The farmhouse sat among pecan trees planted before Warren's birth, its white clapboards patched in several generations of slightly different paint. In the kitchen, the same clock had been running above the sink since the year his daughter was born. Warren had kept it even after it began losing three minutes a month, because Martha had liked the sound it made. Small things held on in a house long after the people who chose them were gone.
He made coffee, but he did not drink it. Instead, he spread the most recent bank statement and the farm's operating ledger across the table, moving a stack of seed catalogs to make room. Cornerstone Agricultural Bank held the operating note and two equipment loans, arrangements that had once felt routine but had become a source of dread after falling grain prices and several expensive repairs. The farm had valuable acreage, but value locked in land did not automatically produce cash on the day an installment came due.
The previous autumn, the bank had asked Warren to consider a partial sale, emphasizing that the low ground along the county road was attracting development interest. Gerald Voss, the regional vice president, had made the suggestion in an office decorated with photographs of harvesters and families nobody in the room had ever met. He had spoken gently about liquidity, capital efficiency, and the value of simplifying an operation in its later years. Warren had understood perfectly well that Gerald was telling him to sell the land before the bank had to consider harsher alternatives.
Warren's answer had been the same every time. "I'm not dividing the place while I'm still here," he had said, folding the offer and returning it across the desk. Gerald had nodded as though refusal were merely one more variable in a spreadsheet. A week later, another appraiser had driven the county road slowly enough to count fence posts.
That morning, Warren called the bank before calling anyone else. The receptionist promised to pass his message to Gerald, and Warren was halfway through describing the new outlet when she asked whether the situation was affecting production. He looked out the window at the water creeping farther across the field. "Tell him it already has," he replied.
A little before eight, a familiar blue sedan turned into the lane, and Casey Puit climbed out carrying a canvas bag, a camera, and two cups of coffee from the diner in town. She was twenty-eight, with dark hair usually secured in a careless knot and the quick, observant expression of someone whose mind rarely stopped making connections. She had returned to Marrow Bend six weeks earlier after a contract position collecting environmental field data ended, intending to spend a season with her grandfather before deciding where to go next. Warren had pretended not to be pleased that she was home, and Casey had pretended not to notice.