By mid-July, the Delta heat settled over the farm and stayed. Rain became scattered and unreliable. The upper fields began showing stress first, leaves folding in the afternoon and soil cracking between rows. The flooded acreage changed too.
The outer edges withdrew. Mud flats widened. Shallow pools vanished. Some of the plants that had colonized newly wet ground browned and collapsed in places where moisture disappeared.
Warren noticed immediately.
One evening he found Casey at the kitchen table comparing June photographs with new ones. "There it is," he said.
She looked up. "What?"
"Reality."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning we spent two months studying a puddle."
Casey looked back at the photographs. "Some of it is drying."
"Most of it."
"The edges."
"Land gets wet, weeds grow, summer comes, water leaves. That's not a business. That's weather."
She wanted to argue. Instead she looked at the measurements and discovered that part of her feared he was right.
The next morning she walked the site alone before sunrise. The outer plots were visibly drier, and one stake stood over cracked mud where water had been six inches deep weeks before. She moved farther toward the center, stepping carefully across firmer ground and following the old depression that cut diagonally through the acreage.
At stake three, water remained.
Not a skin of water. Not damp mud. Water.
Casey crouched and checked the ruler twice. The level had dropped, but far less than she expected after the driest three weeks of the summer. Thick green vegetation surrounded the deeper section. Frogs moved at the edge. Small fish broke the surface in the early light.
She walked to stake four. Same pattern.
The rest of the farm was beginning to show drought, but the deepest low ground was still wet.
She returned the next morning, then again two days later. The levels moved only slightly. More importantly, there had been no meaningful rain.
Casey called Odell from the field.
"I think something is feeding it."
"Maybe," he said. "Send me all the data. Not just the deep points."
"I was going to."
"And rainfall."
"Already attached."