My husband had spent years warning me never to set foot on that farm. So after he passed away and the lawyer handed me the key, saying that from now on the place belonged to me, I was ready to sell it right away and put everything behind me. But before making my final decision, I still wanted to see it once for myself. When the door opened, I finally understood why, all those years, he had never wanted me to set foot there.

She wiped her face and sat straighter. When she looked back at me, the sharpness in her had changed direction. It no longer pointed toward me.

“So what now?”

I smiled for the first time in days.

“Now,” I said, “we stop reacting and start thinking.”

That night, with Jenna beside me in the farmhouse library and Ellis keeping the coffee coming like a man who understood siege conditions, I laid out everything. The western oil reserve. The war room. The brothers’ selective proposal. The legal leverage Joshua had compiled. The geological surveys. The fact that Robert had tried to sell her a fair division while conveniently omitting the most valuable land on the property.

By the time I was done, she looked half devastated, half impressed.

“Dad really did all this?” she asked.

I looked around the room Joshua had built in secret while smiling through dinner at home, while grading term papers with me, while pretending ordinary time still belonged to us.

“Yes,” I said. “He really did.”

Jenna gave a small, incredulous laugh and wiped at one eye. “He always said people underestimated you.”

I looked at her.

“He did?”

“All the time.” She smiled despite herself. “Said underneath the whole calm-English-teacher thing was a strategic mind that could outthink most executives if properly annoyed.”

For the first time since his death, I laughed without guilt.

The attorney Joshua had lined up in Alberta arrived the next day: a woman named Maren Bell, mid-forties, sharp-boned, impeccably direct, and blessedly uninterested in theatrics. She read through the blue folder, the war room files, and the settlement proposal the brothers had drafted.

When she looked up, something like admiration touched her expression.

“Your husband,” she said, “did not leave loose ends.”

“No,” I said. “He never did.”

“Then I suggest we honor that.”

We set the meeting for three days later.

Ten a.m. sharp.

Maple Creek Farm.

Robert arrived exactly when expected, black SUV gliding up the gravel drive with the confidence of a man still convinced the room could be tilted in his favor if he controlled the introductions. Allan came with him, portfolio in hand. David followed. This time they also brought a silver-haired man in an expensive suit whose corporate posture radiated resource extraction from forty feet away.

“Who’s that?” Jenna asked from the window beside me.

“Someone they think will impress or intimidate us,” I said.