Misgivings: Day 7

Word Count: 42,120

Summary of Events:

Greyson went to Grande Prairie to buy groceries and run other errands; while having lunch at a restaurant, he spied a classified ad selling cats which he decided to look into. He was informed that the seller had only one cat left to sell, and since it was female, Greyson elected to buy it. At home again he put away what he'd bought, except the vacuum cleaner, which he used to clean the place, before making supper and pondering what to name his cat. He eventually decided to name her Sonic after the video game hedgehog when he woke up the following morning and saw her balled up, asleep, in the bed he'd bought her. Greyson texted his boss to find out when he might have work again, and was informed, to his disappointment, that his boss didn't know for sure, which left him with nothing to do…

Excerpt of the Day:

Greyson sighed and went into the master bedroom. He didn’t really know what to do, and he wasn’t really inclined to unpack any more than he had to, as he didn’t want to get too comfy.

Seeing the rental agreement he’d typed up sitting atop one of the boxes in the closet, however, Greyson took it up. He’d not actually read through it since Mr. Fransbergen had filled it out to see what exactly Mr. Fransbergen had filled in.

None of what Greyson saw really surprised him, it was all consistent with what Mr. Fransbergen had said in response to his questions when he’d first arrived. The only thing that caused Greyson any surprise or interest was the fact that instead of putting his name in the blank where it was required, Mr. Fransbergen had put down the farm name.

Shady Acres Chicken Farm. As far as Greyson had observed, the only shady acres were the ones on which the trees grew flanking the spring runoff route, as well as the planted trees that indicated the residential yards from each other and the rest of the place.

There were other trees in sight around, but few of them were terribly close, and as a result, Greyson wasn’t sure if they belonged to Mr. Fransbergen or not. Shady seemed more apropos if it was defined as sketchy, dubious, dishonest, or illegal, but maybe there had been more trees on the place before, and in order to rent out more land acres to others — as renting out cropland could be a lucrative business — or maybe even to have once upon a time farmed such acres for themselves the Fransbergens had taken down the trees.

Greyson was able to tell that Mr. Fransbergen hadn’t used the farm name in his signature, although the initials were C and F. The F had enough after it — including long loops both up and down — to indicate it was Fransbergen, meaning Greyson had presumed his name correctly, while the C was followed immediately by what might’ve been an L, and the only other upward loop was a crossed T at the end, plus there were no dots for lowercase Is throughout the signature.

He wasn’t entirely sure what the first name would be, but he at least knew the name of the place he was living on, and he also knew that he had correctly deduced the first man he’d met to be Mr. Fransbergen, Sr.