"Do you think you'll stay?" Eva asked.
"Ask me in October."
Eva smiled as if she already knew the answer and was willing to wait for Ivy to catch up.
Ivy walked back to her complex the long way, through the residential blocks instead of the square because she wanted to look at things slowly. The town had the quality of something that had been running without her and had not suffered for it, which she found both reassuring and faintly humbling.
She made herself a hot cocoa once she got back to the apartment. Her parents had retired to the migration of the Midwesterner. She fired off an email to them, knowing they wouldn't be up for a phone call as they'd likely be out with their new group of friends. Then she pulled open a search app. She told herself she was checking her market analytics.
She typed "Finn Hargrove Purple Heart Ranch" into the search bar.
What came back was not much. A ranch website with a minimal design and a mailing address and no photographs of any individual. A co-op membership listing. A single entry in an agricultural grant database from two years ago. And one article.
Roots and Recovery: How a Midwestern Ranch Is Redefining What Comes Next— byline Sloane Mercer, published in a mid-sized regional food and culture magazine a little over two years ago. The kind of outlet that got passed around by people who cared about regional journalism, respected in its lane.
It was good writing. Careful and warm without being sentimental. The ranch got two-thirds of the piece — the program, the land, the way the work was structured. Finn appeared in the second half, not as a subject exactly but as a presence: a farmer who had started bringing produce to the program before the program had a name, who talked about hisheirloom varieties with the specificity of someone who might be a little obsessed or obsessive. There was a quote about Cherokee Purples —there's a difference between a tomato grown for transport and one grown for taste, and most people have only ever eaten the first kind. That sounded exactly like him.
Ivy wrinkled her brow at the thought. She'd known the man for two days. She didn't know exactly what he sounded like.
Ivy read the article again. Then she looked at the date. Then she looked at everything that came after it — for the ranch, for Finn — which was publicly: nothing. No follow-up piece. No second profile. She closed the tab.
A ping sounded, alerting Ivy to an email. It was from Devon.
The subject line readChecking in. Ivy minimized the window and took a shower. When she came back out in her comfy PJs, the browser window opened the moment she woke up her computer.
It was a good email, which was the problem with Devon. He was excellent at emails. He was professional, but with the familiarity of someone who had known her at a particular stage of her career. The email asked how the summer project was going, noted that theFrom Valor, Actuallycontent was picking up traction in a way that was, his word,exciting, and mentioned that there were some conversations happening that she might want to be part of.
She closed the email without replying and called Roz.
Roz picked up on the second ring, which meant she was at her desk, which meant it was a slow editing day.
"Devon emailed," Ivy said.
"He watched the clip." Roz's voice had the flat clarity it got when she was diagnosing something. "The sign war one. It got forty-seven thousand views, Ivy. He watches your numbers."
"I know."
"What did you say back?"
"Nothing yet."
"Good." A pause, the sound of Roz moving something on her desk. "How are you, actually? Not the content. You."
"Good. I had coffee with my cousin; Eva. She married a veteran, and they live on a working ranch nearby. She looked really happy."
"How do you look, babe?"
Ivy looked out the window. She could just make out Main Street from here. "Probably tired."
"Okay, enough chit-chat. Tell me about the farmer."
Ivy had been waiting for this. "There's nothing to tell."
"Forty-seven thousand people would disagree."
"That's a content dynamic. We share a… we're parking neighbors. We have a running disagreement about signage and sugar content. That's the whole thing."
"You filmed his hands for twenty seconds."
