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2. Seep — south end. Groundwater. Arena unbuildable as flagged without drainage work.

3. Ambulance access — no turnaround at north end. Drive too narrow for fire truck.

4. Arena orientation — east-west currently. Sun in stock’s eyes. Rotate north-south.

5. Creek volume — four inches down since last week. August drawdown risk for stock and vendor supply.

6. Liability certificate — none.

7. Producer — none named on filing.

8. Site plan — napkin. Literal napkin.

Eight items. I’d missed one. I wrote it in the margin: 9. Parking — hay meadow. Confirm compaction/drainage.

The coffee was good too. Strong enough to taste the roast through the cream, hot enough to burn the tip of my tongue on the first sip. I drank it anyway, because my coffee mug was sitting on a stock tank in a field twenty minutes south and I hadn’t slept enough to be particular about temperature.

The woman came back. She refilled the coffee without being asked, the motion of someone who’d mapped every cup in the room and knew which one was empty before the person drinking it did.

I reached for my wallet.

“On the house,” she said.

“I’d like to pay.”

“No.”

She picked up the plate. Her fingers were quick and sure on the edge, the motion of a woman who’d cleared ten thousand tables and never dropped one.

“That’s not necessary,” I said. “I’m not — I was hired for a consult. I’m not family.”

She looked at me then. Not the quick glance from before. A real look, brown eyes steady, the kind that catalogued something and decided where to file it.

“Carrow Creek is good people,” she said. “The coffee’s on me.”

She walked back toward the counter with the plate and the pot and whatever she’d decided about me, which I hadn’t asked for and couldn’t return.

My phone buzzed. I checked it before I could stop myself.

Fourteen emails from Denver. Three from vendors I hadn’t called back. One from my mother asking if I’d eaten today, sent at nine this morning and already four hours stale.

I typed: Yes, Mom.

I’d eaten pie. That counted.

Outside the window, Main Street sat under its cottonwoods in the noon heat. A truck passed. The bell above the door rang when somebody else came in, and the woman behind the counter called a name I didn’t recognize, and the man at the counter called back something I didn’t catch, and the two women by the window laughed.

Silver Bend hummed with the low frequency of a town where everyone knew which seat was whose and I didn’t know any of them.

I opened the clipboard to page one and started numbering the things I’d need if I took the job. The pen moved before the decision did, because it always did, because my hands had been writing plans since I was old enough to understand that plans were the only thing standing between people and the mess they’d make without one.

***

The corner table had been watching me since the pie.

Four men around a table meant for two, seed caps and canvas coats, coffee cups that had been refilled enough times to leave rings on the wood. The loudest one sat facing my booth. He’d been talking since I came in, but the direction of the talking had changed. Aimed, now.

“You’re the one from Denver,” he called across the diner.