Before getting in, he turned toward Eli. "For what it's worth, twelve was real."
"I know."
"Might not be next year. Markets change."
"I know that too."
Marcus drove away.
Norah waited.
"Twelve thousand," she said.
"Yep."
"You didn't even counter."
"Wasn't selling."
"How do you know that was right?"
Eli looked at her. "I don't."
That answer frightened and comforted her at once.
"You can make a good decision and still lose money," he said. "You can make a bad decision and get lucky. Outcome isn't always proof."
Norah looked toward the logs. "Then how do you know?"
"You use the best information you have, decide what matters besides price, and accept that nobody gets certainty in advance."
She wrote that down later.
Not because it was about timber.
Because she suspected it was about almost everything.
The weather turned hot and dry in August. The lower pasture hardened enough that cattle could graze without sinking, and new grass emerged through the silt. The flood line vanished from fence posts one rain at a time. From the road, the farm began looking normal again.
Only the covered lumber stacks and numbered logs suggested the spring had uncovered anything unusual.
Norah's days settled into a rhythm.
Morning chores.
Pasture repairs.
Library visits when Eli had town business.
Moisture readings.
Cleaning and cataloging recovered offcuts.
She began creating individual record cards for each old log. Number. Dimensions. Condition. Markings. Approximate original location.
Photographs taken. Cuts made. Material sold. Buyer. Purpose.
Eli teased her that she was running an archive in the tack room.
She replied that his filing system consisted of "put it in a coffee can and forget which shelf."
He could not argue.
One afternoon Clara visited the farm for the first time since the flood. Norah took her through the pasture and showed her where the old chute crossed beneath the grass. Clara stood with the 1887 map folded beneath one arm and looked over a field that now showed almost nothing of its older geography.
"This is my favorite part," Clara said.
"The logs?"
"No. The fact that the landscape looked ordinary while all of this was under it."
Norah understood.
The discovery had changed how she saw familiar ground.
Before spring, a pasture was a pasture.
Now she wondered what every shallow depression meant, why certain soil dried later, why trees grew in one line instead of another, why old fence corners seemed misaligned with modern roads.
The farm had become readable in a new language.
Clara walked to Log 3 and examined the mark without touching it.
"We'd like to photograph this professionally for the archive."
Eli nodded. "Fine."
"And I want to ask whether you'd consider eventually donating a cross-section from one of the less important marked pieces. Not now. Someday."
Norah looked at Eli.
He thought about it.
"Someday."