Odell answered her call while driving between sites and asked her to send the complete set of records. "Not the best pictures," he told her. "All of them. The dried margins, the dead plants, the levels that don't support the theory. I want to know what the place does when it's not trying to impress us."
Casey smiled despite her anxiety. She sent the photographs, the spreadsheets, the site history, and the notes on all the places that had dried. Odell called two days later and said there were enough patterns to justify a more formal review, but that one observation had become especially important: the old low basin appeared to retain water independently of short rainfall events, which might mean the restoration plan could rely on a more stable water regime once the disputed discharge was corrected.
"Might," Warren repeated when she told him. "That's a mighty expensive word in this house."
Casey nodded. "It is. But it's still better than pretending we know nothing."
A week later, a wetland mitigation operator named Miriam Salazar telephoned Odell after reviewing the preliminary material. Miriam worked with landowners whose properties might support carefully structured restoration projects, and she had rejected far more sites than she had accepted. She had seen artificially flooded fields sold as environmental opportunities and knew the difference between hopeful presentations and creditable projects. Casey's consistent measurements, combined with evidence of historical wetland soil and the newly documented drainage conflict, made her willing to visit.
Miriam arrived without a company logo on her jacket and spent the morning asking questions more difficult than any Casey had heard so far. What had the land looked like before cultivation? Who owned the drainage rights? What happened if the upstream discharge was legally required to stop? Were there existing wetlands that could not be credited as new restoration? Where would a buffer be necessary, and could the farm afford to remove it permanently from production?
She asked Warren whether he understood that a successful project could require a long-term conservation easement, binding future owners and limiting uses of the acreage. He said he understood that a contract could outlive him, but he did not yet understand why anybody would want to make such a permanent decision about land that had already caused so much trouble. Miriam accepted the answer and told him he should not sign anything until he had independent legal advice.
At the far edge of the basin, Miriam stopped near a patch of sedges and crouched to examine the soil. The top few inches were dark and saturated, but the deeper profile showed signs of older wet conditions that had not developed in the few months since May. She