Chapter One

Imogen inherited everything the day her grandfather died. She hung up on her father before he could tell her every detail. Each memory that raced through her mind brought with it the magnitude of her summers until college, running around the farm and exploring every nook and cranny of Grandad's property. When Gram passed away, Grandad slowed down. He sold his livestock. Then the last of his crops. Lived off retirement and social security. Imogen wrote most weeks, called when she could. Her life as a double major stole what time she usually gave to her family and turned it into work production instead. The month she graduated, Grandad had been too sick to come, so she bought a video recorder and set it up on a tripod, recorded the ceremony.

And forgot to send the video. It sat on her side table in a box, addressed and taped up, ready for the postman. Now he was gone, and Imogen was his heir. The great and terrible need for employment had fallen upon her. The urgency for a desk and a cubicle warped her every thought into a corporate advertisement, and she wondered…had she been the original recipient of her grandfather's estate? There had to be a mistake.

"Aren't you his only grandchild?" Farthing brushed the bangs out of his eyes and stirred his coffee slowly. Imogen's roommates sat around the table with her. Saturdays were for big breakfasts and folk music. Soft guitar strains drifted out of the record player, and Imogen sighed behind her tea cup.

"No, there's three of us. We just don't talk much." She sniffed. "One doesn't even live in the country anymore."

"What connection do they have to the farm?"

"Probably none. Maybe they came to the farmhouse for a weekend or a whole week, but that was a long time ago. I'm the youngest of all of us. The others are in their forties, and I was there the longest overall."

Eleanor snapped her fingers and wrote on her white board, "Late to the party."

Imogen nodded. "Basically."

"You wouldn't remember the older generation's vacation time, either, in that case," Farthing said.

Imogen's cell phone vibrated across the tabletop, WORK popping up in the caller ID. She groaned and laid her head across her arms on the table. "I'm so tired of being called in on the weekend."

The silence in the room didn't bolster her confidence much. She'd complained every day since getting her office job. She heard the top of Eleanor's marker pop off, then the quiet strokes of felt against plastic, and a small tapping touched her elbow. Imogen peeked one eye out from her thick mop of hair. The white board had one word:

"MOOOOO."

Farthing snorted. "I agree."

"I can't take the farm," Imogen murmured.

Eleanor shrugged, brow furrowed.

"Because! I'm not a morning person, and it's probably all run-down, and the will must have been a mistake anyway, so what does it even matter? Besides all that, Pelican Town is so far from any real civilization that I would go insane for sure."

"You say at least three times a day, 'Ugh, I wish we lived in the country,' Imogen." Farthing sighed and sat back, rubbing the corner of his eye. "Don't you think we'd help you if it needs fixing? You're like a sister to us."

"For real, though," Eleanor wrote quickly.

"It's not like this is a tiny one-room cabin we'd be moving into. Something we'd need to expand or whatever," Farthing said quietly. He laid a hand on Imogen's and smiled. Tears welled up and stung her eyes. "It's a huge farmhouse. I think we'd be okay for rooms."

Imogen sniffed. She swallowed in order to speak past the burning lump in her throat. "I know. It's just…I didn't even go to the funeral, so I don't deserve the farm."

A heavy silence enveloped them like a thick fog. Eleanor gave a tiny puff of a sigh. Her marker strokes and Imogen's subdued crying marked the end of the record's side A, and Farthing quietly stood to turn it over, his stocking feet making no more than a quiet padding on the kitchen floor. Ethereal vocal harmonies loosened some of the tension.

"I spoke to your dad," he said.

Imogen was too distraught to be angry.

"He said that we'd better not pack until he can get out there to meet with Mayor Lewis about the property, and—"

Imogen slammed her fist on the tabletop. "It's my farm!"

"It doesn't sound like it."

"Only because I don't think I should take it!"

"Do you want to sell anymore of your soul to Joja Corp for the sake of a desk and health insurance, or do you want to stop whining and take responsibility for your own life?"

Eleanor's eyebrows shot up. She mouthed, "Ow," and gritted her teeth.

"You're nasty when you want to be," Imogen murmured. Her chest boiled like a thunderstorm, and every nerve in her body felt as though it were twitching.

"I'm honest," Farthing said, voice level and calm. "You're a mess. Your hair is falling out, you're constantly sick, and you've lost fifty pounds since you took this position. I don't think your grandfather wanted this for you. I think he left you the farm for a reason."

The cellphone buzzed across the table again, and Imogen clenched her fist until her nails bit into the skin of her palm. Her heart hammered a pattern into her ribs. Part of her wanted so badly to grab the phone, to grab for stability, and never let go. Another part (one she felt growing more and more dominant in her mind) longed for adventure, for a new life in which the outcome was as yet undecided by the majority. A fate that she herself determined. She would be her own boss. She would set her own course. And she had two of the best friends she'd ever found willing to rig the sails and cruise with her into this new life, slow and steady and braced for whatever outcome lay ahead.

And still…

Her fingertips grazed the phone's case, but Eleanor snatched it away. It rang like an oversized gnat, persistent and irritating. Face pleading, she sent WORK to voicemail and shook her head at Imogen, who didn't resist. She wrote on her board and flipped it around, giving her friend a small, sad smile:

"You're killing yourself for nothing."

Tears sprang back up, and Imogen couldn't stop them this time. "They promised so much. Humanitarian opportunities. Vacations. Grants to further your education. Family benefits. I could have gotten insurance for my parents if I'd taken on ten more hours."

"You know, there used to be regulations against 70-hour work weeks." Farthing's rumble of a murmur filled Imogen with a flame of comfort and familiarity. She grabbed hold of the proverbial life ring, white-knuckled and gasping for breath.

"I'm terrified." Her whisper exploded into the quiet.

"That's why we're coming with you."

Eleanor drew a large heart.

"And because we love you."

A half-sob, half-laugh bubbled up now, and Imogen wiped the back of her wrist across her eyes. "It won't be smooth."

Farthing shrugged. "That's fine."

"It won't be easy."

Eleanor wrote, "We're tough!"

"It will be home, though."

Farthing smiled broadly and nodded. "That's something we can all agree on."

The dark fist of anxiety clenching her heart loosened, allowing a trickle of emotion into Imogen's whole being. She recognized it from years ago, just before she'd started undergrad, a feeling now so foreign, she grieved for that carefree girl of eighteen. Where had she gone? How had she disappeared so quietly, so quickly? Without Imogen even noticing, at that. Was finding hope again so easy? She didn't know for sure, but some nudge in the core of her heart told her she'd find both her old self and her hope in the fields and forests of Stardew Valley.