Warren watched her face. She was not asking him to keep the land for her. She was asking him to make a decision he could live with after the pressure lifted, whatever that decision might be. He looked down at the offer, remembered his father's muddy boots, then thought of Martha telling him that the farm was supposed to care for the family.
"I don't want to sell it," he said. "But I don't want to die owing a favor to a birdwatcher either."
Casey laughed. "Then let's make the birds earn their keep legally."
They returned to the conference room and declined the purchase offer. Warren did not make a speech. He simply stated that his objective was compensation for provable damage, lawful correction of the runoff, and loan terms based on the farm's actual position rather than a forced land transfer. If the other parties wanted a settlement, he was willing to negotiate those terms. He was not willing to surrender the lower acreage as the price of getting them to stop causing problems.
The discussion became harder after that. Delta Ridge argued that future crop losses should not be assumed if Warren intended to restore the wetland rather than plant the field. Harlan agreed that future plans mattered to the calculation, but he insisted that the actual loss of the planted crop and the unauthorized change in water conditions could not simply vanish because Warren had discovered another potential use. Miriam was not present as a party to the dispute, and Harlan was careful not to allow her preliminary projections to become a substitute for compensation that the evidence already supported.
There were more meetings, more requests for records, and a week in which the negotiations appeared to collapse. Warren became difficult to live with during that week. He snapped at Casey over a misplaced wrench, forgot a meeting with Odell, and spent one afternoon driving the boundary alone without answering his phone. At supper, Casey told him she understood he was frightened, but she would not serve as a convenient person for him to be angry with.
He stared at her across the table. She had never spoken to him in quite that tone, and part of him wanted to remind her whose house she was sitting in. The larger part knew she was right. He apologized without explaining why the apology had been hard, and Casey accepted it without making him repeat it.
The next day, he asked Joan to come back for a weekend. He wanted his family in the room before he made any permanent decision about the acreage, particularly the conservation agreement Miriam had described. Joan listened to the proposed terms and asked questions about ownership, inheritance, tax effects, access rights, and whether the land could be used for other purposes in the future. Harlan explained that each issue required review under the final documents and the applicable laws, and that the family should not assume one easement template would answer every question.