The public board had been built from three tongue-and-groove pine roof boards pulled from the collapsed annex woodshed.
Dan Miller had nailed them together with three-inch casing nails, then mounted the panel on two cedar posts set into the gravel by the schoolhouse gate, where anyone walking the county road between the pump house and the river bridge could read the sheets in daylight.
June Mercer dipped the paste brush into the flour-and-water slurry.
She spread the paste in three even strokes across the unplaned wood, then smoothed down the first large sheet of butcher paper. The paper had been ruled with a carpenter’s chalk line into four black-inked columns: Name Given, Haven Intake Serial, Status or Disposition, and Surviving Next of Kin.
Mara stood beside the girl, holding the stack of transcribed sheets flat against the wind blowing off the river flats.
The wind was colder today. It smelled of fallen oak leaves, damp gravel, and the thin, sharp frost that would come with the dark.
“Read the first header, June,” Mara said.
June’s fingers smoothed the wet paper over a knothole. Her voice was quiet, but it didn’t hitch.
