The Third Way by Aimee Hoben

Author:Aimee Hoben
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press

AT LEAST THEY’D BEEN ABLE TO BUY SOME time on Emma’s foreclosure. Arden and one of the clinic lawyers had driven out to the circuit court hearing on the appointed day, meeting a pale and drawn Emma on the courtroom steps of the Kingsbury County Courthouse. The clinic lawyer had been able to convince the court that the homestead exemption should apply at least for the three-acre parcel containing Emma’s home, barns, and orchard. Though the Unibank lawyer in his expensive suit had argued that the foreclosure should still be finalized that day, they’d been able to delay the final decision, convincing the court that a land survey was needed to establish the new lot.

While the homestead ruling had provided the delay that Arden was hoping for, at least until September, and meant Emma wouldn’t need to move out of Badger, Arden was worried by the look on her grandmother’s face. Though she was silent in the courtroom, when they got to the parking lot, she unleashed her fury on the clinic lawyer and Arden.

“You told me that my land was protected as my home under the law. And then AGM and the bank get up to something funny when you’re not around, and now I get three measly acres? This is what they wanted—don’t you get it? This is what they wanted all along.”

For the clinic lawyer’s sake, Arden was relieved when Emma slammed the door of her old pickup and drove away. But she wondered what Emma was talking about, that AGM was involved. Wasn’t the issue simply that leasing the land to AGM made it ineligible for the homestead exemption, since if you are leasing something out, you are not using it as your homestead, as the lawyer had explained? It was troubling that Emma saw it as a conspiracy, but no wonder that she was furious. All that she had worked for, farming that land over the years, and working on the anti-corporate farming initiative, and now, to have this happen to her. Arden thought about Unibank, ruthlessly pressing this foreclosure, and their funding of the opposition to 99. They were Jeremy’s former employer, the one he wanted to make pay. Was it possible that Emma was getting singled out as retribution for Arden’s activism? Perhaps they’d never know. But it made Arden want to roll right into Sioux City and burn down Unibank’s corporate headquarters.

The next time she saw Jeremy, she asked him if he through his former employer might be going after Emma’s farm because of 99.

“Maybe,” he responded. “I’ve already been contacted by their lawyers, trying to say that what I’m doing is a violation of my noncompete in the early retirement settlement. Which I told them is bullshit. But they are definitely exploring all legal angles.”

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