Chapter 23: Somewhere to Go

On Monday I signed a paper in a lawyer's office, and the van got a home.

It was the Foundation's old garage behind the library, the one with the camera that had been off for a month.

The board had voted me onto the Foundation's committee that morning, and the first thing I put on the table was a lease.

Ninety-nine years, one dollar a year, to the Halsey Night Table.

The man with the gray mustache read it twice.

"Are you sure?" he said. "It's the best lot in the district."

"It's the one where my brother threatened Dustin," I said. "I'd like it to be the one that feeds people."

He signed.

By afternoon the red light in the corner of the garage was on.

Dustin stood under it with his arms crossed, looking up at it.

"It's blinking," he said.

"It's recording."

"I know what it's doing." He looked at me. "I'm saying it's blinking."

I laughed.

That evening we parked the van in the garage together, side by side, and shut the big door against the snow.

It was warm.

Someone had put in a space heater, and a long table, and a row of hooks on the wall for coats.

There was a new sign over the serving window, painted by Brynn, with a very crooked pine tree.

I stood in the middle of it and turned slowly around.

"It's too much," I said. "It's a lot of money for soup."