“So that’s it.” He stood and sighed in the tolerant way of a man who’d been wronged but was willing to talk things through. “What else did she say? You couldn’t have gone through my notes very carefully. If you had, you wouldn’t be mad, you’d be helping me. I’m doing this for both of us, Hannah.”
I decided it was safe to walk toward the wheelbarrow, a dozen or so fledging plants, and potting soil containers in neat rows. “You filed for a provisional patent on an idea that wasn’t mine to begin with. And it sure as heck wasn’t yours. You stole those seeds from my mother’s property. Where’s the tree you took? I should’ve asked that three weeks ago. Don’t deny it. Loretta saw it in the back of your truck. I was a fool not to believe her.”
Kermit, with his copper hair and cowboy tan lines, stood patiently, open to any accusation I wanted to make. “Get it off your chest,” he said. “When you’re done, I want to show you something.” After a glance at the door, he added, “Don’t take too long-unless this property’s already deeded over to you. She’d put me in jail.”
“Maybe that’s where you belong.”
“You don’t believe that. You really think I’d risk hurting Sarah? Or you?”
“Leave your family out of this. And stop talking as if there’s something between us, Kermit. There never was. It was just a stupid kiss, that’s all.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “I remember that night a little differently.”
“Bullshit yourself,” I hollered.
We argued like that for a while. My accusations were delivered in anger. He responded calmly to each one. Only when he showed me the citrus tree he’d taken from our grove did I begin to soften. But I didn’t soften much.
“How do I know that’s really it?” I asked.
“Do you see any others around? I can’t force you to believe me, Hannah. I admit I took the damn thing. Isn’t that enough?”
The tree was a fledgling, barely knee-high, far too small to be grown from a seed my uncle had planted six years ago. Kermit claimed it was one of many seedlings on our property. This was true, but I refused to acknowledge it.
“I didn’t think you’d mind,” he said. “You did give me permission to take oranges from your oldest trees. But you’re right, I did it in a sneaky way.”
“Yes, you did,” I said. “But not as sneaky as filing for a patent on an idea that doesn’t belong to you.”
“A provisional patent,” he said, “that I never actually filed. What Lonnie took from my office was only a rough draft, but even in that draft-”
“I don’t care, Kermit! I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses. I won’t tolerate someone who treats me or my family in a two-faced, lying way.”
The man’s tolerant manner vanished. “Lying? Is that what you really think of me?”
“You could’ve told me about filing for a patent,” I said. “You didn’t even bother to ask. There’s no difference between an intentional omission and a lie, as far as I’m concerned.”
He put his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground, but only long enough to control his temper. “How could I ask you? You told me not to contact you for at least a month. I called anyway, the same night. Remember? You didn’t answer. For weeks, do you have any idea how many times my phone rang and I hoped it was you calling back? Then, this morning, you hung up on me before I could say a damn word.”
Now it was me who stared at the ground. I evaded the hurt look on his face by saying our relationship was all wrong to begin with. Then added something suitably inane, which was, “Everything happens for a reason, I suppose.”
“Depends on what you’re willing to settle for,” he replied. “I think I’ve apologized enough for one day. Wait here.” He went past me, out the door, then reconsidered. “Come on, it’s hot in here and we both need to cool down. I’ve got something in my truck that might change your mind.”
What he wanted me to see was inside a weathered khaki bag. He handed me a sheath of papers. The cover sheet was headed with the logo of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, blue with white lettering, Washington D.C.
“Keep it,” he said. “I have other copies. When you get home, take your time, go through it. I have no idea what Lonnie showed you, but you either didn’t read it or she gave you something she printed herself. She called this morning, screaming at me, then asked for your address, but I didn’t tell her. That woman’s either crazy or desperate, I’m not sure which.”
I opened the document, saying, “Kermit, just point me to the right page.”
He found a section titled “Declaration for Utility and Design.” There, at the bottom, on lines provided for the signatures of applicants, was my full name-Hannah Summerlin Smith. It had been typed above the name of a second applicant, Kermit L. Bigalow.
I stared and swallowed. News of Reggie’s death had pushed me near an emotional edge, yet I was reluctant to let go of my anger. All I could manage to say was, “Sometimes I’m too quick to judge. If I’m wrong, I’m sorry.”
“I’d prefer a smile to an apology. Come on, you’ll like this.” He reached, almost put his hand on my shoulder, then decided against it.
Back into the greenhouse we went.
It gave me time to recover what little poise I had left.
NINETEEN
The greenhouse smelled of earth and fertilizer and the fruity odor of white-blossoming vines that snaked their way up a trellis. On a bench was a plastic pan with a Plexiglas cover. Snap locks suggested something important resided inside. Suspended above was a bank of LED grow lights. Kermit switched on the light, then popped the lid. Inside, on a growing mat, were a dozen seeds, several of which had sprouted. “These are late bloomers,” he said. “I’d about given up on them.”
“Everything inside here looks healthy enough,” I said. “Someone’s been watering, at least-or is it on a timer?”
Kermit shook his head. “Just me. I’ve driven past that gate a dozen times. It was always locked, so, every few days, I’d park and hike across the pasture to check on my plants. Always after dark, of course, and I’d take home what I could in a bag. Today was the first it was open, so I thought, What the hell? Dodging police couldn’t be any worse than dodging that big-ass bull Mr. Chatham bought.”
“Jessie James,” I said, and smiled for the first time in a while. I moved closer to the sprouting pan. “Are these from our citrus orchard?”
“The oldest trees your great-grandfather planted. Use this.”
He handed me an inexpensive magnifying glass. Beneath the lens, the seeds ballooned with detail. From each seed protruded three delicate, fleshy sprouts. Two of the sprouts grew in opposition on the pointed ends. From the belly of the seed grew a shorter, more delicate sprout.
Kermit said, “Oranges-it’s weird the way they propagate. Trees in isolation, too remote to cross-pollinate, they continue to produce seedlings that grow into exact clones. A hundred years, a thousand: it doesn’t matter, if conditions remain stable. The mother tree will continue to reproduce perfect genetic replicas of itself.”
“Mother tree,” I repeated in a murmur.
“You probably know all this.”
“Some, but it’s better than arguing,” I said.
“Okay… These two sprouts”-he used a pencil to indicate the seed’s pointed ends-“one is a root, the other is a shoot that will produce a clone. This one”-he indicated the fragile middle sprout-“doesn’t grow, not usually, because it’s a genetic mix. It only grows if there’s a fertile tree near enough to cross-pollinate. The birds and the bees, you know how that works.”
“Keep going,” I said, “I’m interested.”
“The third sprout is key. It’s smaller and weaker than the clone sprout. It’s the same with all the seeds from your oldest trees. That’s not what I was hoping. My theory is, after a several hundred years in isolation, the weaker shoot should also produce a clone. A way of adapting to the inability to cross-pollinate. Or, quite possibly, split into twin shoots. It’s a stretch, but one single seed might produce three perfect clones. Here… have a look at what came from your orchard.”