Two brokers looked at Maren's log and made offers close to ordinary salvage value. Neither wanted to pay for the possibility of figured material, and one admitted he would probably resell it to someone with a larger mill. Dale came back to the yard and reminded her that she could still take a loss before the loss became a catastrophe. She listened without arguing. The two of them had worked together too long for her to pretend his advice came from anything other than concern.
"You can't keep it because you've already paid to move it," he said. "That's money gone. The next dollar has to stand on its own."
"I know," Maren replied.
"Do you?"
She looked toward the tree. "I'm trying to find out whether that next dollar is buying information or just buying hope."
Dale was quiet at that. Most of us, he later admitted, had not distinguished the two. We had seen the log and started calculating how rapidly the cost could grow. Maren was trying to limit the cost of finding out whether her suspicion had merit, one decision at a time. It was still a gamble, but it wasn't the romantic blindness Preston described.
Preston drove out himself on a bright morning eleven days after the auction. His car came down the lane without a speck of dust on the hood, which seemed a small defiance of the condition of the road. He wore a tan coat and carried no measuring tools. He walked the length of the redwood with his hands behind his back, pausing near the scar in the same place he'd stopped in the auction yard. Then he asked Maren whether she'd be open to an exit that protected her business.
He offered less than she'd paid for the log before adding transportation. He explained that Harrington had the capacity to absorb the rotten volume and perhaps recover some saleable boards, but even his company would be taking a chance. He could get her out of the purchase immediately, with no further expenses and no more risk of embarrassment. A small shop had to know its limits, he said, and there was no shame in recognizing them before the bank did it for you.
"You said it wasn't worth a freight bill," she reminded him.
"I said the freight was a problem. I've found a way to handle it."
"At my expense."
"At the expense of your sunk cost," he corrected. "Those aren't necessarily the same thing."
He was good at making an insult sound like financial literacy. Maren knew the distinction well enough not to contest it. Instead she asked whether he would guarantee the offer for another month if she first inspected the grain. Preston smiled, said markets changed and nobody could promise yesterday's price tomorrow, and left his number on the workbench. He told her to think about it overnight.
"I've been thinking about it for eleven days," she said.
He glanced once more at the scar, then toward Luis, who was working near the shop door. "I admire loyalty," Preston said. "But sometimes loyalty to an idea is expensive."