The little girl turned.
"Grandma, I'm just fishing."
Ruthie walked toward her.
"Not there."
"But why?"
The older woman's face tightened.
For a moment, she looked toward the pond.
Then she said something Naomi remembered for the rest of her life.
"That water doesn't always stay where you think it is."
Naomi didn't understand.
She thought her grandmother was frightened of snakes, deep mud, or sudden drop-offs.
And perhaps she was.
But Ruthie never explained further.
She simply insisted that children stay away.
By the time Naomi returned to the farm as an adult, she'd almost forgotten the warning.
Almost.
The first strange measurement came on August 9.
Naomi was walking toward the eastern gate when she noticed water standing against the old cedar post.
That bothered her.
The post had always stood on dry ground.
She remembered sitting beside it as a child while her grandmother repaired fencing.
In old family photographs, grass surrounded its base.
Now muddy water touched the wood.
Naomi looked toward the shoreline.
The pond seemed larger.
Not dramatically.
But enough that she could see the difference.
She paced the distance between the cedar post and the previous shoreline shown in her grandmother's photographs.
Then she returned to the farmhouse.
Found a measuring tape.
And began recording.
Her notebook contained four columns.
Date.
Reference point.
Distance.
And conditions.
She measured from the cedar post, the corner of the barn foundation, and the concrete culvert head.
She took photographs from the same locations.
Then she compared the observations with rainfall records.
The results were strange.
Halbert County had experienced a dry spell.
Temperatures were high.
Pasture grass was beginning to yellow.
And several neighboring stock tanks were losing water.
But her pond wasn't shrinking.
It was expanding.
Dale dismissed the concern.
"Ponds move around," he said one morning.
Naomi showed him the measurements.
He glanced at the notebook.
Then smiled.
"Give it another season. You'll see."
She nodded.
But the numbers still bothered her.
Water had to come from somewhere.
If the pond was rising during dry weather, there might be an unusually strong spring feeding it.
Or a change in drainage.
Or water entering through a pipe nobody remembered.
Another possibility was worse.
The ground itself could be subsiding, allowing the shoreline to spread even without a large increase in water volume.