The first serious offer arrived in September, not by telephone or through an excited neighbor but in a heavy envelope delivered by a courier who asked Callie to sign for it. The return address belonged to Bragg Agra Holdings. She opened the package at the kitchen table with Eli and Dutch sitting nearby, not because either of them had legal expertise, but because she no longer believed the most important decisions about the farm should be made with nobody else in the room.
Inside was a cover letter signed by Nathaniel Bragg and a proposed agreement running to thirty-seven pages. Its opening paragraphs praised the historical significance of the Voss Flint collection and referred respectfully to the preliminary field observations. The financial terms were generous enough to make Callie read them twice. There was a substantial advance, an annual guaranteed payment during the development period, and royalties that could grow significantly if the variety became commercially useful.
For a family whose bank statements had been reduced to careful calculations about feed and roofing materials, the numbers were almost painful to look at. The proposed advance would retire the outstanding farm debts and leave enough to repair the buildings. The annual guarantee could allow Callie to stop taking maintenance work for other farms and pay Dutch properly without waiting for each harvest. She saw, in a handful of typed lines, the shape of a life she had nearly forgotten it was possible to want.
Then she reached the definitions. Bragg's company would receive exclusive worldwide rights to evaluate, develop, register, multiply, market, and sublicense the Voss Flint genetic material, including future selections derived from it. The agreement would restrict independent distribution and place commercial seed decisions under Bragg's control for a term long enough to outlast Eli's early adulthood. There were protections for the Voss family as holders of physical parent seed, but the scope of the rights Callie would surrender was far greater than she had expected.
Dutch watched her read the same page three times. "Bad news?" he asked.
"Good money," she replied. "That's what makes it complicated."
Eli pushed his chair closer. She showed him the section defining exclusive rights and explained what it meant in ordinary language. If Bragg developed a successful commercial line, the company might be able to make decisions about its distribution that Callie could not reverse simply because she had inherited the original seed. Even saving and sharing the next generation could become entangled in permissions, depending on how the contract was interpreted.
"That's why Silas hid it," Eli said.
"Maybe." Callie traced the printed words with one finger. "He was afraid somebody would buy the right to decide what happened to it. And here we are, reading a paper that asks almost exactly that."
For the rest of the evening she let herself imagine accepting. The bank manager would stop calling. Dutch could replace his old truck instead of coaxing it through another winter. Eli would not have to pretend that the patched elbows on his coat were a personal fashion preference. Callie could sleep without hearing a grain trailer in every dream.