We checked the calibration solution.
The meter was drifting.
I bought Claire lunch.
"For what?"
"Being annoying."
"I can do that for free."
"Apparently."
The business became part of the family in ways I had not planned.
Melissa began helping with bookkeeping one afternoon a month because she did not trust Ethan's habit of naming spreadsheet tabs things like MONEY STUFF FINAL 3.
Ethan objected.
She showed me a folder labeled TAX RECEIPTS MAYBE.
I sided with her.
At Thanksgiving, conversation shifted from football to whether we needed another nursery basin.
I realized halfway through dessert that we had become the kind of family that discussed fish mortality over pie.
I apologized to my sister.
She said it was more interesting than politics.
Not every part of growth was good.
Customers occasionally wanted more than we could produce responsibly.
Tom repeatedly warned me not to chase volume at the expense of breeding quality.
"The fastest way to ruin a specialty operation is to become ordinary," he said.
So we stayed smaller than some buyers wanted.
We sold fewer certified broodfish than demand allowed.
We expanded juveniles more carefully.
We built waiting lists rather than promising stock that did not exist.
That decision frustrated me whenever I looked at lost revenue.
Then I remembered how Silver Ridge had ended up in trouble.
Short-term convenience is persuasive when the bill belongs to later.
I had already watched what that philosophy did.
One fall afternoon, almost three years after Karen first arrived with the invoice, a familiar silver SUV stopped outside my gate.
Not the same vehicle, but the same color.
Karen stepped out.
I saw her on the camera before she called from the intercom.
For a few seconds I considered not answering.
Then I did.
"Robert."
Her voice sounded smaller through the speaker.
"Karen."
"Can we talk?"
"About what?"
"I would rather not do this through a gate."
I almost said that the gate had become necessary because of her.
I decided not to.
I opened it remotely.
She drove only as far as the gravel turnout and parked. I met her there rather than inviting her to the house.
Karen looked older.
Not dramatically.
Just less polished around the edges.
Her hair was shorter. No sunglasses. No leather folder.
She looked toward the pond in the distance.
"I heard the business is doing well."
"It is doing all right."
"People say it is worth over half a million."
"People say many things."
She gave me a tired smile.
"Still careful with numbers."
"More than ever."
For a while neither of us spoke.
Then Karen said: