"You've been around wetland people too long."
The dispute with Cornerstone remained quiet after settlement, but its consequences continued inside the bank. Gerald Voss was transferred out of the regional agricultural portfolio the following year. Cornerstone never described the move publicly as discipline, and Harlon cautioned Warren against claiming that it was.
"People move jobs for all kinds of reasons," he said.
Warren nodded. "And some of those reasons arrive in document production."
Harlon pretended not to hear him.
A new regional manager named Ellen Price visited the farm soon afterward. She came without a purchase proposal and asked Warren how the operation was performing. When he showed her the wetland agreement, she read more carefully than he expected.
"Cornerstone would like to rebuild trust," she said.
Warren leaned back in his chair. "Trust is not a loan product."
"No."
"Can't restructure it with an amendment."
"No."
He studied her for a moment. "That's a better start than telling me how easy it is."
Their banking relationship never returned to what it had been decades earlier, but it became functional. Warren learned to separate the institution from the people inside it without forgetting what the institution had allowed. Ellen provided clear terms, stopped pushing land sales, and agreed that future farm appraisals would recognize the conservation project's documented income stream without pretending the protected acreage remained ordinary cropland.
Casey's role expanded much faster.
Claire offered her part-time contract work assisting with monitoring on other restoration sites. The offer surprised Casey because she still thought of herself as the granddaughter who happened to keep good notes.
"That's not why I'm asking," Claire told her. "You pay attention. You separate observation from conclusion. You admit when you don't know. Those three things are harder to teach than plant identification."
Casey accepted.
She continued living on the farm and working with Warren, but several days each month she traveled to other sites with Claire's team. She learned how restoration projects failed, which taught her more than the successful ones. She saw wetlands where invasive species overtook plantings, sites where hydrology had been modeled badly, easements written so vaguely that landowners and sponsors fought over access, and projects where unrealistic promises made during sales conversations poisoned relationships for years.
Each failure made her more protective of the Puit site.
"We got lucky," she told Warren one evening.
He looked up from a machinery catalog. "With what?"
"People. Odell didn't oversell it. Renata wouldn't say more than she could prove. Claire gave us the bad scenarios with the good ones. Harlon made us read everything."
Warren nodded. "That's not luck. That's choosing who gets to talk you into things."
Casey thought about Gerald and understood exactly what he meant.
The development upstream continued too.
Roads appeared where soybean stubble and rough pasture had once been. Utility lines followed. Buildings rose beyond the tree line, first warehouses and commercial structures, then residential sections along the county road. The permanent drainage improvements required by the settlement were incorporated into the project, including additional detention and revised outlets that reduced peak flows toward Warren's boundary.