Chapter One - Ballast / Page 6 of 6
The Waterline
Elias notices a pale seam across the plaster: a memory of water where water should not have stayed.
The waterline was too clean to be old neglect.
Elias found it halfway down the hallway, a pale seam running across the plaster at waist height. It passed behind the coat hook, beneath the framed print, and stopped at the door trim as if someone had drawn the flood with a ruler.
He crouched, touched two fingers to the wall, and brought them back dry. No bloom. No softness. No fresh lift in the paint. Just the mark of water where water had no business remembering itself.
He wrote moisture history in the margin, then crossed it out. The phrase felt too certain for a house that had not yet decided what it wanted to admit.
Just the mark of water where water had no business remembering itself.
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