As August approached, a different enemy arrived with deliberate, graceful steps. Two herons discovered the shallows at daybreak and returned until Delaney understood that their visits were not accidental. She had admired such birds when she was younger, back when watching a heron catch a fish had seemed like a peaceful glimpse of nature. Now she watched one lift a fingerling from the edge of a pond and realized that an impressive predator could still be a serious problem for a working farm.
She asked Roy about safe deterrents and found that protecting fish did not require injuring wildlife. She used practical barriers and carefully maintained bird netting around vulnerable shallows, leaving larger areas open and checking regularly that nothing had become entangled. The work was awkward, especially when wind caught the netting and twisted it around her boots. It was also effective enough that she could see a difference in the fish near the edge after several mornings.
Harlan watched her struggle with a section of net and came over with extra stakes. "You fighting birds now?" he asked, and Delaney told him she would prefer to negotiate but the birds refused to meet her terms. He laughed, genuinely this time, and spent an hour helping her secure the last stretch. She discovered that neighbors could be wrong about the future and still useful in the present, a distinction her grandfather would have appreciated.
When the air finally cooled, she estimated that she had lost a little more than a third of the original six thousand fish to the first oxygen crash and the smaller troubles that followed. The surviving stock was uneven, some fish growing well while others lagged, and her records showed only modest progress toward anything she could sell. Yet the ponds no longer smelled wrong, the banks held, and the surface carried the steady agitation of functioning equipment. Delaney understood how small those victories sounded to someone looking only for profit, but she also understood how hard they had been earned.
She returned to her grandfather's orchard one Sunday and walked the rows alone. No one had pruned the trees since the previous winter, and the ground beneath them held fallen fruit in various stages of decay. She remembered complaining that he spent too much time rescuing things that other people would have replaced. Standing among the neglected trees, she found herself asking whether she was preserving the ponds or simply refusing to accept a failure that had already been decided for her.
The question followed her back to the farm that evening. She wrote down every loss, every outstanding bill, and what she could reasonably expect from the surviving fish. The numbers were not encouraging, but they were no longer imaginary, and that mattered more than she had anticipated. Her grandfather's note lay folded inside the notebook, a reminder that noticing value was not the same as pretending something had no cost.