Bethany came up the porch steps two at a time, the stack of papers trembling in her hand, and for the first time since I met her she had nothing rehearsed to say. Curtis followed a few feet behind, pale, quiet, already understanding something she did not. I opened the door before she could knock and invited them both into the kitchen, where the blue folder sat open on the table beside two cups of coffee I had poured for them. “You called the title company,” I said. “So you already know the ranch isn’t listed in my name alone. Sit down. I’ll explain the rest.”

Bethany dropped into the chair across from me and spread her papers out like she still believed there was a fight to win. There wasn’t. The land, the house, the pasture, the mineral rights, all of it had been placed into an irrevocable family trust years earlier, and the trust, not I, was the legal owner. No developer from San Antonio could buy a single acre of it, because I had no authority to sell it and neither did anyone else. But that was only the first page. The second page, the one I had told my attorney to prepare the moment Bethany drove away with her camera, was what made her hands go still.