The fifth day, Kendrick walked the half-mile to where Marlene's old house used to stand. It was a construction site now: yellow tape, a backhoe, a sign that read Belmont Holdings, Future Site of the Magnolia Townhomes, Starting at $349,000.
Marlene was standing on the sidewalk across the street. She did this sometimes, she'd told him at dinner. She came and watched. She didn't know why.
Kendrick walked up beside her. They watched the backhoe push earth around for a long minute. The afternoon was hot. The sky was that particular flat white of a Carolina summer right before a thunderstorm.
Then Marlene said, "My mama planted that magnolia tree out front when I was six. I helped her dig the hole. I remember because I wore a yellow dress and I got mud all over it, and she didn't yell at me. She just laughed and said, 'That's a planting dress now, baby. That's what it is.'" She paused. "They cut it down on a Tuesday. I came by Wednesday to drop off the keys. Tree was already in the chipper." She turned to him. "Don't let them do this to your daddy, Kendrick."
He nodded. He wrote three words in the notebook: magnolia, six, Tuesday. He didn't know why he wrote those exact words; he just knew he didn't want to forget them.
Days six through nine were spent in the basement. Kendrick spread out every map on the floor, every survey. He bought transparent plastic sheets from the office supply store with money he'd been quietly saving from helping Burl at the garage—three weeks of saved-up dollars, $56 and change, all of it spent on plastic and pens.
He traced each survey by hand. He compared them to the originals. He worked through the night. He slept in two-hour shifts on the floor next to the maps. He ate sandwiches Bobby brought down at midnight between jobs. He drank coffee for the first time in his life and decided he didn't like it.
And he found something.
Every survey done by the same man, a guy named Howard Pritchard, had a starting point that was off. Not by much—a few feet—but always in the same direction, always in Belmont's favor.
The garage parcel: 16 feet east. Marlene's old land: 4 feet south. The Reed property: 11 feet east. A third Black family, the Hightower-Bells, who'd settled quietly two years ago: 8 feet east.
Same surveyor. Same trick. Same outcome.
Bobby came down to the basement around midnight on day eight. He looked at the floor covered in transparent sheets and red string and notebooks. He looked at his son—hair uncombed, shirt wrinkled, eyes bright with the particular alertness of someone who has been awake for a long time but isn't tired.
"Son, what does all this mean?"
Kendrick looked up. "Dad, it means it's not a survey. It's a recipe."
Bobby was quiet for a long time. He looked at his son the way you look at a stranger who happens to be wearing your child's face.