The first time I saw the child in the lantern room, she was sorting broken light bulbs by color.

“Those are dangerous,” I said.

She looked up from the floor of the old ferry terminal, where dust floated through the late afternoon sun. She wore a yellow raincoat even though the storm had passed, and her boots were two sizes too big. A canvas bag lay open beside her.

“They're not broken,” she replied. “They just don't light up anymore.”

I had come to close the building. My name is Lena Ward, and for seventeen years I had been the city engineer responsible for keeping Harbor Point's public structures standing. That afternoon my assignment was simple: lock the terminal, post the notice, and hand the keys to the redevelopment company by five.

I checked my watch. Four forty-two.

“Who brought you here?” I asked.

“My aunt. She's cleaning the upstairs office.”

The woman in the office had been hired to empty the records before demolition. I had met her that morning: a quiet woman with tired eyes and a careful way of asking whether unused paper could go to the school. Her name was Rosa Bell.

The child held up a blue bulb. “I found a whole box. Aunt Rosa said I could take the ones nobody wanted.”

The lantern room had once held the lights that guided ferries through the harbor fog. The lamps were long gone, but the narrow round windows remained, each facing a different stretch of water. Through the eastern one I could see the new glass towers rising beyond the docks.

I had signed the inspection report that made the terminal's sale possible. It was structurally sound, though expensive to repair. The council had chosen to sell it rather than fund a public building it no longer considered essential.

That decision was above my pay grade. I had told myself that for three months.

Rosa appeared in the doorway carrying a stack of folders. “Mina, I said you could wait downstairs, not wander.”

“I didn't wander. I found the bulbs.”

Rosa apologized to me and reached for the bag. Her hand trembled under the weight of the folders.

“Leave it,” I said. “She isn't hurting anything.”

Mina's expression changed from guarded to hopeful. “Can I really have them?”

“I don't know who owns them.”

Rosa said, “Everything left is going in the skip. That's what the supervisor told me.”

I glanced at the inventory sheet. The old electrical fittings had been marked for disposal. I signed a release and handed it to her.

“Take them safely,” I said. “And keep the glass wrapped.”

Mina pulled a folded towel from her bag. She had planned ahead.

Rosa thanked me, but Mina had another question. “What happens to the room?”

“It's going to be redeveloped.”

“Does that mean knocked down?”

I could have offered the city's language about investment and renewal. Instead I said, “Yes.”

She looked around the round room, then at the blue bulb in her palm.

“Then where will the people wait?”

I assumed she meant ferry passengers. There hadn't been a passenger service for eight years. But Rosa's face had gone still.

“What people?” I asked.

Mina pointed to the bench beneath the western window. “The people who come when the lights in their houses go off. Aunt Rosa brings tea. Mrs. Avery brings blankets.”

Rosa put the folders down. “Mina.”

“I didn't tell them our address,” the girl said quickly. “You said that was private.”

Rosa turned to me. “It's not a shelter. It's just a few neighbors during the winter outages. We sit here until the electricity comes back. The backup heater still works.”

The heater shouldn't have worked. According to the facilities records, the terminal had been disconnected from city services two years earlier. Yet I could hear its steady hum behind the wall.

“How many neighbors?” I asked.

“Sometimes six. Sometimes twenty. Mostly older people.” Rosa lifted her chin. “I know we weren't supposed to use it. We always cleaned up.”

I thought of the notices mailed to the three public addresses within the redevelopment zone. No one had listed a winter gathering place in a building that was officially vacant.

At four fifty-one my phone rang. It was my supervisor, asking whether I had secured the property.

“Not yet,” I said.

“The developer's representative is already downstairs.”

I looked at Rosa. She had pulled Mina close, waiting for me to tell her she had done something wrong. Mina had put the blue bulb back in its towel.

“I found an active heating system that isn't on the building record,” I told my supervisor. “I need to verify the disconnect.”

“That will take ten minutes.”

“Probably longer.”

I ended the call before he could argue. Then I opened the cabinet beside the door. Inside was a small metal switch, a handwritten maintenance log, and a fresh envelope addressed to the city council.

The envelope had never been mailed.

Rosa recognized it. “Mrs. Avery wrote that last spring. She wanted everyone to sign before we sent it.”

“Why didn't you?”

“She died in June. We couldn't find it afterward.”

I unfolded the letter. It described thirty-two residents who relied on the terminal during outages, a volunteer schedule, and a request for the city to make the arrangement official. At the bottom, in a different hand, someone had added a line in pencil: The lantern room belongs to everyone who needs to find their way home.

Mina leaned close. “That's my handwriting. Mrs. Avery said I could help.”

Downstairs, a car door slammed. The developer had arrived, and I was holding a letter that should have been in front of the council months ago.

I folded it carefully and put it back in the envelope.

Then I told Rosa, “I need you to introduce me to the people who come here.”