Nora had imagined that moment many times. Sometimes there had been applause in the version she pictured, sometimes a feeling of triumph. What actually happened was smaller. She thanked him, walked to the side of the lane, and leaned one hand against a fence post until the pressure in her chest loosened.
Tess came over and stood beside her. "We made it."
"We did."
"Do you want to call those guys who laughed at the goats?"
Nora shook her head. "No. I want to sit down somewhere no blackberry cane can reach me."
They sat on the tailgate with sandwiches Tess had brought and looked down the open access route. It was not a perfect road, and it had cost more than they hoped, but it was real and passable. The county would not hire a crew and send the bill. The one-dollar purchase had survived its first test.
That evening, Nora walked to the nearest numbered pecan tree. Beyond the cleared lane, the unworked portions of the property still looked almost impenetrable. She could see how much remained hidden. For the first time, however, she was allowed to think about the ground as something other than an approaching deadline. She rested a hand on the tree guard and tried to imagine what might happen if the orchard could begin earning its own care.
The answer, as autumn soon taught her, would not be as simple as shaking a few branches and collecting money from the ground.
Wade returned in early autumn carrying a notebook of his own. The pages were crowded with penciled harvest dates, equipment charges, and notes about pecan varieties he had worked with for decades. He had agreed to advise Nora because he admired what she and Tess had uncovered, but admiration did not pay for machinery, and he made that distinction clear before they walked the rows.
"We can make one careful test this season," he told her. "Not a full commercial harvest. We focus on the healthy trees we marked, leave the dangerous ones alone, and find out what's there. If the numbers work, we plan more work next year. If they don't, we'll know that too."
Nora liked him best when he spoke that way. Wade never tried to improve a disappointing fact by dressing it up. He treated a tree as something that responded to seasons, soil, damage, and work, not to the hopes of the person who owned the deed beneath it. There was comfort in that, even when the facts were not generous.
They began with the orchard floor. The goats had thinned the tender understory, but dried canes and loose branches still made the ground unsafe for walking, much less for collecting fallen pecans. Nora moved the herd into a separate paddock and worked under the selected trees with hand tools. Tess helped after work, carrying debris to a trailer while Rook inspected the newly exposed soil.