The schoolhouse gymnasium had been swept by the restoration work party four days earlier.
Dry basketball rosin and grit crunched under the boots of fifty people sitting in rows of folding oak chairs. Overhead, two iron tie-rods ran between the brick walls, vibrating faintly whenever a heavy truck passed on the county blacktop.
Silas Venn sat on an unpainted kitchen chair in the center of the free-throw circle.
He was wearing a gray work shirt without buttons at the collar, a pair of washed denim trousers, and clean wool socks inside unlaced work boots. The white adhesive compress across the bridge of his broken nose had been changed that morning by Toby; it was clean, taped down with medical plaster. His right wrist was bound in a light splint of birch lath, resting on his knee.
At a folding table set beneath the south backboard sat the three stewards: Ruth Danner from the pumping station, her wool sweater pulled tight over her forearms; Dan Miller from the town annex, his spectacles sliding down his damp nose; and Mara Vale.
Beside Mara lay the black buckram custody ledger from Haven Compound, its heavy brass clasps unfastened, along with two wooden boxes of index cards and Ada Bell’s surviving carbon-paper files.
