A knock sounded at the window. Harvey stood outside, snow collecting on his old cap. Audrey lowered the glass.
"You coming to supper, Judge?" he asked. "The ladies made enough ham to feed the whole county."
"In a minute, Mr. Harvey. Save me some pie."
He saw the map in her hand and his expression changed. "Another one of those ribbons?"
"One that hasn't been tied yet."
"What does the map say?"
"Three more counties. Three places. The same price as the bottle."
Harvey rested one hand on the window frame. "You don't know who sent it?"
"No. And before we call it evidence of anything, we'll have to find out where the numbers came from."
"Sounds like a committee with a lot of free evenings," Harvey said. "Or somebody who learned how to wait."
Audrey smiled. "Mama would've wanted to know who was keeping the books."
"She would've wanted us to eat first. Most important questions survive a plate of ham."
He walked back toward the church's warm windows. Audrey looked again at the three red circles, then at the black ribbon resting against her palm. She had spent the autumn refusing to let a badge, a photograph, or a judge's title decide what a record meant before it had been examined. She was not about to let an anonymous message decide that for her either.
She slipped the card and map back into the envelope and wrote the date she had found them on a separate sheet. She did not tie the ribbon around her wrist. It remained between her fingers, waiting for the day when its meaning could be established by something stronger than a suggestion.
Beyond the church parking lot, traffic moved along a wet road beneath the winter sky. Somewhere on Interstate 95, someone might already be searching for the next driver willing to sign a false paper rather than lose a weekend. Somewhere else, a person might be keeping a receipt in a Bible, a shoe box, or a drawer nobody had opened in years. Audrey could not guarantee that every one of them would be found or that every count would come out the same.
But she knew what she would do when the next page was placed in front of her. She would read it. She would ask where it came from and who had been allowed to alter it. She would count once, then count again, until the answer could stand without anyone having to know her name. And when Harvey called from the church doorway that the pie was getting cold, she closed the glove compartment, stepped out into the snow, and went to eat with the people who had taught her why the count mattered.