That batch fermented more predictably and produced a cleaner liquid, but it still disappointed her. The flavor was thin and sharp without depth. The aroma carried the basic character she wanted, yet tasting it beside a commercial sample made the difference painfully obvious. Milo described the result as a useful step forward, which Emily suspected was his polite way of saying she had made something technically interesting and commercially unremarkable.
She asked him whether she should keep going. He waited so long before answering that she thought the call had dropped.
"I can't decide that for you," he said. "I can tell you the last batch is better than the first. I can't tell you how much more of your life you can afford to spend learning."
It was the first answer he had given that did not contain a practical solution. Emily appreciated it less at the time than she would later. That night she sat at Ruth's kitchen table and worked through the financial numbers, circling the expenses she could no longer treat as experiments. The porch repair was paid for.
The roof still needed major work. Electricity for the barn had risen, and the cost of cleaning supplies, containers, testing, and transport had been higher than her first budget allowed. Her savings were nearing five thousand dollars.
She called Frank the next day and asked whether he knew anybody who could patch the roof before winter. He arrived after work, climbed into the barn loft with a flashlight, and returned shaking his head. "Patch it, maybe," he said. "But not for another decade. You'll have to decide how much you're putting into this place."
"I've already put in almost everything."
He sat down beside her on a stack of lumber. "That's what worries me."
Emily wanted to explain the fifth batch and the feedback Milo had given her. Instead she asked Frank whether he thought Ruth had made a mistake leaving her the farm. He looked startled, then offended.
"Your grandmother could have left this place to somebody with more money," he said. "She could have sold it herself and handed you a check. She left you the land because she trusted you to make a decision with it. Keeping it forever wasn't a condition in her will."
"I thought she'd want me to save it."
"I think she'd want you to stay a whole person while you tried."
The conversation unsettled Emily more than criticism from strangers because it came from somebody who knew what her efforts were costing. She began taking freelance marketing work several evenings a week, drafting product descriptions and website copy for small businesses. It was a practical compromise that kept the utilities paid, though she felt a faint irony every time she opened an assignment from a company claiming its ordinary product was revolutionary. She could do the work faster now, with less of the hunger for approval that had once kept her in the office late.