Callie looked at the attorney's careful handwriting on the last page. "That kind of advice might have saved me eighteen thousand bushels."
"It might have," Helen said. She did not try to comfort her with a lie. "It can still save the next thing."
During those same months, Bragg's company sent her the requested sampling map. It showed scattered collection sites on Bragg-owned property near the county road and a few locations where routine soil surveys had been conducted under easements held by neighboring landowners. The map did not prove wrongdoing, nor did it erase the uncomfortable timing of his interest. Callie filed it with the rest of the correspondence and resisted the temptation to turn suspicion into an accusation she could not support.
Bragg called once before Christmas. He asked whether she had learned anything useful from the seed collection and offered to pay for laboratory analysis through one of his company's vendors. Callie thanked him for the offer and declined. There was a silence, followed by a short laugh that sounded less like amusement than recognition.
"You don't trust me," he said.
"You gave me a lot of reasons to be careful," Callie answered. "I'm not asking you to agree with them."
He told her the offer would remain available, then changed the subject to the condition of her grain bins as though they were two ordinary neighboring farmers discussing equipment. Callie made herself answer honestly. It would have been easy to sound bitter, and she had discovered that bitterness was expensive in ways a person could not enter into an accounting ledger.
Spring came with a wind that made every open field feel larger than it was. From the kitchen window, Callie watched loose topsoil lift along the south boundary whenever a truck passed on the county road. The bare fields were waiting for planting, the irrigation pivot needed attention, and the bank manager had agreed to a short extension only after she presented a plan showing how she intended to operate without proceeds from the seized harvest. She had taken seasonal maintenance work for two neighboring farms and accepted a small cattle-feeding job to close part of the gap.
Nothing about this arrangement made the days easier. She worked on Hollow Bend before sunrise, drove to somebody else's equipment shed by eight, then returned in the evening to begin the chores she had left. Eli kept up with school, but he also fed the cattle, checked the weather station he had assembled from donated parts, and entered rainfall readings in the spreadsheet before going to bed. Dutch pretended he did not notice how little Callie ate during the busiest weeks, then began leaving half his lunch in the workshop refrigerator with her name written on the paper bag.
One Sunday, Ruth called from Ohio and asked whether Callie had thought about selling a portion of the west pasture. Callie knew her mother meant well. The pasture was poor grazing ground and represented one of the few parts of the property not connected directly to a machine payment. Selling it would remove several worries at once, at least for a while.