Casey took over more of the farm management.
The transition happened through a hundred small decisions rather than one formal ceremony. She began ordering seed. She handled insurance renewals. She met with the accountant. She coordinated with Claire's successor when the mitigation company changed project managers. Eventually even Warren admitted that people called Casey first because she usually knew the answer.
"Temporary situation," he said.
"Of course."
"I'm still in charge."
"Absolutely."
"Don't use that tone."
She grinned.
On Warren's eightieth birthday, Casey gave him a framed set of two photographs.
The first was taken on May 7 years earlier. Brown water covered the young soybean rows. Fence posts stood in the flood. The picture looked bleak enough that Warren felt the old pressure in his chest simply seeing it.
The second photograph had been taken from almost the same location the previous spring. Water reflected a clear sky. Native vegetation filled the shallows. A heron stood near the edge, and the higher farm stretched green behind it.
Beneath the photographs Casey had placed a small brass plate.
SAME EIGHTY ACRES.
Warren stared at it longer than necessary.
"You trying to make me sentimental in front of people?"
"Yes."
"Didn't work."
His eyes said otherwise.
Later that evening, after family and neighbors had gone, he carried the frame to his bedroom and set it on the dresser beside a photograph of his wife.
The wetland eventually became familiar enough that younger members of the family could not imagine the land as soybeans. That unsettled Warren in a way he had not expected. His great-nephew once asked why anyone would have tried planting crops in "the bird place."
Warren spent twenty minutes explaining drainage history, field economics, and the fact that landscapes could serve different purposes at different times.
The boy listened with the patient misery of a child who had asked a three-second question.
Casey rescued him.
"Granddad's point is that it wasn't always the bird place."
"That's not my whole point."
"It's the part he can survive."