Four neighbors followed before three o'clock, including men who had spent the first morning watching the drawdown as entertainment. One brought extra tarps, another offered his tractor to move supplies along the stable upper track, and a third had a generator that kept the work lights running when an extension cable failed. Nobody gave a speech about changing his mind. They asked Warren where to put their hands and accepted his instructions, which was better than an apology in the middle of a storm.
By four the weather station had measured more than four inches of rain, and water was moving across the pasture in sheets. The spring continued feeding the basin beneath the runoff, invisible except in the movement that did not match the direction of the surface water. Warren crouched beside the survey marker and watched a section of temporary protection strain under the force. The next few hours would determine whether the exposed chamber remained intact or whether the investigation would need to begin again under a pile of washed-out stone.
Adele was carrying a coil of rope toward the equipment trailer when Tobias called. The signal was poor, and she had to stand beneath the barn overhang to hear him. He knew about the storm from the regional weather reports and had been watching the radar since midnight. "Mom, please tell me you are inside," he said, and she could hear the fear he was trying to conceal beneath irritation. She told him she was on the upper lane, well away from the unstable ground, helping with supplies and making certain the workers had coffee.
"Is this really worth it?" he asked. "Your health, your savings, everybody out there in the rain?" Adele watched Frank and another neighbor steady a load of sandbags while Warren directed the work. She thought of the lost years beside Everett's hospital bed, the bills that arrived after he died, the unbroken routine of animals needing care regardless of how frightened their owner felt. "I'm not risking anything I haven't already survived," she told Tobias.
Then she corrected herself because the answer had been too proud and not nearly precise enough. "I'm not taking foolish chances. Warren is keeping us out of danger. And I don't want all of this lost because we failed to protect it for one night."
Tobias was quiet. When he spoke again, he asked her to call as soon as daylight came. She promised she would, and before ending the call she told him something she had not said in years. "I miss him most when I need to make a decision I wish we could make together."
Tobias answered with equal honesty. "I know, Mom. I miss being able to call him, too." The admission stayed with her long after she returned the phone to her pocket.