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.

Western Plains began preliminary infrastructure work on the far edge of the eastern tract under tight terms and constant oversight. The western reserve remained untouched while engineering studies continued, and I found I liked that. Let the oil stay under the hills a little longer. Let it remain possibility instead of immediate extraction. Money has a way of making people hurry toward their own moral compromises. I was in no rush.

Then, six months after the settlement, my phone rang on a winter morning while I was standing in the kitchen in thick socks and one of Joshua’s old wool sweaters, trying to decide whether the day required bread or merely coffee.

It was Jenna.

She did not usually call unexpectedly now that she was back in Minneapolis. We had fallen into the habit of scheduled evening conversations, modern life making room for family the way it always does, by appointment and necessity both. The second I heard her voice, I knew something was wrong.

“Mom,” she said, “David came to see me.”

I set the mug down.

“When?”

“Just now. He showed up at my building. Said he wanted to apologize.”

My body went very still.

“For what?”

“For all of it. The farm. The pressure. The lies. He said Robert is sick.”

My grip tightened around the edge of the counter.

“Sick how?”

“Heart condition. Serious. He mentioned surgery. He was… strange, Mom. Softer than before. But he kept asking odd questions too. Whether I visit the farm often. Whether anyone else is living there. Whether there’s unusual activity on the property.”

I looked out through the kitchen window toward the white fields beyond the barn and felt something cold move through me that had nothing to do with weather.

Reconnaissance.

“Did you tell him anything?”

“No.”

“Good.”

I exhaled slowly. “I’ll alert Ellis. And Maren.”

“There’s more,” Jenna said. “He tried to make it sound like family should come together in hard times. Like whatever happened before ought to be set aside.”

Of course he did.

Illness has a way of tempting people to retrofit morality onto old behavior. It can make urgency look like redemption when sometimes it is simply desperation in a cleaner coat.

After we hung up, I went straight to Ellis. He listened without interruption, then nodded once.

“I’ll check perimeter systems,” he said. “And increase remote camera coverage at the gate.”