Carolina Moon

some errands here and there. Is there anything I can pick up for you?”
    “I could use some weed killer.” She lifted her head then. Her eyes were a paler, quieter blue than his own. But they were just as direct. “Unless you have some moral objection to my using it in my gardens.”
    “They’re your gardens, Mama.”
    “And your fields, as I have been reminded. You’ll deal with them as you choose. Just as the properties are your properties. You’ll rent them to whom you please.”
    “That’s right.” He could be as cool as she when he chose. “And the income from those fields, and those properties, will keep Beaux Reves in the black, well into it. As long as it’s in my hands.”
    She pinched off a pansy with quick, ruthless fingers. “Income is not the standard by which one lives one’s life.”
    “It sure as hell makes life easier.”
    “There is no call to take that tone with me.”
    “I beg your pardon. I thought there was.” He set his hands on his knees, waited for them to relax. “I changed the way the farm’s run, started changing it over five years back. And it works. Still you refuse to accept or acknowledge that I’ve made it work. There’s nothing I can do about that. As for the properties, I do that my own way as well. Papa’s way isn’t mine.”
    “Do you think he would have let that Bodeen girl set foot on what was ours?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Or care,” she said, and went back to her weeding.
    “Maybe not.” He looked away. “I can’t live my life asking myself what he would’ve done or wanted or expected. But I do know Tory Bodeen isn’t responsible for what happened eighteen years ago.”
    “You’re wrong.”
    “Well, one of us is.” He got to his feet. “Either way, she’s here. Has a right to be here. There’s nothing to be done about it.”
    They would see, Margaret thought as her son left her alone. They would see what could be done about it.
    His mood stayed raw throughout the day. No matter how many times he tried and failed to reach his mother, he felt the sting of that rejection as fresh as the first.
    He’d stopped trying to explain and justify his changes to the farm. He still remembered the night he’d shown her charts and graphs and projections, still remembered how she’d stared at him, had stonily informed him before she’d walked away that Beaux Reves was something that couldn’t be put on paper and analyzed.
    It had hurt, more, he supposed, because she’d been right. It couldn’t be put on paper. Neither could the land itself that he was so determined to protect, preserve, and pass on to the next generation of Lavelles.
    His pride in it, his duty to it, were no less fierce than hers. But to Cade it was, had always been, a living thing that breathed and grew and changed with the seasons. And to her it was static, like a monument carefully tended. Or a grave.
    He tolerated her lack of belief in him, just as he tolerated the amusement and the resentment of his neighbors. He’d dealt with countless sleepless nights during the first three years he’d been in charge of the farm. The fear and worry that he was wrong, that he would fail, that the legacy that had come into his hands would somehow slip through them in his eagerness, in the sheer stubbornness to do things his way.
    But he hadn’t been wrong, not about the farm. Yes, it cost more in time, effort, and money to grow cotton organically. But the land—oh, the land thrived. He could see it bursting in the summer, resting in the winter, and in spring thirsty for what he would put into it.
    He refused to poison it, no matter how many told him that by that refusal he was dooming earth and crop. They’d called him wrongheaded, stubborn, foolish, and worse.
    And the first year he’d met government standards for organic cotton, had harvested and sold his crop, he’d celebrated by getting quietly drunk, alone in the tower office that had been his father’s.
    He bought more cattle because he believed in diversification. He added on more horses because he loved them. And because both horses and cattle made manure.
    He believed in the strength and value of green cotton. He studied, he experimented. He learned. He stood by his beliefs enough to hand-chop weeds when it was necessary, and to nurse his blisters without complaint. He watched the skies and the stock reports with equal devotion, and he plowed the profits back into the land just as he plowed the cotton after