Talley nodded as though that answer suited him. He completed his inspection without ceremony and drove back toward the road. Nora watched the truck disappear between the trimmed branches. There was no longer a looming threat of an outside crew charging her for work she had failed to do. The lane was simply a responsibility she was managing, one among many, and she felt a quiet satisfaction in the ordinariness of that.
Wade's next visit brought another practical conversation. The healthier pecan trees were responding to increased light and reduced competition, but their recovery remained uneven. One had put out strong new shoots. Another still carried too much dead wood in its upper canopy. A third showed signs of stress near an old vine scar that made Nora question whether it belonged in the promising group at all.
"Trees don't sign contracts with you," Wade said while they inspected the trunk. "They respond as well as they can to the season they're given. This one may need more time. That one may never justify the money you'd spend on it. And that smaller tree over there might surprise us in five years."
"Five years," Tess repeated.
"You bought mature pecans by accident. You didn't buy five years of immediate income with them. They're still living things."
Nora looked across the row at the guard she had built from scrap panels after Hazel tried to taste the first exposed trunk. The guard was stronger now, anchored well away from the bark, and the tree above it carried a healthy canopy that made her hopeful without asking her to forget Wade's caution.
"Do the truffles change how we take care of the trees?" she asked.
Wade held his hat against his side and considered the question. "They change how carefully you disturb the roots. They don't replace the work the trees need."
He looked between the trunks. "You can have a healthy orchard and still have a poor truffle season. You can have a truffle season that looks good and a nut crop that doesn't pay its way. It's not one business with two guaranteed payments. It's two uncertain crops sharing some of the same ground."
Nora turned the phrase over in her mind. Two uncertain crops sharing the same ground. It was less grand than the dream of a hidden fortune, but she trusted it more. The land had already taught her what happened when an owner mistook an encouraging clue for a promise.
Later, Mira helped Nora refine her truffle observations into a more useful set of records. She wanted each find connected to the precise tree number, position, recent moisture conditions, appearance, maturity assessment, and handling after collection. She also wanted the searches that found nothing recorded, so that a future comparison would not treat every visit as though it produced a specimen.