built right. Maren had spent hers repairing things that had stopped being trusted because they had stopped being true. Between the two of them, they had the whole of it: the building and the keeping. He did not say any of this aloud. He was a carpenter, not a speechmaker, and some things were better left in the work than in the words. But he thought it, and the thought steadied him for the days ahead in a way nothing else had.
The next morning, before the third noon, Soren climbed the tower early and went over the movement with Maren one more time, the way a man goes over a fence line before a storm: not because he expected it to fail, but because expecting nothing was the only way to be ready for anything. A boy from the street below called up to him, cupping his hands around his mouth, and asked what time it was, and Soren, without thinking, looked at the tower face instead of at the sun, and called back, "Nearly eleven, by the tower." The boy ran off, satisfied, and Soren stood there for a moment, surprised at himself. He had answered by the tower. He had trusted it without thinking. That, he thought, was what the trial was really for: not to convince Fallon, who would never be convinced, but to teach the town, one noon at a time, to look up instead of guessing.
On the third day, the wind came up hot and dry from the south, the kind of wind that makes timber creak and tempers shorten, and Soren spent the morning in the tower room with Maren, checking the movement for dust and watching the pendulum swing. Maren's wrist was giving her more trouble in the heat, and she kept flexing her hand and then stopping herself, as if she were annoyed at her own body for not keeping up with her mind. Soren did the fine work she asked for without being asked twice: a small adjustment to the rating nut, a drop of oil on a pivot, his hands steady under her direction. It was their rhythm by now, hers the knowledge, his the hands, and he had come to respect the rhythm the way he respected any good joint: it held because each part did what it was made to do, and neither part tried to do the other's work.
At noon on the third day, the crowd was larger still. Children stood at the front, craning their necks. A woman Soren did not know well held a baby on her hip and pointed up at the tower face, saying, "See? That is the time." The depot agent came, opened his watch, looked up, and nodded.
"True to the minute," he said. "Day three."
This time the murmur in the crowd was warmer, less surprised, more like satisfaction. People began to talk as they walked away, not in low voices but in ordinary ones, about what they would do with a clock they could trust again: set the school hours by it, set the mill whistle by it, set their own watches by it when they passed the hall. Soren listened, and he felt something shift in his chest, something he had not felt since he first came to Fox Creek and believed that a well-built thing would be kept. The town was beginning to set its day by the tower again. Not because anyone had told it to. Because the tower had kept its word, three days running, where everyone could see.
He was still standing in the street, watching the crowd thin, when he saw Otis Fallon.
Fallon had not come to the first check, nor to the second. He had stayed in his shop, writing his editorials, letting his paper do his standing for him. But on the third day, he came out and stood at the edge of the crowd, alone, with his hands behind his back, watching the tower face the way a man watches a thing he has already decided to be rid of. He did not speak to anyone. He did not need to. His presence was a statement all by itself: I am still here, and I am still watching, and three days is not seven.
When the crowd had gone, Fallon walked past Soren on his way back to his shop, and he stopped, just for a moment, and he smiled the smile Soren had seen him use on people he intended to beat.