“You think?”
Nora gave him a look.
“I told you I don’t know yet.”
Frank laughed, but the laughter had changed.
He was no longer laughing at the pile.
He was curious about it.
Nora chose a smaller maple piece with strong rippling and spent evenings working on it.
She was not trying to make furniture.
She only wanted to expose enough clean surface to understand what she had.
She scraped away dirt, flattened a section, sanded through several grits, and wiped the dust away with an old cloth.
Then she applied a little finish to one corner.
The wood changed instantly.
Pale waves sharpened beneath the surface.
Dark mineral streaks curved through one side.
Around several tiny holes, the grain carried smoky lines that made the marks look intentional rather than damaged.
Nora stared at it under the kitchen light.
The defects were still there.
They had simply stopped looking like defects.
She photographed the piece from several angles and posted the images where independent woodworkers bought and sold unusual slabs.
She expected questions.
She did not expect the messages to arrive almost immediately.
How thick?
How wide?
Air-dried or fresh?
Any more with that figure?
Can you send a photo of the full slab?
Do you have matched pieces?
Nora read the messages twice.
Nobody asked why she had kept garbage.
They asked how much maple she had.
For the first time since leaving Boston, Nora felt the old analytical part of her mind wake up without dread attached to it.
She made a notebook.
She measured each promising slab.
She marked lengths, widths, cracks, thicknesses, and visible figure.
She separated fresh material from pieces that had already begun drying.
She did not hide flaws.
That mattered.
If a slab had a split, she photographed the split.
If one twisted, she said it twisted.
If beetle marks ran through the grain, she showed them.
The interest continued anyway.
One woodworker asked about the first slab she had planed.
Nora named a price that made her nervous because it was many times what firewood would have brought and far more than Grantham Sawmill had considered the piece worth.
The buyer accepted without negotiating.
Nora stared at the message for a long time.
Then she walked across the road.
Frank was repairing a gate when she found him.
“I sold one,” she said.
He straightened.
“For what?”
Nora told him.
Frank lowered the wrench in his hand.
“For one slab?”
“One slab.”
He looked toward her barn as though the entire landscape had changed shape.
“You have a lot of slabs.”
