Catherine McKenna took me to lunch at the only restaurant in Hico with cloth napkins, which meant she'd done research.
Not casual Googling — targeted reconnaissance. She'd identified the highest-status dining option within thirty miles and booked it before I'd finished saying "sure, lunch sounds nice."
Bread arrives warm, the waiter knows not to rush, prices aren't printed because visible pricing is a vulgarity.
Catherine ordered with the fluid confidence of a woman who'd never asked a waiter for a recommendation in her life.
"Just water," I said, gesturing at the belly. Twenty-six weeks. The baby had opinions about Italian food — enthusiastic, followed by heartburn that could strip paint.
"Tell me about the due date. March?"
"Late March. Around the twenty-eighth."
"And how are you feeling? The second trimester was always my best with Colton — the first was miserable, the third exhausting, but the second was golden."
I found myself answering. That's the thing about Catherine — she asked questions the way a surgeon uses a scalpel, and each one opened a door you didn't realize you'd been holding shut.
She asked about symptoms, I told her about the back pain. Birth plan — Marysville clinic. Practice — the client list, the growth, the Davis referral.
She listened. Not performative listening. Active, engaged, eyes tracking my face with attention that felt both flattering and diagnostic. She remembered details from thirty seconds earlier.
She asked follow-ups that proved processing, not just recording. Objectively the best conversationalist I'd sat across from, and that should have been a warning but felt like relief — because after four months of whispers and tiptoes, here was a woman treating me like I was interesting rather than scandalous.
She asked about the children. Not generic — specific. Names, ages, personalities.
"Levi sounds extraordinary," she said, after the baby name list and the sealed envelope.
"That kind of mind — analytical but creative. Colton was the same way. Cataloging everything, organizing the world into systems he could understand."
Something loosened in my chest. She knew her son. Despite the distance and the three years of silence, she knew exactly who he was because she'd built the first version of him before he rebuilt himself into someone she couldn't control.
"I can see why he loves you," Catherine said. Hand covered mine — brief, warm, withdrawn before it could become uncomfortable.
"You're strong in ways that complement him. He needs someone who can match his intensity without being consumed by it."
I relaxed. Against every instinct Colt had given me, against the acquire warning ringing in my skull.
Because the things she said were true and kind and specific, and the combination was so rare in my current life that my defenses didn't know what to do with it except stand down.
I sat in that Italian restaurant with cloth napkins and invisible prices and let a woman who might be dangerous make me feel seen, because being seen was a luxury I hadn't been able to afford in months and she was offering it for free.
Which, of course, is exactly how the best acquisitions begin. With something that feels like a gift.
Meanwhile. At the ranch.
Colt told me that evening — clipped sentences, controlled voice, the debriefing of a man reporting from a battlefield he'd survived but not enjoyed.
Gerald had toured the property. Systematically. South pasture, north fence, the barn, the equipment shed missing its trailer and generator.
He'd walked the land with the unhurried authority of a man who understood that every acre had a price and most of them weren't being optimized.
Pointing out improvements with the careful language of someone who'd given feedback to subordinates for forty years and perfected making criticism sound like curiosity.
"This fence line is newer. Good choice — cedar lasts longer than the pine your grandfather used." Translation: I'm evaluating your infrastructure.
"The barn could use east-side drainage. Water pooling damages foundations." Translation: I've identified a deficiency.
"Still working with Baylor for hay? Reliable, but never the most competitive." Translation: I know your business and I've been watching from a distance you assumed was indifference.
Each suggestion is objectively reasonable. Each carrying the undercurrent of a man who wasn't touring — he was inspecting a portfolio that had underperformed.
"He asked about cattle revenue," Colt said. "Hay yields. Operating margins. He knew the numbers. Not exactly — close enough to tell me he's had someone looking into our financials."
"Can he do that?"
"He's Gerald McKenna. Land records are public. Cattle auction records are public. And he still has contacts at every bank in Hamilton County."
Colt's hands lay flat on the table — past anger, into the colder territory of strategic assessment. His voice was the one he used for financial projections — detached, precise, already three moves ahead.
"He didn't mention the baby. Not once. My mother asks because the baby is a person to her. My father didn't because the baby is an asset. You don't discuss assets at the inspection stage. You discuss them at acquisition."
The knock came at nine. Jolene at the cottage door, dish towel over her shoulder from Hank's evening routine.
She didn't come in — stood in the doorway with the body language of a woman who understood her boundaries.
"Can I say something?"
"Say it."
She glanced toward the main road where the McKennas' SUV had been parked. Her brown eyes — the ones Kameron didn't inherit — carried the hard-won intelligence of a woman who'd spent twenty years in institutions reading the intentions of people with more power than her.
"Those people don't visit," Jolene said quietly and certain.
"They assess. I've seen that look before — not on people with money like theirs, but on landlords and case workers and anyone who walks into your space with a clipboard behind their smile. They're measuring, Ivory. Every room, every person, every weakness."
The same territory Colt had mapped from the other side. Acquire. Assess. Two people from opposite ends of the economic spectrum arriving at the same conclusion — Colt through the experience of being owned, Jolene through the experience of having nothing worth taking.
I looked at Colt. He looked at Jolene. Something passed between them — not warmth, not alliance, but the mutual recognition of two people who'd survived families that treated love as a transaction and had independently stopped paying.
"I know," Colt said.
She nodded, went back to the main house. The dish towel stayed on her shoulder and the warning stayed in the kitchen.