The dining room table had been cleared of supper bowls by eight o’clock.
In the center of the scarred pine boards sat three separate ledgers, each laid flat under the amber glow of the kerosene hanging lamp.
The first was Mara’s: the heavy, calfskin-bound Candlewake register, its brass corners clean from staying in the desk cradle and its pages smelling of cedar oil.
The second was the Civic Shelter’s blue canvas binder, brought up from the old grammar school by Naomi Chen and Marisol Vega. Its paper was ruled in red ink, its margins filled with Marisol’s precise, clerical shorthand.
The third was a thin, battered pocket notebook with a black oilcloth cover, its spine reinforced with friction tape. It belonged to Alden Ross, a gray-bearded surveyor who had walked four miles over the ridge from the settlement at Pine Creek.
Gideon Pike stood by the cast-iron stove, scraping the bottom of a twenty-quart stockpot with a wooden paddle. The smell of stewed green lentils and fried salt pork still hung in the rafters, thick enough to mask the carbolic from the infirmary.
“That’s twenty-five portions for breakfast,” Gideon said, looking over his shoulder. “If we stretch the porridge with dried meal and use the last of the peach syrup, everyone gets a bowl. Nobody gets two.”
