Four days after the exposition, the meeting packet arrived in Maren's email. It contained the resort's preliminary schedule, the central hall drawings, technical requirements, a list of attendees, and the names of the firms already under contract. She opened it in the shop office while Luis ran a sander in the main bay. The first pages made her more excited than she'd allowed herself to be. Julian's concept genuinely needed the material she'd found. Then she reached the supplier list and saw the name of the firm responsible for the project's primary architectural timber package.
Harrington Architectural Timber. Preston's company had been attached to the project for seven months. It had supplied the sample boards for both schemes the client had already rejected, and it expected to provide most of the wood products in the final design. The packet listed Winslow Custom Timber under a separate agenda item for specialty material. Maren stared at the two company names on the page, one above the other, and understood that the meeting was not merely about whether Julian liked her table. It was about whether she would be allowed to supply the material directly or whether Preston's company would absorb her discovery into the established purchasing structure.
She called Julian. He didn't sound surprised that she'd noticed. He told her that the project team had invited the supplier of record because the material decision affected the existing contract and the entire construction sequence. Harrington would attend, and so would the general contractor and the client's representative. Maren asked whether she was expected to submit a wholesale quote to Preston. Julian said no decision had been made about the purchasing route and that he wanted to see whether she could satisfy the project's requirements on her own.
"I need you to tell the truth about your capacity," he said. "Even if that means this is smaller than we hope. The client is tired of hearing confident promises that aren't supported by work."
Maren thanked him and hung up. She read the meeting packet again, this time looking not at the beauty of the proposed hall but at the questions hidden inside the specification pages. Each piece would need dimensions, a finish and maintenance plan, acceptable movement allowances, documented source, protective packaging, and a schedule the contractor could coordinate with other trades. The wood would have to be conditioned for the coastal environment where it would live, not simply finished in her inland workshop and delivered as though humidity were a polite suggestion. Preston was right about one thing. Finding the wood was not proof that she could deliver the project.
She spent the next week assembling what became the most carefully prepared binder I'd ever seen in a small timber shop. She began with the original ranch documentation and the records from the auction. The transport papers followed, along with photographs showing the log before movement, after arrival, and at each