Downstairs, Mrs. Alton had porridge and coffee waiting, and Maren ate standing by the kitchen window because the morning was already warm and she did not want to waste it sitting. Through the window she could see the tower over the roofs, its face white against the summer sky, its hands pointing to just past seven. The hands had pointed to nothing for a month. Now they moved. People in Fox Creek had begun to look up when they passed the hall, the way people look up at something they had forgotten was there. Maren had seen a man stop his wagon that morning two days ago, take out his pocket watch, compare it to the tower, and nod once, as if a small argument inside him had been settled. She had not told Soren about the man. She was saving the small good things up, the way you save coins, for the days when she would need them.
She walked to the town hall with her case in her left hand, because her right wrist still did not like to carry weight. The hall smelled of dust and old timber and the faint, clean smell of the oil she had used on the movement. Soren was already there, up on the staging inside the tower room, running his hand along a beam the way another man might run his hand along a horse's neck, judging it by feel.
"Morning," he said, without looking down. "The south beam is sound. I checked it twice. Whatever else is wrong with this tower, the bones are good."
"Good," Maren said. "Bones matter."
She set her case on the workbench and opened it. The movement parts she had cleaned the day before lay in a row on a cloth, bright as new coin: wheels and pinions and screws, each one wiped free of the grime that had helped stop the clock. Today she would lay them out for final inspection before the trial, and she needed clean paper to put under them, paper that would not shed lint into the works. She had used up the last of her own wrapping paper the day before.
"There is a cupboard in the clerk's office," Soren said, as if he had read her mind. "Old newspapers. The clerk keeps them for wrapping and kindling. I saw a bundle there yesterday when I went for the chalk."
Maren went down the narrow stair to the clerk's office, a small room that smelled of ink and damp paper. The cupboard door stuck, and she had to work it with her left hand while her right wrist protested. Inside, on the lowest shelf, sat a bundle of newspapers tied with twine, the top sheet yellowed and curling. She carried the bundle back up to the tower room, set it on the bench, and cut the twine with her pocket knife, holding the knife awkwardly in her left hand.
She did not expect anything. That was the truth of it, and she would remember that later, when people asked her how she had found it. She was not searching. She was not suspicious. She was a woman looking for clean paper to lay clock parts on, and she sorted through the bundle the way anyone would, setting aside the sheets that were too torn or too dirty, keeping the ones that were whole.
The third sheet she lifted was the Fox Creek Gazette. She knew the paper at once. She had seen it every week since she arrived: Otis Fallon's paper, printed in his shop at the end of the main street, the paper that had called the tower dangerous and had carried the petition to tear it down. She was about to set it aside with the rest when the date at the top of the page caught her eye.
She stopped. Her hands went still on the paper.
She counted back, carefully, the way she counted gear teeth when she wanted to be sure. The fall had been on a Monday. She remembered the day because Soren had warned her about the ladder that same morning, and because the light through the tower window had been the pale light of early morning, and because she had heard, as she fell, the sound of her own breath going out of her. The paper in her hands was dated the Thursday before that Monday. Four days before the fall. Four days before she had ever set foot on that ladder.