.”
    Deal
was a safe word. I said, “What’s that?”
    “You know the Thorpe property?”
    “Salt Key Farm?”
    “That’s the one.” Gordon raised his eyebrows. “I got it.”
    I whistled. Salt Key Farm was hardly a farm. It was a five-hundred-and-eighty-acre estate, owned by the wealthiest family in the eastern half of the state. They had properties all over, but Salt Key Farm was something of a jewel. The Thorpes were railroad money; train-coach makers and engine builders. But the decline of railroads had meant nothing to the Thorpe fortune; over the years, the money had become self-generating. At any rate, Jacob the Fourth and Dolores Thorpe, who were probably in their eighties, lived much of the year at Salt Key Farm, with servants and horses. The houses, a main house and two other houses, and the barns, for mares, stallions, weanlings, hay, and so on, and the fencing were all simple and elegant, built on a grand scale. I said, “Did you see inside the house, Gordon?”
    “Sat right in the paneled study. You haven’t ever seen anything like this paneling, Joe. Split maple, book-matched, the edges just melted together, no moldings to hide any flaws. Pegged floors. You know how, before the French Revolution, the Queen of France had a little toy farm that was a sort of rich people’s version of life in the country? Well, this study was a rich people’s version of simplicity. He showed me the barns. All the horses’ stalls were tongue-in-groove golden oak, chevron style.”
    “Why in the world would they sell, Gordon? They can’t need the money.”
    “I don’t think they need the money. My guess is, they had some big argument with the kids. Those Thorpes are like that. Always a big argument. John Thorpe, I guess he was Jacob’s uncle, he made a will in 1910 that put all his money in trust for generations yet unborn. Everyone then alive, even the babies, had to be dead before they could distribute the money. There was a piece in the paper about it when the last one died a year or so ago. Anyway, the old man called me up the other day and asked me to come over. He said he wanted to sell me Salt Key Farm, and what I did with it was up to me, except he wanted it advertised and put on the market for six months, so the relatives could see it. If any of them want to buy it, I’m supposed to put some sort of deal-breaking contingency on it. But I guess that’s your department.”
    “Did you talk about developing it?” I said.
    “Well, he must know I’m a developer. But let’s pretend I don’t know what I might do with it. It’s not like anything else. He said he’d looked around and decided I was the only guy who could afford to buy it. I said, ‘Well, appearances are deceiving, but it is quite an opportunity.’”
    “I can’t believe they want it developed.”
    “Well, let’s put it this way: He offered to sell me the property. I didn’t say, ‘Mr. Thorpe, I’m going to put thirty houses on this farm,’ and I don’t know that I am. I could live there with all my kids and their families, and we’d never see one another if we didn’t want to.”
    There was a time before my divorce when I used to drive around and fantasize about owning this property or that one, living with this view or owning a particular house. I was pretty rich, and I thought I was going to be richer, and the