The members agreed to explore the idea, though not everyone was enthusiastic about creating another administrative cost. Samuel asked the treasurer to calculate what the nineteen disputed deductions had consumed in staff time, professional fees, and lost revenue. The answer was already larger than the likely cost of a short trial. He told the board that accountability sometimes looked expensive only because the costs of having none were buried in places nobody counted.
Later that week, he asked Tessa if she would be willing to hear about the proposal. She agreed to meet him at the cooperative office but made him promise that the discussion would not be framed as compensation for losing her job. If the job existed, she wanted to know who controlled it, what records she could access, whether she would have to challenge farms as well as stores, and how her own performance would be reviewed. Samuel told her those were precisely the questions the board needed answered.
She came on Monday carrying a notebook with additional pages of requirements. They sat with Felix and the cooperative secretary around the same table used for the delivery-pause vote. Tessa did not begin by thanking them. She began by asking whether the person hired would be allowed to state in writing that a Heritage farm had sent defective produce even if the conclusion made Samuel angry.
"Yes," Samuel said.
"And whether Bridgeville can refuse access to the original receiving history if a claim is under appeal?"
"We're negotiating that access now," Felix replied. "It will have to be part of the agreement."
"What about mileage between stores, medical insurance, travel time, and a way to appeal if either side tries to remove the liaison for making an unpopular finding?"
The secretary wrote each item down. Tessa had spent seventeen years inside a company where people called a problem resolved if the computer said it was resolved. She was not willing to take another job built on a promise that might vanish when someone with more authority became uncomfortable. The farmers were surprised by how practical her questions were, but Samuel saw that she was describing the cost of independence in terms the cooperative could measure.
"I want written appeals and access to original intake events," she said. "I don't want somebody sending me a final summary and telling me the history is confidential. If I'm expected to sign my name to a finding, I need to know what happened before I arrived."
Felix asked whether she would accept the role on a temporary basis if the terms were approved. Tessa looked at the window, where a truck was reversing toward the packing shed. She liked the idea of doing work that mattered to both sides, but she had no intention of letting her sudden popularity with the growers make another decision for her.
"Write the terms first," she said. "Let your board vote. Let someone outside both organizations review the agreement. Then ask me again."
Samuel nodded. "That's fair."
"And yesterday doesn't disappear because you've offered me something."
"No," he answered. "It doesn't."
The first trial agreement was forty pages long. Tessa read every page over two evenings and returned it with questions in the margins. She objected to a clause allowing the cooperative chairman to end the position immediately for conduct deemed contrary to cooperative interests, pointing out that almost any honest adverse finding could be described that way. She also objected to a Bridgeville provision requiring advance approval before the liaison spoke to growers about a disputed lot. Neither clause survived the next draft.