Tyler pointed toward the shed. “Should I ask what happened in there?”
Daphne glanced back at me, and her smile hit hard enough that I had to put one hand on the workbench.
“Ask Zane,” she said. “He’s had a rough morning.”
Then she stepped through the gate and headed toward her car.
The phone rang again.
I waited until Daphne was past the P-Patch sign before I answered.
“What?” I said.
Fletcher exhaled into the line. “You know, most people start with hello.”
“Most people stop calling after the first time I don’t answer.”
“Then I suppose we’re both disappointing each other.”
I walked out of the shed and crossed toward the south fence. The repaired drip line darkened the soil in even spots along the row. Daphne had done that work, and it held.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“A serious conversation.”
“We’ve had it.”
“We’ve had the part where you say no and pretend that counts as strategy.”
I stopped near the fence. Past the scrub grass, my land rose in pines and hard summer shade. Beargrass Lake flashed blue through a break in the trees.
“No is a strategy when the question is whether I’m selling,” I said.
“Nobody’s asking you to sign anything today.”
“You say that like it’s generosity.”
“I say it because timing matters. The people at the table are getting impatient.”
“Tell them to stretch.”
Fletcher went quiet for half a beat. “That might be funnier if you weren’t standing in the way of a real opportunity.”
“The P-Patch doesn’t need your kind of opportunity.”
“It needs more than tomatoes and stubbornness.”
My grip tightened around the phone. “Careful.”
His voice smoothed out. Fletcher could sand an insult until it looked like advice. “I’m not attacking your garden, Zane. I’m saying there’s a bigger picture here.”
“I know the picture. You keep trying to draw my property into it.”
“You own the natural access point.”
“I own land I’m not selling.”
“Access can be structured without a sale.”
