At the far end of the pavilion, Silas met with three shop owners. Caleb passed on his way to the workshop and heard the owner of a hardware store say, “My store isn’t paying for a lecture about brake failure.” Another sponsor, a woman who ran a family bakery, said she had donated because her granddaughter was racing and would still happily give away the pastries. The third owner, who operated a sporting goods shop, sat with his arms folded, studying the crowd.

Silas caught Caleb at the doorway. “This isn’t finished. I have vendors calling me about refunds. What are you going to do about that?”

“I didn’t write their agreements,” Caleb said.

“You helped stop the event. That has consequences.”

“It does. The committee should deal with them openly. I’ll help set up a meeting.”

Silas stared as though he had expected a fight and been offered a toolbox instead. “You’d actually sit down with them?”

“If they’ll listen to what happened.”

A few minutes later the committee borrowed a classroom in the old quarry office. Every sponsor was invited, along with two parents and two teenagers. Leo and Becca volunteered to represent the racers, although neither looked especially comfortable with the idea. Caleb stayed near the back; he wanted the children to speak first.

Leo began by explaining how much time the racers had spent on their carts. He said the exhibition mattered to them because adults had described it as a chance to show serious skill. Then he described the brake test, including the part he had initially tried to ignore. He admitted that he had been afraid a safety complaint would make him seem ungrateful for the sponsor’s help.

“That was part of what went wrong,” he said. “Everybody kept telling us we were lucky. It made asking questions feel rude.”

Becca spoke next. Her voice was low at first. She described the replacement tires that rubbed against her cart, and the boy who had invited her to the service lane after the official event stopped. She told the adults that she had almost gone along because she wanted proof the decision to cancel had been unfair.

“I thought if I went faster, people would have to respect us,” she said. “But my sister told me I didn’t build this thing for a stranger’s approval. She was right.”

The hardware store owner unfolded his arms. “Did you know we’d been promised a filmed high-speed run?”

Becca shook her head. “We knew there might be cameras. We didn’t know the whole event needed one.”

The sporting goods owner looked toward Silas. “I thought the course had been approved by the town.”

“The route was approved for use under its safety conditions,” Reuben said. “The equipment wasn’t. Those are two different things.”