Teresa placed her ceramic bowl beside a photo of the painted bread. Roland lined up the moth tiles in rows. Alma brought an old wooden easel and a frame large enough to hold a cluster of photographs. Owen carried a folding table from his car. By the time the first curious passerby approached, the square contained a rough exhibition of hands, tools, and stories.
A teenager from the restoration crew arrived holding the rollers she had been asked to use. She stared at the photographs and said, “I thought these were test marks.”
“They were signatures,” Teresa told her. “You couldn’t read them like words, but you could feel who was there.”
The teenager touched the ceramic moth. “Can you show me how to make one?”
Safiya smiled. “Tomorrow morning. Bring somebody who thinks art belongs in a museum.”
Owen watched as volunteers who had spent weeks repainting a wall began asking the original makers what they remembered. The discussion was untidy. People disagreed about dates and colors. One man insisted he had painted a blue bird, while his sister said it had been green. Leona, listening through Safiya’s laptop, laughed and told them they had probably mixed the paint themselves. The details mattered, but no single memory needed to dominate.
At ten, Owen walked home past the remains of his mailbox. The charred post stood like a warning beside the empty street. He was tired and worried about Colin, who had been taken for an examination. He also felt the first small sense of possibility he had felt since the fire.
On his porch, a note waited beneath a flowerpot. It was from Iris, written in hurried block letters: ETTA HAS REQUESTED THAT TOMORROW’S PRESS PREVIEW GO AHEAD WITHOUT THE LOWER WALL. PLEASE DON’T TURN THIS INTO A WAR.
Owen read the note twice. He knew that if the wall disappeared from view, the public would see only the clean version Etta preferred. A blank curtain could conceal the disagreement as effectively as a layer of primer.
He called Mara. “We need to be there before the preview,” he said.
“I know,” she answered. “I already told Teresa.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: A DIFFERENT OPENING
Friday dawned cold and bright. At eight, the square outside the bathhouse filled with people carrying folding chairs, ceramic tiles, sketchbooks, and old photographs. Somebody brought coffee. Somebody else brought a portable magnifying lamp so visitors could examine the fingerprints in the clay. The gathering had no stage, and no one had rehearsed speeches.
Owen had slept little. He arrived with Thomas Mercer, who walked slowly and leaned on a cane. The old truck driver looked at the bathhouse and smiled with surprise. “They’ve cleaned the windows,” he said. “I never thought I’d see through them again.”
