Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 92 of 115

In the morning they went to dig the footings. Eduardo carried a shovel. Kiersten carried the rolled plan. But a man in a gray suit stood on the bare lot, holding a folder. He was the county clerk. He had come about the deed. "You tore the house down," the clerk said. He did not look up from his papers. "The deed lists a dwelling on this lot. No dwelling now. You can't build a new one until the record is sorted. Could take months." He tapped the folder. "Until then, this is just empty land." Eduardo felt the old heat rise. The urge to argue. To talk the man in circles, like he used to. He set the shovel down instead. He made himself breathe. "What do you need from me?" he asked. The clerk blinked, surprised. "Proof the old house was yours to remove. Proof the land carries no outside claim. Most people can't show either." Eduardo thought of the debt collector who had come for the deed years ago. He had paid that man every dollar. He had the receipt. He had the ledger the feed store owner signed, week after week, witness to each payment. "I have records," Eduardo said. "Every debt I owed on this land, paid and witnessed. I kept them all." Kiersten stepped forward. "He writes everything down now," she said. "Nothing hidden." Eduardo drove home and brought back the ledgers. He laid them on the folder in the clerk's hands. The clerk read the dated lines. The feed store owner's signature. The bank's stamp. The collector's receipt for the final payment. "This is clean," the clerk said slowly. "Cleaner than most. The old man's signed as witness on every page." He looked at the empty lot, then at Eduardo. "I can file this today. The record moves to vacant land in your name. You can build." Eduardo did not feel pride. He felt something quieter. The honesty he had kept for its own sake had just cleared the ground. The clerk wrote a note and signed it. He handed Eduardo a slip. "Permit's provisional until the office stamps it. But you're free to break ground." He gathered his folder and left. Kiersten took the slip and read it. "Provisional," she said. "That word has a deadline." Eduardo looked closer. The slip gave them sixty days. If no walls stood by then, the permit lapsed, and the whole fight started again. "Sixty days," he said. "Then we don't waste one," Kiersten said. She picked up the shovel and pressed it into his hands. Eduardo set the blade against the dirt where the first door would stand. He pushed it down with his boot. The soil broke open. The footing had begun. "Together," he said. "Every board," she answered.