My Brother Didn’t Speak to Me for 25 Years. His Will Left Me Half of His Maine Blueberry Farm, and a Partner I’d Never Met

“I’m leaving you half the farm because it’s the best thing I ever did, and I want you to see it. Don’t sell it before the harvest. Give it one season, Frankie. Sarah will hate you at first. She’ll get over it. She got over me.”

Nobody had called me Frankie since I was ten years old.

I stayed for the season.

Sarah did hate me at first. She thought I was there to sell her home out from under her. She wasn’t entirely wrong.

But I didn’t know how to sit still, so I started helping. I learned to rake berries until my back screamed. I learned how to run the winnower. I learned how the barrens are burned every other year to make them grow back stronger.

And because I’m an accountant, I looked at the books.

They were a disaster. Patrick had been a wonderful farmer and a terrible businessman. They were overpaying for crop insurance, missing tax deductions, and selling their entire crop to one processor at a terrible price.

I sat down with Sarah at the kitchen table and showed her.

She went quiet for a long time.

“He always said you were the smart one,” she said finally. “He said it like it was a complaint. But he meant it.”

Over that fall and winter, we rebuilt the business. We set up a proper partnership agreement. We started selling frozen berries directly to bakeries in Boston and Portland at three times the price. We applied for a conservation program that paid us to protect the barrens.

And I got to know Patrick, through her.

She told me how he’d shown up in Cherryfield with nothing, worked for her father, and helped her keep the farm going after her father died. How he coached Little League. How he cried at sad movies and pretended he didn’t.

She had never married. Neither had Patrick. They had been partners and best friends, nothing more.

“He was my family,” she said. “The only real family I had left.”

“He was mine too,” I said. “I just forgot for twenty-five years.”

In the spring, I sold my condo in New Jersey.

I didn’t sell my half of the farm.

Sarah and I run it together now. On summer evenings, after the raking is done, we take our buckets down to the rocks by the water and watch the sun go down over the bay.

Last week, she reached over and put her hand on mine and left it there.

“Patrick would be laughing so hard right now,” she said.

“Patrick knew,” I said. “He always knew more than he let on.”

I still have his letter. I keep it in my wallet. I think about all the times he picked up the phone and put it down. All the times I did the same.

If there’s someone you haven’t spoken to in years, please, call them. Pride is a terrible thing to inherit. Have you ever reconciled with someone after a long silence? Tell me in the comments.