"It's an exhibition," Otis says. "Not a fight."
"Tell that to half the internet," the janitor mutters and keeps sweeping.
By Wednesday, ticket requests have tripled from the year before. Otis calls in two extra deputies just in case. He tells himself it is only a precaution; some part of him already knows better.
That night, Walter sits with Arthur on the front steps of the dojang. The evening is cool, the parking lot empty.
"You worried about her knee?" Walter asks.
"Every hour of every day," Arthur admits. "But I've watched that girl her whole life. She's already made up her mind."
"Then we back her," Walter says simply. "Same as we would for anyone in that class."
Arthur nods slowly, looking out at the dark road. "Grace would have had something wise to say right about now."
"Grace would have already been at the gym helping her stretch," Walter says.
Arthur laughs: quiet and real.
At the diner that same week, Ruth sets a large glass jar by the register, hand-lettered with careful block letters: Save Our Dojang. Every Dollar Helps.
Within two days, the jar is nearly full: five-dollar bills from waitresses, loose change from regulars, a folded twenty from a man nobody even recognized. Ruth takes it upon herself to track every dollar in a small notebook, using the same handwriting from her hardware store days.
By midweek, the jar has grown heavy enough that Ruth suggests something bigger. "We should open a proper account," she tells Arthur. "Somewhere donors can write checks, too, not just drop coins in a jar."
Arthur agrees. By Wednesday afternoon, the fund has its own account at the bank on Fifth Street, with Ruth's name and Vivian's both listed as authorized signers.
On Thursday evening, counting the jar at her table, Ruth frowns at her own numbers: the total does not match what she counted the day before. Off by exactly $40. She counts again, slower this time; still off. Probably her own mistake, she tells herself—she is seventy years old, after all, and the light in her kitchen is not what it used to be. She writes a small note in the margin anyway: Check again tomorrow.
The next evening, the number is off again: $60 this time, gone without explanation. Ruth sits back in her chair, unease settling in her chest. Two mistakes in a row is unusual; for a woman who once balanced ledgers down to the penny, it feels almost impossible. She pulls out an old receipt to compare handwriting just to be sure of her own eyes. Something about the ink looks slightly off, though she cannot say exactly why yet.
Thirty years at the hardware store taught Ruth one thing above all else: numbers do not lie, even when people do. If the jar is short, someone made it short on purpose. She thinks about calling Arthur that same night, then decides against it: better to be certain first; better not to worry him over something that might still turn out to be nothing. She does not yet know how right that instinct will turn out to be, or how wrong.
Delia's investigation, meanwhile, is picking up speed of its own. Public records show Colton Holdings purchased four other properties in Maple Hollow over the past two years: each one sat empty for months before being flipped into something more profitable; each sale went through faster than county records usually allow. Delia cross-references the approvals. She finds the same name on three of them: Councilman Roger Hensley.
The next morning, she drives to the county clerk's office in person. An old friend from high school still works the front desk.
"I need everything you have on Hensley's votes," Delia says quietly. "Especially anything tied to Colton."
Her friend glances around before sliding a thin folder across the counter. "Officially, I never gave you this," she whispers.
Delia flips through it right there at the counter: meeting minutes, approval dates—a pattern that only makes sense once you see it laid out side by side.
"You're playing with fire," her friend warns.