I sat down in the vinyl chair and reached for my phone.
The screen was already open to the county emergency placement registry. I had opened the page three times since breakfast, and each time I had closed it before the images could fully load.
This time, the signal was strong enough.
Five small photographs loaded in a neat row across the top of the blue state portal. The oldest boy, Eli, looked directly at the lens with his mouth set in a thin line.
The other four children were smaller, their faces blurred slightly as if they had been moving when the shutter clicked.
Underneath the row of pictures, a single line of bold text explained the emergency status. The county had forty-eight hours to secure a single placement before the sibling group would be divided among three separate regional facilities.
I rubbed sawdust from my palms, watching the gray dust settle into the creases of my skin.
My hands were rough from ten years of handling rough-cut oak and pine, but they did not shake now.
I closed the browser on my phone and set the device face down on the desk next to the toy truck.
The silence in the office was different now, filled with the weight of five names I did not know how to pronounce yet.
I got up and walked through the shop to the back stairs that led to my living quarters.
The kitchen was exactly as I had left it after breakfast, with a single coffee mug sitting in the sink and the scent of linseed oil rising through the floorboards from the shop below.
I knelt by the pantry door and reached into the dark space behind the flour sacks.
My fingers found the cold steel handle of the gray lockbox. It was heavy, the lock stiff from years of sitting in the damp corner of the lower cabinet.
