"That is a completely reasonable answer. It also doesn't explain why you came back smiling."
Victoria looked up from her notes. "Am I not allowed to smile at work?"
"You are. It just normally means you've won a negotiation and somebody in another time zone is now unhappy."
Victoria closed her notebook. "His daughter brought us sandwiches."
Mara studied her. "This is about the man Richard sent you to meet."
"It began that way."
"And now?"
"Now I think there may be a real business problem worth solving."
"Both things can be true," Mara said.
Victoria recognized the phrase and found herself smiling again. Mara noticed, of course, and said nothing. Her silence was somehow more revealing than another question.
The following week, Victoria invited Ethan to a meeting in Cedar Ridge's modest town office, where five local farmers gathered around a folding table to discuss distribution costs. She arrived with two transportation managers, a regional economist, and a presentation that Ethan almost immediately interrupted. The slides treated growers as a collection of suppliers whose volume could be consolidated under a central operator. Ethan listened until the discussion turned to mandatory exclusivity, then raised his hand.
"What happens if a farmer already has a better buyer for part of the harvest?"
One manager, Daniel Pierce, answered without hesitation. "Exclusive agreements improve routing stability. It's a standard arrangement."
"Standard for whom?"
"For efficient logistics."
"Efficient for Hayes Global, maybe," Ethan said. "If I have to sell my whole crop through you, a good price this year doesn't mean much if you change it next year."
An older farmer named Walter Beckett nodded from across the table. He had been raising vegetables in Cedar Ridge since before Ethan was born, and his rough hands were folded around a cup of weak coffee. "We've all seen those deals," he said. "They sound fine until you want to leave."
Victoria looked from Daniel to the farmers. "Then no mandatory exclusivity. Let's design a system that earns the deliveries instead of requiring them."
Daniel's face tightened. "That changes the financial model."
"Then the financial model needs to change."
After the meeting, Ethan found her standing in the corridor, examining a faded photograph of Cedar Ridge's old grain elevator. She turned when she heard him approach. "You were going to let me agree to that clause, weren't you?"
"I was going to see if you listened when somebody explained why it was a bad idea."
"And did I pass?"
"You didn't fail."
She gave him an incredulous look. "High praise."
He shrugged. "I'm a farmer. We don't hand out medals because a fence is standing. That's what it's supposed to do."
Outside, rain had begun to freckle the sidewalk. Victoria reached for her coat, and Ethan held the town office door for her. Across the street, someone was hanging pumpkins in the window of the bakery. Cedar Ridge smelled of wet leaves and fresh bread, a combination that made Victoria feel briefly, absurdly reluctant to leave.
"Would you like coffee?" she asked.
"I already had three cups at the meeting. The town coffee is mostly an argument against coffee."