Ray looked at me for a long moment before giving me the number. It was nearly six times what my ex-husband had valued the forty acres at during our settlement. I thought he was exaggerating until he pointed toward the orange survey stakes and explained that a development company had been buying parcels along the highway for nearly a year. The gravel road didn’t matter anymore. They were planning to build an access road straight through the section, and my forty acres sat directly along the proposed route.
I asked why nobody had contacted me. Ray shook his head. He said the company had approached him first because they assumed he controlled the entire stretch of land. When he told them part of it belonged to me, they apparently asked whether he knew how to reach me. Ray hadn’t given them my number. Instead, he’d called me himself. Then he showed me an old county map he’d kept in his truck. The planned road crossed my property in exactly the place where my ex had told me there was “nothing but useless pasture.”
The following Monday I hired an attorney and ordered a new survey. The surveyor found something even stranger: the access easement the developers needed had never been properly recorded. Without my signature, their entire project could be delayed for years. My ex called that evening and asked why I’d suddenly hired a lawyer. I told him I was finally taking care of the “swamp” he’d been so generous enough to leave me. He went silent. Then he said, “You don’t understand what that land is worth.” I smiled and answered, “I understand now. That’s why you’re suddenly calling me.”
