She sat beside him.
Warren watched headlights turn at the county road. "I refused enough money to buy us time because I'm trusting a wet field, a consultant, a hydrologist, and a granddaughter who came home saying she didn't know what she wanted to do with her life."
Casey smiled weakly. "When you say it like that, it sounds bad."
"It is bad."
They sat in silence.
Then Warren added, "But selling it to the people who may have caused the problem sounded worse."
Casey rested her elbows on her knees. "We don't have to know this works yet."
"Bank wants us to know."
"Then maybe the next thing isn't proving the wetland is valuable. Maybe it's proving why the water is there."
Warren looked toward the darkness covering the lower farm.
"Renata thinks she's close," Casey said.
She was.
Two weeks later Renata returned with a draft report thick enough to bend the folder holding it. She spread maps across Harlon's conference table: pre-development drainage, approved design drainage, current surveyed drainage, storm hydrographs, historical rainfall comparisons, and water-level response from Casey's monitoring points.
She spoke carefully because Harlon had asked her to explain the conclusions the same way she would under oath.
The evidence supported a material change in runoff concentration after upstream construction. The altered system routed more stormwater toward the Puit boundary through a narrower conveyance. Comparable rain events produced more rapid inflow and longer inundation of Warren's low acreage after the modifications than before. The effect was repeatable, not limited to one extraordinary storm.
Warren listened with both hands folded on the table.
"Can you say they flooded me on purpose?"
"No," Renata said.
He frowned.
"And you do not want me to. I can tell you what the system did. I can tell you the consequences were foreseeable from the drainage configuration. I can tell you the repeated flooding is consistent with the changes. Intent belongs to documents and testimony, not hydrology."
Harlon nodded. "That's exactly what I needed."
Warren looked at the maps again.
For months he had been angry that nobody would say the thing he believed plainly. Now he understood why Renata's restraint made the report stronger. She had not built a theory around his suspicion. She had built a chain from measurements.
The old drainage dispersed water.
The new system concentrated it.
The timing changed after construction.