“I've sent somebody to the company office. Until we receive instructions, the house will remain standing.”
Amily exhaled.
“Thank you.”
He nodded.
Then glanced toward the metal case.
“Whatever you've found, I hope it's worth the trouble.”
Amily looked toward Harlon.
Then back at the old farmhouse.
“I think it might be.”
But she didn't yet know how much.
Because inside the metal case, beneath her mother's original deed, was a document neither she nor Harlon expected to find.
A signed engineering report.
Dated three days before the landslide that killed Thomas Boone.
And beside the warning about unstable ground was a handwritten instruction from the office of Silas Vale.
Proceed with the work. Public acknowledgment of the risk will jeopardize the company's acquisition.
The man Harlon had spent nine years blaming for negligence might have known exactly what could happen before his brother died.
And he had ordered the work to continue anyway.
They opened the metal case inside the abandoned farmhouse kitchen.
The demolition supervisor had given them permission to remain while his men secured the tools and waited for instructions from the company office.
Harlon didn't trust the arrangement to last.
Neither did Amily.
So they worked quickly.
The case contained more than twenty documents wrapped in separate folds of waxed cloth.
There were original land descriptions, correspondence, tax receipts, probate-related papers, and a carefully preserved deed naming Amos Ward as the owner of the upper Bellwether tract.
The old seal was still visible.
So were the signatures.
Amily examined the writing.
Her grandfather's name appeared several times.
Then she found her mother's.
Clara Ward had inherited an interest in the property after Amos's death.
The later papers indicated that certain water access and spring-source rights had been reserved rather than transferred with the surrounding acreage.
Harlon examined the survey descriptions beside his father's map.
The boundaries aligned with the older markers.
But a later document used by Blackstone placed one section of the creek inside the company's claimed land.
The difference was small on paper.
On the ground, it was enormous.
It placed the company's proposed diversion structure precisely where the old Ward records suggested Blackstone had no right to build.
Amily looked toward Harlon.
“That's why they want the house.”
He nodded.
“They want the documents gone before anybody can challenge the new works.”