Page 52

He reached for it a beat too late.

“You called it scratch paper when I caught you drawing my shop window,” I said.

The tips of his ears went red. The same red they’d gone in the community center in front of a garland crew. “I draw to think,” he said. “I needed to see how the street fit together. I couldn’t make the lantern arches work until I drew your window.”

I had no answer to that.

I covered the notebook with one hand so he couldn’t take it and pulled the copies toward me with the other. I read the final page twice. The last line changed everything.

“Frank’s grandfather’s minutes,” Griffin said. “Nineteen forty-seven.”

“This is recorded.” I had my finger on the last line. “Recorded with the county this fourteenth day of November. Griffin. This isn’t just an old document about intentions. This can bind the owners.”

“It appears to bind the current owners. We need counsel to say what that means now.”

“If the recorder still carries it against the land, Frank’s page tells us where to find it. Book sixty-two, page four-seventeen, indexed under the old Grange Hall Addition with the grantor misspelled. A modern parcel-number search would miss it.” My voice sped up. “There are eight parcels. Six are yours. One is Ivy’s. The town owns the north lot, where the Grange Hall burned in 1971 and the county took the property for taxes.”

“Which means⁠—”

“Which means the council is one of the three owners.” I laid the page flat. “The covenant says no owner can remove or change a load-bearing part of the block without written permission from the others. It also says all eight parcels share the cost of structural repairs. I can tell you what the record says. County counsel has to tell us whether it still has legal force.”

He studied me with the concentration he gave a beam. “I read that over and over tonight and I did not get to the town,” he said.

“That’s because you’re a structural engineer and I’m a woman with a grudge and a library card.”

I got the good lamp off the shelf and put it on the counter and read the whole thing through twice more, out loud the second time, because that is how you catch what your eye has agreed to skip. “Here’s what worries me,” I said. “Meridian will say the covenant’s stale. Seventy-eight years, nobody’s enforced it, no owner has ever assembled anything. There’s a lawyer somewhere who’ll say abandonment and get paid for saying it.”

“Can they win that?”

“I don’t know.” I tapped the last line. “I know where to look for a release. If there isn’t one, the owners can meet under the covenant and hire a neutral engineer. That gives county counsel current evidence instead of one forgotten page. Paper trails are where I’m useful.”

Griffin looked at me across the counter for a second too long. “Say that again in the morning,” he said. “In that same order. Do not improve it.”

We finished with the covenant. Griffin left both hands on the counter.

“I should have told you about Crane’s call the day it came,” he said. “I didn’t. Then I booked the flight, called Rosie, and told you what your part would be.”

“You had ten minutes.”

“I did. I spent all ten deciding for both of us. Then I handed you the answer, called it help, and tried to fix the rest with money.”

“The plane wasn’t the betrayal. You put me outside the plan.” I kept my hand on the copied minutes. “Then I didn’t answer. That part is mine.”

“You called back.”

“A day late. Don’t make it generous.”

“I won’t.” He ran his thumb along the edge of the counter. “You said I made you feel the way Thomas did, and I argued. I should have listened. I’m sorry.”

“What should you have done in the parking lot?”

“Walked inside. Told you the whole mess. Asked what we were going to do.” He looked down at the copied minutes, then back at me. “I solve first and tell people later. I don’t know how to stop yet.” His thumb pressed into the paper. “There’s something else. If the festival had survived and the repairs started January second, your shop would have closed for five weeks, but you still would have qualified for the grant. I keep wondering whether my leaving cost you both. I don’t know. I promised to tell you the bad thought while I’m having it.”

“That’s the promise,” I said.

He nodded. He did not ask me to promise anything else.

I had switched off the music box. Outside, half the block went dark when the old street-light timer switched to its night setting at eleven thirty.