“Mostly vegetables. We’ll plant enough to live on and then put stuff by. We plan to do a lot of canning and we’ll sell or trade the produce we can’t use. We might put in wheat or corn or something like that if we want to turn a profit. I mean, we don’t want to turn a profit per se, but we want to be self-sustaining. We’ve visited a couple of communes in Big Sur and they’re keen. They even said they’d help.”

“Well,” Patrick said. “That’s a hell of an idea. You have my blessing if that’s what this is about. I wish I had advice to offer you, but farming’s not my bailiwick.”

Greg was grooming his facial hair. He’d taken to spinning strands of his scruffy beard between his fingers, making little upturns like the villain of the piece. “We were thinking about the money Granddad left me. Didn’t you talk about that once?”

“Sure. Forty thousand dollars, but it’s all in trust. The money won’t be available until you turn thirty. I thought I’d made that clear.”

Greg frowned, baffled by the very idea. “Why? That’s five years from now.”

Deborah got the impression they were getting to the heart of the matter. Greg had a point of view he was prepared to argue if he could work his way around to it.

Patiently, Patrick said, “Those were the terms of the will. If you’ll remember he gave you ten thousand dollars when you were eighteen.”

“And that was part of the forty?”

“No, no. He was curious what you’d do with it. If it’s any comfort, he did the same thing with me and I went through mine about as fast as you did.”

“What, that was like a test or something?”

“That’s precisely what it was. Your grandfather was a bit of a pissant. This was his method of teaching money management.”

“That’s not what he told me. He said the money was mine and I could do anything I wanted.”

“He didn’t want to influence your process. If you made a mistake or turned out to be a financial whiz, he wanted it to come from you. Do you remember what you did with it?”

“Some of it, sure. I went to Oregon to see my friend Rick, and ended up lending him a few hundred dollars because the transmission on his truck went out.”

“He pay you back?”

“Not so far, but he said he would. And I mean, you know, I trust the guy. He’s a good dude.”

“You also bought a Harley, if I remember correctly.”

“Well, yeah, a used one. And I paid off some credit cards.”

“That was smart. I remember the credit card companies were really on your case by then.”