Jonathan leaned back. "You're taking this unusually seriously."
"I take every business we expect people to rely on seriously," Victoria said. "If we make promises that determine whether somebody plants a field, we have an obligation to understand what happens when those promises fail."
The board approved a limited pilot, subject to oversight and quarterly reporting. Victoria stepped out of the meeting feeling tired but satisfied. She called Ethan from the hallway, and when he answered she heard a tractor engine coughing somewhere behind him.
"It passed," she said.
"The board?"
"A limited pilot. We still need signed contracts and operational checks, but we can move ahead."
For a moment he said nothing. Then he let out a breath that sounded like relief. "Amara's going to be thrilled. Walter will pretend he isn't. June will ask whether we've thought about parking."
"And you?"
"I'm pleased," he said. "But I'm more pleased because it's something fourteen farms can use, not just mine."
Victoria smiled at the blank corridor wall. "That was the idea."
He paused, and his voice changed. "Lily wants to know if you're coming for her birthday in March. She says she's making a cake and you have to help because the cookies at Christmas were an emergency."
Victoria laughed so loudly that a passing vice president turned to look at her. "Tell her I'll come. And tell her I am perfectly capable of baking a cake."
"I'll pass along the first part," Ethan said. "The second part still needs evidence."
That evening, alone in her apartment, Victoria stood by the river-facing window and thought about the life she was beginning to build. She had spent years making decisions that moved millions of dollars and affected faraway towns only as numbers on a screen. Now a seven-year-old girl wanted her to attend a birthday party and a man with calloused hands had asked her not to let his daughter down. The first commitment came with detailed legal documents and measurable returns. The second asked something she had never been able to guarantee with money: that she would be there when she said she would.
Lily's eighth birthday fell on a Tuesday in March, a day when Cedar Ridge was still caught between winter and spring. The snow had retreated from the fields but remained in dirty heaps along the shaded roads. Ethan planned a small party after school with June, two of Lily's classmates, and homemade strawberry cake. Victoria had promised to come, and Lily mentioned that promise often enough for Ethan to worry about what would happen if the day got away from her.
Victoria was aware of the risk. She had blocked the afternoon on her calendar a month earlier, told Mara that the time was not available for routine meetings, and ordered the ingredients for a cake she had practiced baking twice. Both trial cakes were edible, although the second leaned slightly to the left. She had even purchased a present: a sturdy wooden model of a barn that could be assembled and painted, because Lily liked things she could make with her hands.