Chapter 18
CHAPTER 18
SLATE
I t was just shy of midnight, and the family was still gathered around the kitchen table. Across the table, Jess stifled a yawn. Austin was relaxed, leaning back in his chair and on his fourth or fifth drink.
Jeanie had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders as she sipped a cup of tea. I'd had about the same amount to drink as Austin, but the spiked lemonade was only making me lazy. It wasn't strong enough to give me much more than a little buzz.
It'd been a long, hot day and I was ready to turn in, but Doug was still wide awake and full of life, more excited about the oil than he had been since I'd gotten here.
I wasn't sure if Austin's arrival had made it real to him or if he just wasn't tired, but he turned to me with excitement in his eyes after laying out all the groundwork we'd done so far to his son. "What are our next steps, Slate? I want the whole family present to discuss what the expert thinks we should do."
Immediately, said family he'd wanted present started throwing out suggestions. Austin shrugged. "We pump our own oil and sell it."
Jess nodded at him, blinking away the exhaustion in her eyes as she sat up a little straighter. "I agree. There's no telling how much we have. Who would we sell it to, though? Oil companies? Would they even buy it?"
"No," I said, needing to reel them in a little.
"So we lease it," Doug suggested, a slight crease between his eyebrows, but that excitement still glimmered in those brown orbs. "I'm sure we'd be able to find a company willing to lease that section of land. We could let them manage the extraction until the well dries up. We'd be hands off, but I'm sure they'd pay us well for it."
"That seems reasonable, sweetheart," Jeanie said, hugging the blanket around her. She leaned over to touch her head to Doug's shoulder.
He winked at her before dropping a kiss on top of her hair. "Thank you, darling."
"That could work," Austin said, contemplation tightening his features before he sighed. "The big companies have got the money and the experience. They've also got the people who know what they're doing, whereas we've only got Slate and he won't be staying forever."
"What do you think?" Jess asked, prompting the entire family to turn to me expectantly.
I looked at Austin first and chuckled. "Even if I did stay forever, it wouldn't help much. One guy won't get you far when it comes to actually getting oil out of the ground. It takes a lot more than that."
He shrugged, humor lighting his eyes, and he brought his drink to his lips once more. His hair was a little more disheveled and the tie he'd had on with his suit long was forgotten. Right now, he looked like any number of my friends when they were kicking back and relaxing after a long day.
In fact, he reminded me a little bit of my friends back home. It made it easier to say stuff to him that I would've struggled to say to his parents if we'd been alone.
Because I know Austin can take it.
Maybe Jess and their parents would've been able to as well, but what I was about to say was going to come as a shock. I was glad he was here to help them through it.
"Your best bet at this being as lucrative as you hope is to sell off the entire section of land over the well," I said, moving my gaze away from Austin's to make eye contact with every person around the table in turn. "It could be acres. It could be the entire farm."
As I said that last part, Doug's face fell and Jess's hardened. "What?"
"There could be more than one well," I explained, raking a hand through my hair as I shook my head. "At this point, we just have no way to know exactly what you're sitting on. There are ways to estimate, but no way to guarantee."
She swallowed hard, the column of her throat moving. She averted her gaze and her shoulders slumped. Austin reached over to stroke her back. Glancing at me, he slung an arm around her. "How do we estimate? Obviously, we'd rather not sell the whole farm. A section would be difficult enough to part with, but we could talk about that. The entire farm…" He trailed off.
I nodded. "I know, but realistically, that might be the only way to make as much as you can out of this."
"What are our next steps, then?" Doug asked, his voice almost hollow now.
The light had gone out in his eyes too, and Jeanie's gaze kept bouncing between him and Jess like she wasn't sure who needed her more.
This was why I'd been happy Austin was here. His family would need him while they were making these decisions.
"First things first," I said. "We need to slow our roll. I know it's the discovery of a lifetime and that it's difficult to imagine what might happen from here, but we don't have all the information we need yet."
"What do we need to do to gather that information?" Austin asked, a little more ashen now but still focused. "At what point do we need to start considering the sale of the farm as a whole?"
"You have to hire more experts," I started. "We'll bring in more equipment and do everything we can to conclude how much oil you have. Once we know that, you can decide what to do with it. It will also only be then that you'll know whether selling the farm, in whole or in part, will be the best option"
Doug nodded slowly, scratching his chin as he thought it over. Jeanie scooted her chair closer to his and slid her arms around his neck, a pillar of support. "It'll be alright, my love. We'll just let those in the know find out how much oil there is and take it from there."
"It could be nothing," I warned them, needing them to stay grounded and realistic. "It's possible that it's just a small deposit and you got freakishly lucky to strike it."
Everyone lapsed into silence until Jess fixed me with a serious look, her face as pale as her brother's, but I still saw a glint of determination in her eyes. "Or?"
I shrugged. "Or you're the luckiest family in the nation and you're sitting on millions, or even billions of dollars of oil."
The family looked around at each other with varying expressions of shock and uncertainty. I knew that hearing they might have to sell the farm hadn't been easy. Given that it had been in their family for so long, I could imagine that it was unfathomable for them to even consider putting it on the market.
However, from the looks of things, it wasn't doing that well as a farm anymore. If they made some money from the oil, then sure. They would probably be able to turn things around, but they needed to know it was possible they could be the last generations of Merricks who would ever live and work on Merrick Meadows farm.
"Nothing is real until we get more answers," I reminded them gently. "We have weeks of investigative work ahead of us before we'll know more, and that's only if you give me the go-ahead."
"How soon can you start investigating?" Austin asked as he finished his drink. "I won't be able to stay out here for that long, but I'd like to be here when they get started. If I can. I'll also do my best to check in periodically, but it all depends on when this whole thing is going to kick off."
"I'll make some calls in the morning," I said. "See if I can pull some strings to get some guys down here that I trust, but they won't do it for free."
"We don't have the money to pay them upfront," Jess said, glancing at her brother before she looked back at me. "Will they take the work if they're offered a cut of the proceeds of the oil?"
I shook my head and grimaced. "These guys only work for guarantees. You'll have to figure out a way to come up with the money, I'm afraid."
"Okay," Austin said slowly. His father had buried his hands in his hair and his mother was staring into the distance with her jaw slack. He inhaled deeply before he focused on me once more. "Let's say we come up with the money and there's barely any oil. How much will we be out?"
"You're looking at a starting bill of around two hundred and fifty thousand," I said directly, needing them to know exactly what they were in for.
If I was being honest, this was the part of the job I'd hated most back when I'd still been doing it. When working with companies, it was hardly ever such a big issue, but with individuals? I looked around the farmhouse when the family went quiet.
The old kitchen. The worn floorboards. The window coverings that had seen better days.
These folks didn't have that kind of money. They probably wouldn't even be able to come up with half of that, and this wasn't me being a pessimist.
In the short time I'd been here, I'd seen the way they lived. Seen the beat-up cars and how Jess did all the work on the farm by herself, being helped only by Doug on occasion.
Once again, I silently cursed my sister for sending me here without having given this family a proper breakdown of not only what to expect from me, but what they were facing with this process. I sighed, turning to the window to give them a moment to process without being overly obvious about it.
As I looked out at their land, hidden under the cover of darkness, I wondered whether they'd ever let it go. This life might not be for me, but it was clear that they loved every second of it. More than that, this was who they were.
Even if there was a guarantee of them sitting on an entire farm full of oil below the surface, I just didn't know if they would ever sell. Or if any of this would be worth it at all—even if they did find some way to come up with more money than this place appeared to have seen in a long, long time.