“I didn’t. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Grant tested it.”
“Where?”
Leo glanced at Grant. Grant said they had conducted controlled trials on a private paved course outside town, then offered to show a short phone video. Odessa shook her head.
“You cannot tell how it turns on this hill from a straight run on another road.”
Silas turned toward a cluster of waiting reporters and raised his voice. “Everything here has passed a professional inspection. Let’s get the racers to the line.”
A cheer went up. Leo climbed back into the seat, encouraged by the attention. Caleb could see his own place in the crowd shrinking: the fussy carpenter, the disappointed mentor, the neighbor who had arrived with a hammer-wielding troublemaker.
He stopped trying to win an argument with Silas. Instead he spoke directly to Leo.
“If that cart were mine, I would not ride it down the last corner. You have the right to know I mean that.”
Leo looked away. “I heard you.”
Odessa touched Caleb’s elbow. “Come with me. I’ll show you why I smashed the box.”
“You could have knocked on my door.”
“I did. Three times yesterday. The boy who answered said you were with the committee. And this morning when I saw Grant’s truck, I knew I couldn’t wait for someone to decide I was worth listening to.”
“So you attacked my daughter’s mailbox?”
“I knew you’d follow me instead of calling Silas first.” Her expression was full of shame, but she didn’t pretend otherwise. “It was wrong. I will pay for it. I still needed you on this hill before he put that boy in the cart.”
Caleb wanted to say he would have come if she had simply shouted. Yet she had shouted at the planning meetings and been ignored. He could not honestly promise this morning would have been different.
“Show me,” he said.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE OLD TEST RUN
Odessa led him past the food stalls to a maintenance shed overlooking the course. A faded wooden board hung inside with photographs of old Gravity Days: boxy carts, oversized helmets, laughing parents in heavy coats. She stopped beside an empty shelf where tools were usually kept.
“This was our inspection room for years,” she said. “Before they moved everything into the sponsor tent.”
“What am I supposed to see?”
“The hill from here.”
She opened a narrow window and pointed toward the final bend. Caleb could see the whole extended course. A spray-painted white stripe crossed the road forty feet before the bend. Beyond it, the surface changed from concrete to a patched section of asphalt. The junction looked smooth from the starting line; from the shed, the slight raised lip was obvious.
