Tobias reached into his coat and took out his phone, opening a photograph of Everett standing beside the pond in an old work shirt. The picture had been taken the summer before his first hospitalization, on a day nobody knew would become important in hindsight. Everett was holding a fishing rod and squinting into the sunlight, one hand lifted to shade his eyes. Tobias showed it to his mother and waited while she studied the familiar expression. "He'd be proud of you," he said.
Adele wanted to accept the certainty, but after three years she had learned that the dead did not conveniently confirm the feelings of the living. "He might have been frightened first," she answered. "He hated spending money when he didn't know what he'd get for it." Tobias laughed because the description was exact. "Then he'd have been proud," he said. "After he checked the numbers twice."
During his visit they sorted more of Everett's papers, repaired a gate, and shared meals that lasted longer than they had in years. Tobias asked questions about the mineral agreement, not with the fear that had marked his earlier calls but with genuine interest in how his mother had learned to judge the experts. Adele showed him the exclusion zones on the restoration map and the photographs of Josiah's old pipe. She explained why owning a resource did not require removing all of it, and why the spring might matter more to the farm's future than a single lucrative season of extraction. Tobias listened, then asked whether he could help create a permanent archive of the work.
They spent an afternoon scanning photographs, the old receipt, the 1922 rejection letter, Owen's drawings, laboratory reports, inspection records, and Adele's rainfall notes. Tobias organized the digital files by date while she labeled the original folders in the precise handwriting she had used for farm accounts since marrying Everett. He scanned the page from Everett's journal but insisted that the journal itself remain with her. They made two backup copies of the archive, one for Tobias and one for secure storage, because some discoveries were worth protecting from more ordinary kinds of disappearance.
On the last evening before he returned home, Tobias asked whether she had considered what to do with future income if the pilot project proved successful. Adele told him she intended to repair the barn roof, restore a section of pasture fencing, and leave enough in reserve that the farm would not be forced into desperate decisions again. Beyond that, she wanted to preserve Josiah's documents and make the story available to people who might learn from it. She had never wanted Hollow Creek Farm to become a monument to wealth. She wanted it to remain a working place where sensible people could still ask difficult questions.