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My name was Naomi Marie Blackwood before I married Nicholas in 1981 and became Naomi Canton. For more than forty years, that was the name I lived under.
I was 68 when Nicholas passed away. After fourteen months of illness, we had already spent plenty of time preparing ourselves for the inevitable. We had talked about our affairs, said the things that needed to be said, and tried to make peace with what was coming.
What I never expected was that losing my husband would also force me to defend the life we had spent decades building.
Nicholas and I owned a modest farmhouse in Pennsylvania and Canton Orchards, a small organic fruit business we had built together. When we started, the land was little more than neglected apple trees. Over the years, we turned it into a successful local operation.
Our two children, Brandon and Melissa, grew up there. Brandon eventually moved to Boston and became a financial consultant, while Melissa moved to Denver and pursued several businesses of her own.
Neither of them was deeply involved in running the orchard.
After their father’s funeral, I expected my children to stay close.
Instead, the subject of grief quickly became a discussion about property, money, and the future of the business.
One evening, Brandon placed a document in front of me at the dining-room table.
“Dad wanted Melissa and me to take over the orchard,” he said. “We think it would be better if we handled everything quickly.”
I looked over the paperwork and immediately felt uneasy.
Nicholas had always handled important legal matters with our longtime attorney, Vincent Hargrove. The signature on this document didn’t look like the one I remembered from the final months of Nicholas’s life.
“Where’s the original?” I asked.
Brandon didn’t answer.
Melissa then told me that a developer was interested in buying the property. According to them, selling the orchard would give everyone enough money to start over.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Nicholas and I had spent forty years building that orchard. We had planted trees, repaired irrigation systems, employed local workers, and donated portions of our harvest to community programs.
To me, it wasn’t simply land.
It was our life together.
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