Paloma: I AM HERE. I am on the access road. There are construction workers staring at me.
Nellie: oh perfect! they’re lovely, the young one has great energy… for a dude.
She found Paloma idling behind the flatbed, jaw set, clearly braced for handcuffs. The burrito sat in the center console like a small, slightly tragic monument to good intentions.
Nellie ate it while she explained. She was aware that her version of events placed certain emphases—like, say, the full implications of what she’d agreed to—somewhat to the side, in favor of the parts that were, she felt, genuinely exciting. The full four thousand acres. Sixty days. Peer-reviewed science. The evidence she hadn’t even found yet but was already fairly confident existed.
Paloma waited until she’d finished the burrito.
“What do you think you know about this land that Alburn’s own surveyors don’t?”
“Potentially quite a lot,” Nellie said. “The surveys on file with the county are really old. Old-growth dynamics shift. If the team they used missed the mycorrhizal density around Eleanor, they probably missed everything downstream of it, not to mentionanything they deliberately overlooked because companies with ridiculous amounts of money always get what they want.”
“And if you can’t make the case? What happens in sixty days?”
“Then I leave and they build.” Nellie sighed. “But I was always going to lose the chain action, Paloma. Haines was patient, but patience has a limit. At least this way I get sixty days with full access instead of a citation and a parking ticket for Dolores.”
Paloma looked at her for a long, flat beat. “I don’t trust it.”
“I know.”
“She’s not doing this out of the goodness of her heart.”
“I know that too.” The offer wasn’t generosity; it was a tactic. The important question was whether it got her onto those four thousand acres, and it did.
Having ushered Paloma back into her own car, Nellie climbed into Dolores—who smelled, reassuringly, of the lavender air freshener she’d hung from the rearview mirror years ago and never replaced—and sat for a moment with her hands on the wheel. The forest was quiet around the van.
“Okay,” she said to herself.
And then, louder, because she was alone and she had just talked a billionaire into pausing an eighty-million-dollar construction project over breakfast: “Okay, Fuller!”
She put Dolores in gear and went to find better coffee.
Three hours later, after adequate caffeine and brunch from a vending machine, Nellie called the number she’d found for Sawyer Alburn after some extensive Googling.
It rang twice. “Alburn Systems, this is Martha.”
The voice was pleasant in a precise, professional way, likely refined over years of working adjacent to someone who was probably extraordinary and quite possibly exhausting. Nellie liked her immediately.
“Hi! This is Nellie Fuller. I’m?—”
“I know who you are, Ms. Fuller.” Not unkind. “I’ve been informed to expect your call.”
This was, Nellie suspected, a diplomatic way of saying,she’s the one from the tree. “Great! I just had a few logistics questions about the access arrangement.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll be spending the full sixty days living on-site for the survey. What I need to know is whether I can park my van wherever I want on the property or if there are specific designated areas I should?—”
“Living?” A long pause. “In your van?”
“In my van, yes. She’s called Dolores.”
A pause so long Nellie had to check if the call had been disconnected.
“A van,” Martha said again.
“Aconvertedvan, yes. Very comfortable. I’ve lived in her for three years, and the ventilation is genuinely excellent. Better than two apartments I’ve rented, honestly.”
