"Thinking about the flood?"
"Thinking about how close I came to selling."
Casey leaned against the doorway.
"How close?"
He looked at her.
"Closer than I told you."
She waited.
Warren set the stake on the workbench. "After Gerald's first serious offer, before Odell came back, I drove to town with every intention of telling the bank I'd sell the lower acreage if they released enough pressure on the note."
Casey's expression changed.
"You never said that."
"Didn't happen."
"Why not?"
"I got halfway there and remembered you standing in the kitchen telling me not to decide what the land was worth before we understood what it had become."
Casey looked down.
"I pulled over at the feed store," Warren continued. "Sat there twenty minutes. Then drove home."
"Granddad..."
"Don't make it bigger than it was. I didn't have some revelation. I was scared of signing too fast. That's all."
"That's not all."
"It's enough."
She walked over and hugged him.
This time he did not complain that people were looking.
The following spring brought one of the driest starts in a decade. The higher fields needed rain badly. Farmers in the county talked about planting insurance and yield risk. Warren watched clouds pass without dropping enough water and felt the old familiar worry, proof that no amount of financial security completely removed farming from the nervous system.
The wetland contracted around the edges.
The deeper zones held.
Casey took Warren out in the utility vehicle one morning and stopped at the same place she had measured during the first severe dry spell years earlier.
"Remember this?"