The week after the farmhouse was — complicated.
Not bad. I want to be clear about that. The manor was safe. The planning board objection had held through two legal challenges and was now embedded so deeply in the process that Voss's lawyers had switched from fighting it to pretending they had never intended to fight it, which was the specific legal manoeuvre of people who understood that the documentation was too solid to contest and had decided that strategic amnesia was their most dignified remaining option.
Simone's article had become, by Saturday morning, a national story. By Sunday, it was an international one — the Financial Times ran a piece on predatory lending networks embedded in urban development schemes, and while they did not name Crestholm specifically, everyone who needed
