another used an outdated name for the creek, and an old survey included acreage figures that did not perfectly match later measurements.
By lunchtime they had established that the central parcel had remained in Fenwick family ownership through successive transfers and inheritances. That was reassuring but not conclusive because a mineral right could have been separated at any point and continued independently. The 1920s ledger showed that an exploration company had acquired limited interests in several parcels farther along the ridge. One reference included a name close enough to Fenwick that Adele felt her stomach tighten until Constance checked the full legal description and found a different farm. They kept working.
Adele's attorney, Nora Bell, arrived in the afternoon after Constance called and explained the stakes. Nora specialized in land and estate matters and had handled the transfer of Hollow Creek Farm after Everett's death. She cautioned everyone against assuming that a reassuring clause in an old deed would automatically settle a modern title dispute; the entire chain needed examination, and any recorded severance would have to be accounted for. She sat beside Constance and worked through the index pages with a ruler, a pencil, and the kind of patience Adele had learned to trust.
Late in the afternoon, Constance discovered a second packet tucked behind the original 1888 purchase agreement. The packet had once been fastened with a metal clasp that had rusted into the paper, and one corner was folded so tightly the text beneath it had almost vanished. She asked for an archival weight, flattened the page gently, and read the clause that had been overlooked in the copied summary. Josiah's purchase transferred both the surface estate and the mineral interests then held by the seller, and the deed expressly confirmed that those interests passed with the land to Josiah and his successors unless later conveyed.
"This is promising," Nora said, but she did not allow them to celebrate. Constance continued through later transfers, searching for any recorded exception or sale. Instead she found a letter dated 1922, signed by Josiah Fenwick and addressed to the regional mining survey company. The company had requested an option to explore beneath his ridge, and Josiah had declined, stating that he did not intend to separate the mineral rights from the farm. The letter was folded around the company's original proposal, apparently because Josiah wanted a record of precisely what he had refused.
Adele read the signature twice. The ink had faded to a brownish gray, but the letters remained strong and deliberate. In 1922 Josiah would have been an old man, and Adele imagined him at his kitchen table, perhaps a little hard of hearing, writing