Eleven years earlier
“Nice to see you playing with your farm again. You haven’t played with it for ages,” Rory’s mother said, smiling and looking down at the model farm spread out on the kitchen table.
Rory rolled his eyes. “Not playing. It’s a project for social studies, momma.” The nine year old lifted one of the Herefords out of the pasture. Could he increase the acreage? From his calculations, there’d be a problem with over-grazing the available pastureland. Not that he’d mention this in his presentation. He’d learned the hard way not to be too smart in front of the rest of the class. And telling a teacher they were wrong and then proving it tended not to go down well with the faculty either.
“Everything okay at school?”
Rory hummed his assent, although he cringed at how perceptive
