Eli had started carrying a spiral notebook of his own. It held maps of the county, observations about old buildings, and a growing list of terms he wanted Jonah or Mara to explain. He had become interested in why some structures lasted while others failed, and the questions no longer felt like an attempt to understand why his father had left. They felt like the beginning of something he wanted for himself.
One Saturday, Cutter ended the navigation lesson early because rain threatened the afternoon practice walk. The children packed their materials and drifted toward the doors, where Rascal waited with his usual confident belief that the next important event would involve him. Eli stayed to review a sketch of a potential meeting site the club was considering for the following winter.
Ronan arrived near the end of the session. He had come to discuss the scholarship with the community center director, not to watch the class, but he stopped in the doorway when he saw Cutter asking Eli to explain the route he had drawn. The boy pointed to a road, then to a floodplain, and explained why he thought the higher path would remain passable after heavy rain. Cutter listened, asked a question, and made Eli reconsider one of the curves.
Ronan waited until the other students had left.
"How's your mother?" he asked.
"Good. She's going to the county planning meetings now. She says she wants the scholarship to include building-code education."
"Sounds like her."
"She also says your application forms are too complicated."
Ronan lifted an eyebrow. "Does she?"
"She says she's going to fix them."
"Then I assume they'll be better by Monday."
Eli grinned. It had become easier to smile around Ronan as the months passed. The club president was still a serious man, but the seriousness no longer made him seem distant. He had visited the Mercer house twice, once for dinner with Jonah and Megan to discuss the scholarship and once to deliver a replacement jacket that Eli had stubbornly insisted he did not need. The jacket hung by the back door now, next to the old one with the broken zipper.
"How's the clubhouse?" Eli asked.
"Safe enough that the inspectors have cleared the repaired sections. But we may hold the winter gathering somewhere else."
"Because of Brackett?"
"Partly. Mostly because I want people to be comfortable. A building can be repaired faster than everybody's trust in it."
Eli nodded. That was the kind of answer he had learned to expect from Ronan. It did not pretend a practical repair would solve an emotional problem. It allowed two things to be true at once.
"I've been looking at other properties," Eli said.
Ronan turned toward him. "Have you?"
"Just the publicly available plans. I didn't go onto any of them. Mom knows I'm researching buildings, and Mara said I could send her the list if I kept it to documents and photographs."
"How long have you been doing that?"
"Since February."
Ronan looked at the notebook in Eli's hand. "Do you have anything useful?"
"A few possibilities. There's an old timber operation north of the county line. The foundation looks good in the available records. Another place is a converted mill, but I'm not sure about the drainage. Mara's checking what I missed."