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I kept my tone easy. Habit. Armor. Same thing most days.

“What kind of outside income counts?” I asked again. “Leasing pasture? Selling equipment? Guided hunts? Hosting weddings? Boone in a kissing booth?”

Josie made a small, startled noise that might have been a laugh if the room had allowed one.

Boone looked at me.

“Market conditions would be part of the review,” Dennis said. “As would sustainability and demonstrated cash flow.”

“That didn’t answer him,” Wyatt said.

“No,” I agreed. “It was shaped like an answer. Nice posture. Good shoes. No internal organs.”

“Cash.”

“What? I’m trying to understand our new religion.”

Dennis took a slow breath through the speaker. To his credit, he didn’t get sharp. “The committee wants evidence that Carrow Creek can generate revenue beyond a single commodity cycle. I can’t prejudge what the holder will accept at renewal.”

“The holder,” Wyatt repeated. “Not Meridian.”

The silence on the line told us before Dennis did.

“The instrument permits transfer.”

I turned toward Wyatt. He had gone very still, the way he did in the ring when a number stopped climbing.

“Are you selling the note?” he asked.

“I’m not authorized to discuss potential transactions.”

“Is Meridian currently the holder?”

“Yes.”

“Will Meridian be the holder in twelve months?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Can’t,” I said, “or won’t?”

Down the hall, past Wyatt’s shoulder, a cream envelope lay face-down on the table under the ranch photograph. It had been there three weeks. Wyatt had turned it over the day it came and hadn’t touched it since.

I knew the number inside it. Mine had come the same week and I’d opened it standing at the mailbox.

Three envelopes. Three names. One to each of us, so we’d each have to carry it alone.

Wyatt raised one hand. Enough.

I shut up.

Mostly because Cash serious was the family alarm bell, and I wasn’t ready to pull it yet.

Dennis spoke with care. “I wanted you to have time. That is what I could do.”

It sounded true.

That was the trouble. The worst situations rarely required every man in them to be a bastard.