"Most of them didn't end up in a conventional mill," he added. "They went to individual makers or design firms doing one-off work. This is a different market."
Preston asked for clarification, though I suspect he understood him perfectly. Shaw explained that industrial mills purchase yield, consistency, and predictable conversion costs. Bespoke furniture makers and certain architectural clients purchase visual character, provenance, and the ability to make something that could not be duplicated from a catalog. The damaged center could be a catastrophic loss to the first category and largely irrelevant to the second, provided the outer material was sound and could be prepared to specification. Those were not contradictory judgments. They were judgments about different products.
Maren listened without once interrupting. I watched her face and expected the beginnings of triumph. Instead I saw calculation. A report from Shaw could confirm that her instinct hadn't been reckless fantasy, but it could not tell her who would buy the wood, what they would pay, or how much of it would survive drying and fabrication. The consultant was clear about those uncertainties. He would not put a speculative sales price on the tree merely to make the buyer feel vindicated.
His written report ran nine pages and included photographs, observations, limitations, and a recommendation for careful planning before further conversion. Maren paid him from the same strained account that had paid the hauling company and the first milling visit. She placed the report in a binder with the salvage documentation and her own notes, then sat alone in the shop office for a long time. When I stopped by before going home, she showed me the sentence about exceptional figure and asked whether I thought a banker would lend money against a word like that.
"Not without a buyer," I admitted.
"That's what I thought."
She closed the binder. Outside, the log lay on its cribbing with one beautiful exposed face and more unanswered questions than it had carried the week before. It had changed in our eyes, but the bills had not changed at all. The tree was no longer a mistake everybody could laugh at. It was a valuable possibility that could still ruin a woman who had been brave enough to see it.
Preston called the following Monday, and the change in his tone was almost elegant. He'd been thinking about their last conversation, he said, and he wanted to recognize Maren's instincts. He had connections in the architectural material business that she didn't, and he thought there might be a sensible way for both of them to benefit from what Shaw had found. He offered to purchase the entire log at a price several times higher than her auction bid. The money would arrive by wire within a week, and she could return to her ordinary work without spending another dollar on the uncertain parts.