One morning she found Denny sitting in the shed studying a proposed schedule for the next season. He wanted to change the way they divided responsibilities during the busiest harvest weeks, partly to reduce the risk of mistakes and partly because Delaney had begun taking every unresolved problem home in her head. She pointed out that hiring extra help would raise costs. Denny replied that exhausted owners were expensive, too, and that the farm had already paid enough for her belief that she could solve everything alone.
She agreed to test the schedule and made a note to discuss a raise with him after reviewing the final expenses. Denny looked surprised when she brought it up, as though he had not expected fair compensation to be part of the discussion. Delaney told him she remembered what it was like to do work that mattered while being treated as a replaceable line in someone else's budget. He looked down at the paper for a moment, then said he was glad she had not brought that habit into the business she now owned.
A month later, Diane, her former supervisor, stopped at the market and bought a package of smoked catfish. She stood awkwardly beside the display, wearing the same practical jacket she had worn throughout Delaney's years at the supply office. "I saw the article," she said, then admitted she had been certain the ponds were a terrible idea. Delaney remembered the old remark about pouring money into a hole and found it easier to smile now than it had been then.
Diane asked whether Delaney ever missed the security of a normal job. Delaney told her she missed the paycheck and the ability to close the office door at five, but not the feeling of spending each day correcting problems she had no power to prevent. Diane looked toward the customers waiting at the table and said the farm seemed to have become more complicated than the work Delaney had left. Delaney agreed, which confused her former manager until she added that complication was easier to carry when she had chosen the purpose behind it.
For all the business's progress, Delaney continued visiting the fourth pond more often than the others. Its original dry floor had been one of the few places on the property Roy thought worth mentioning without a warning, and she liked watching its fish grow beneath a bank she had paid to rebuild properly. She remembered standing among the weeds, unable to imagine the area holding water again, while the neighboring ponds looked like evidence of an expensive mistake. What seemed empty at first had turned out to require patient work rather than an act of faith.