Petersen nodded, but he did not take the petition away, and Maren understood, with a clarity that hurt, that the storekeeper was not her enemy, but that he was also not her ally, and that most of the town would be like him: decent people who would sign a paper put before them, because signing is easier than arguing, and because Fallon's newspaper had told them, week after week, that the tower was a danger, and that danger, repeated often enough, begins to feel like fact.
She walked back to the tower with Soren beside her, and neither of them spoke, because there was nothing to say that would make a petition smaller. And then, at the tower door, she stopped, and turned to him, and said, "Mr. Krogh, I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer plainly. You warned the council about the ladder. You kept copies. Do you still have them?"
"I do," Soren said. "In a box in my workshop, with the dates on them."
"And the new ladder," Maren said. "The town can see it. Anyone who climbs it can feel that it is sound."
"They can," Soren said.
"Then we have two things Fallon does not have," Maren said. "We have proof that the danger was warned about and ignored, which is not the same as proof that the tower is dangerous. And we have a ladder that is sound, which is not the same as a tower that is doomed. He has ink. We have work. Ink dries. Work stands."
Soren looked at her, and she saw in his face the same resolve she felt in her own chest, and she knew that they were, from that moment, not merely a clockmaker and a carpenter, but allies, which is a different thing, and a stronger one, because allies do not merely work together; they stand together when the work is attacked.
That afternoon, Fallon himself came to the tower. Maren had imagined him, from his newspaper, as a large man, loud and blustering, but he was neither. He was a neat, compact man of fifty-two, with a careful beard and a suit that was too good for Fox Creek, and he spoke softly, with the politeness of a man who has learned that soft speech carries further than shouting. He introduced himself, and he expressed his concern for her wrist, and he said he hoped she was recovering, and he said all of it with such apparent sincerity that Maren almost believed him, until he said the next thing.
"I understand you intend to continue the repair," Fallon said. "I admire your spirit, Miss Reed, I do. But I must ask you, as a friend of this town, whether you have considered that the kindest thing, for everyone, might be to let the tower go. A tower that has already hurt one person will hurt another, in time. The council will listen to a petition. The town will be safer. And you, my dear, will be free to take your talents to a town that can use them without risk."
Maren looked at him, and she thought about the petition on the store counter, and about the editorial that had made her fall into an argument, and about the fact that this man, who spoke so softly, had never once asked her what had actually happened on the ladder, and she understood, with a sudden and complete clarity, that Otis Fallon did not care about her wrist, or about the tower, or about safety. He cared about the lot. The lot was the point. Everything else — the editorial, the petition, the concern — was ink, laid down carefully, to cover the point the way a fresh coat of paint covers a crack.
"I have considered it," Maren said, and her voice was calm, because calm, she had learned, is the only answer to soft-spoken men who expect you to be flustered. "And I have decided that the kindest thing, for everyone, is to fix what is broken, rather than to tear down what can be mended. The ladder is mended. The clock can be mended. The tower stands. I intend to finish what I was hired to do."
Fallon smiled, a thin smile that did not reach his eyes. "Then I wish you well, Miss Reed. I truly do. But I must warn you, as a friend, that the town is watching, and that a clock which has stopped once may stop again, and that the town's patience, like its budget, is not without limit."