"That empty place belongs to the pattern too," she said.
Nora looked down the line. Four living trees and one dead one. For the first time, she allowed herself to imagine a row extending farther into the property than she could see. She did not call it an orchard, not even to Tess. But when she went home that evening she left the row sketch open beside her supper and studied the distances until the numbers became familiar.
The parallel lane made the idea harder to dismiss. Two more broad trunks appeared through the greenbrier, set at intervals similar to the first row. One was hollow on its downhill side but carried living branches overhead. The other seemed healthier, with a thicker canopy and a lower swelling beneath the bark. The ground between them was uneven, but their positions made sense as part of a deliberately planted grid.
Near the healthier tree, Clover pawed at loose soil to reach a tender shoot. A short length of rusted iron appeared beside her hoof. Nora stopped the animal and knelt. It was the top of an irrigation riser, bent but recognizable, with a corroded fitting that had once connected to a larger system. She traced the pipe beneath the soil with her probe for several yards until roots and stones made further work unsafe.
"Somebody watered these trees," Tess said when she saw the fitting.
"Maybe. Somebody watered something."
"You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Acting as though we're making everything up until a tree signs a confession."
Nora laughed in spite of herself. Then she stood and looked across the lanes, where the numbered trunks were beginning to form an orderly picture beneath the still-chaotic brush. The pipe was another clue, but the goats had shown them where to seek it. Without their insistence on the green columns, Nora might have followed the county's old line straight through the thicket and passed every trunk without ever looking up.
That evening, Tess replaced several crowded ledger pages with a new row sketch. She marked each live tree, the rotten stump, the exposed irrigation fitting, and the direction of the county's required access route. She drew the fire lane in red and the tree rows in black so the two would not become confused. The black lines continued farther than they had evidence to justify, and Tess made those portions dotted rather than solid.
Nora studied the drawing. "You think there's a whole orchard under there."
"I think we have enough to keep looking."
"And if there isn't?"
"Then we still have more safe ground cleared than we had last month."
The answer satisfied Nora more than optimism would have. It admitted uncertainty without pretending uncertainty meant they should stop. She closed the ledger, put it in a dry box behind the truck seat, and wrote one more note on the cover: Do not confuse what we hope with what we know.