Part 3
Fresh stumps spread behind the first one in two crooked bands. The older November cuts had darkened beneath caps of snow; the new ones shone yellow against the ground, with needles and chips not yet buried by weather. At the landing, enough spruce lay stacked for two full trailers.
Evelyn kept a compact camera inside her sweater and took it out only long enough for each picture. Her father had taught her that cold made batteries lie and plastic brittle. She photographed the closure sign in relation to the landing, the fresh cuts, the blue slash, and a stump wide enough to show its rings beside Silas’s folding scale.
“Count from the north edge,” she said. “I’ll take the south.”
“You’ll lose the light.”
“Then count faster.”
He looked at her once and began.
They found eighty-three new stumps before Silas called a stop. The number mattered less than the fact of them, but Evelyn wrote it anyway. Numbers were how she kept fear from becoming weather—everywhere, shapeless, impossible to hold.
On the return route Silas pointed toward a lower road. Two tire tracks, newly polished by chains, ran west instead of toward North Branch’s legal landing.
“Old Tabor mill sits that way,” he said.
“It was decommissioned.”
“On paper.”
They climbed a ridge where the firs thinned. Below, half hidden by trees, stood the long dark roof of Tabor’s mill and a maintenance trailer beside it. A straight thread of smoke rose from the trailer pipe. Utility lines still crossed the yard, and the access road had been plowed.
Silas watched the smoke. “The headrig in there has a cracked drive housing. When it runs, you can hear it from my kitchen on a still night.”
“Have you heard it?”
“Twice since Christmas.”
“Why didn’t you report it?”
He adjusted one snowshoe strap. “Same reason Pike didn’t give you a number. I had something I wanted left alone.”
He did not ask her forgiveness, and Evelyn did not offer it. She took three pictures from the ridge, including the smoke and the plowed road, then slipped the camera back against her body.
When they returned to Morrow near dark, the light in Evelyn’s office was on.
She stood across the road and watched a shadow move behind the blinds. Ten minutes later Grant came out carrying nothing, followed by Roy Baines, the mill’s security supervisor. The custodian locked the door behind them.
Evelyn waited until both trucks left. Her office door showed no damage, but the bottom file drawer sat a fraction of an inch crooked. She always drove it shut with her knee because the wood swelled in winter. Now pale splinters lay beneath the lock plate.
The handwritten reconciliation was gone. So were both monthly driver-packet binders and the notebook in which she had copied the eleven night entries. Whoever searched had taken the obvious things and left convinced there was nothing else.
The photographs were still in the camera beneath her sweater. The duplicate reconciliation remained inside her father’s bag at home.
The next morning Tess placed a transfer request on Evelyn’s desk. She had asked to work in the cafeteria for fewer hours and less pay.
“Grant approved it already,” she said.
“You’re the best bookkeeper in this building.”
“I’m also the one who has to get Eli through his review and keep two children insured.” Tess’s chin trembled. “Please don’t make me explain it until I sound noble. I’m not. I’m tired.”
Evelyn signed. “Go before lunch. I’ll bring the form upstairs myself.”
By afternoon she worked alone. In the grocery store, a woman behind her said an audit would cost everybody’s bonus and maybe the mill. She said it just loudly enough to be overheard and just softly enough to deny having addressed Evelyn.
The cruel part was that she might be right. North Branch had less cash than Grant admitted. A state closure order could take the company down before anyone separated legal work from illegal cutting. Evelyn could not promise the town that truth would leave every innocent paycheck untouched.
Ruth came that night without calling. She carried yeast rolls and shook snow from her boots in the entry as she had since they were girls.
“I heard about your drawer,” she said. “You need to stay with me.”
“I’m not leaving my house.”
“Then I’ll stay here.” Ruth set the rolls down and began checking the window latches. “People are worked up. Grant’s got them thinking you want the place boarded shut.”
“Do you?”
Ruth turned. “Do I what?”
“Think that.”
“I think you don’t know when to bend.” She came closer and gripped Evelyn’s upper arms. “That’s what I love about you when it isn’t scaring me half to death.”
The words struck where they were meant to. Ruth had admired Evelyn’s certainty when they were children, borrowed it when Paul died, and resented it whenever Evelyn’s clean answers made Ruth’s compromises look shabby. Both things had always been true.
“I’m going to the state office,” Evelyn said.
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Don’t tell anybody who’s taking you.”
“I won’t.”
Ruth stayed until ten. She talked about school lunches, the coat Evelyn had given her during her pregnancy, and how Molly still wanted them both to visit Bangor in spring. Evelyn listened for an opening and let every one pass.
After Ruth left, Evelyn locked the door and took the camera card from its slot. She wrapped it in waxed paper and worked it through a loose seam inside the left front panel of her winter coat. The camera itself went into the canvas bag with the duplicate reconciliation.
The official proof of the night signatures was still at North Branch. In the basement archive, employee equipment receipts went back seven years. Evelyn let herself in before work and found Ruth’s 2007 issue form for a reflective vest, insulated gloves, and steel-toe boots.
The body of the form was written in Ruth’s broad left-leaning hand. At the bottom, where she had signed quickly, the letters drew narrow and upright.
The final stroke fell into a long hook. Evelyn laid her tracing of a night ticket beside it. Every midnight load had been signed by Ruth…
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