When Callie came to Bragg's office the following week, she brought Helen with her. Eli wanted to attend, but Callie told him he could read every page once the meeting was over and that a school attendance record mattered too. He grumbled, then asked her to promise she would not agree to anything without showing him where the family seed rights appeared in the final document. She promised.
Bragg greeted her politely and offered coffee. His office was full of framed acreage maps and photographs of grain facilities, the furniture heavy enough that nothing seemed capable of being moved by accident. Through the window, trucks lined up beside the elevator where Callie's harvest had been taken. She noticed the view, felt its effect on her, and made herself concentrate on the papers rather than on the old anger they represented.
"This is a significant opportunity for you," Bragg began. "I hope you understand that."
"I do." Callie opened her folder. "It's also a significant opportunity for your company. Otherwise you wouldn't be offering these terms."
Bragg smiled faintly. "Fair."
"Then let's talk about what each of us actually needs." She placed the revised first page between them. "You need the right to study the seed and maybe bring a product to market. I need to keep control of the original line and make sure my family isn't cut out of decisions about its future. Those aren't necessarily incompatible."
The meeting lasted three hours and ended without an agreement. Bragg resisted the limits on exclusivity, arguing that his company would assume the development expense and therefore needed protection against competitors receiving the same material at no cost. Helen suggested narrowly defined periods and territories with renewal provisions rather than an indefinite claim to every descendant of the variety. Reeve proposed scientific milestones that would justify expanding the license only after the seed demonstrated real commercial potential.
Callie listened closely. She recognized that Bragg had legitimate reasons to protect an investment and that treating every corporate concern as greed would make a workable partnership impossible. She also recognized how quickly reasonable clauses could accumulate into a document that left her with a family name on the label and little authority over anything else. Whenever she became uncertain, she asked Helen to explain the consequences in terms Eli would understand.
The hardest conversation came near the end. Bragg said the grain debt had been settled according to the agreement and was unrelated to the seed-development proposal. Callie agreed that the transactions were legally separate. Then she asked whether he wanted the new arrangement to begin on terms that made another fourteen-month surprise possible.
"You had legal rights under that contract," she said. "I know that. You exercised them. But I couldn't sell a bushel of the best crop my farm had produced in six years, and you knew how much of my future depended on it. Don't ask me to pretend that doesn't matter when you ask for my trust now."