Eli helped after school. He transferred her handwritten notes into a simple spreadsheet on the aging laptop he used for homework and labeled the photographs so the crate numbers could not be confused. Callie had expected him to lose interest once the excitement of the secret door wore off. Instead, he asked whether seeds were alive while they sat dry and whether a plant could carry useful traits that no commercial seed company had measured.
"They can stay alive without growing for a while," she told him. "But time and heat and moisture can damage them. These have been there an awfully long time."
"Then how do we find out?"
"Carefully," she answered. "And without using the whole supply on the first guess."
The answer felt more like a promise to herself than an instruction to him. She had already lost a season by accepting a contract she had not examined closely enough. Whatever Silas had protected, she was not going to risk it merely because she wanted so badly for it to be valuable. She would learn the truth slowly if slow was what the truth required.
Three days after the discovery, a black pickup came down the lane again. This time Nathaniel Bragg drove all the way to the yard and stepped out with his hat in his hand. His boots were clean and his coat looked expensive without being showy. He paused beside the porch as if he could sense that one careless step would end the conversation before it began.
"Callie," he said. "I hope I'm not interrupting."
She set down the bucket she had been using to rinse a feed trough. "Depends what you came for."
"Word travels in a small county." He glanced toward the old cattle pasture but did not move closer. "Roy's cousin does seasonal work around here and heard something about an old structure behind the corn crib. I thought I'd ask whether you found anything interesting."
"You could have asked Roy to ask." She folded her arms. "Or sent another truck."
Bragg took the remark without defending himself. "I've sent enough trucks down your lane for one week."
"You have." She waited, not offering him a chair or a reason to stay.
He looked toward the fields, the same fields from which his people had taken eighteen thousand bushels. "My grandfather used to tell a story about your great-grandfather. Said Silas grew corn that held up through dry spells when the neighbors had almost nothing. I always thought old men remember good seasons better than they happened. Then our seed-development manager mentioned some unusual characteristics in samples from this area, and I wondered whether the old story had more truth in it than I'd given it credit for."
"What samples?" Callie asked immediately.
Bragg recognized the change in her voice. "Routine soil work and volunteer plants along neighboring ground. Nothing taken from your stored seed. I can have the sampling locations sent over if you'd like."