"Exactly." She smiled at him. "Your great-grandfather is still teaching us how not to fool ourselves."
They worked through another season of careful multiplication and testing. The seed increase was gradual, protected from unwanted pollen, and supported by people who understood the risks of letting a small genetic population narrow too quickly. The company developed additional trial plots under a range of documented conditions. Callie grew ordinary commercial crops on most of her acreage because those crops had established markets and provided the predictable income the farm still needed.
The old flint line occupied only as much land as they could responsibly maintain. Some neighbors were disappointed that she had not covered the entire farm with the unusual corn after the first successful summer. Callie told them that a seed could not become a reliable agricultural system merely because it had made an exciting newspaper story. The variety's future would be built on repeated seasons, sound selection, and honest records, or it would not be built at all.
Nathaniel Bragg visited less frequently than he had during the early negotiations. When he did come, he arrived by appointment and usually brought Reeve or another specialist who knew more about the day's technical questions than Bragg himself. He did not always like Callie's insistence on reviewing the field reports in person, but he complied with it. Their relationship remained complicated, which Callie considered healthier than pretending that a signed agreement had turned two people with a difficult history into intimate friends.
One autumn, Roy Sabin appeared at the farm with a small box of archived elevator photographs Bragg's staff had found during a records cleanup. Among them was a photograph from the late 1950s showing Silas beside a wagon of corn with Nathaniel's grandfather standing a few feet away. Neither man was smiling, but they were close enough to suggest a conversation rather than an argument. Roy placed the photograph on Callie's kitchen table and said Bragg thought the Voss family should have it.
"He didn't send a note?" Callie asked.
"He said you'd understand what it was." Roy scratched his chin. "For what it's worth, he's changed some of the emergency grain-drying terms after what happened here. The contracts explain the cross-default provisions in plain language now. There's also an independent review available before a grower signs."
Callie studied Roy's face. "Does that come from him or from his lawyers being nervous?"
Roy smiled a little. "Couldn't tell you. Might be some of both."
She thanked him for the photograph, and that evening Eli slipped it into the family album beside the picture of Silas and Henry after the dry year. It was strange to see the two families standing close together in the past, before decades of expansion and resentment made every conversation feel like a test of strength. Callie wondered what Silas would have said about the partnership she had signed, then realized she could not know and did not need to pretend otherwise.