The ledger described clear water, thin fog, a white sail close to shore. Its author had lost most of her sight before the last entries. When her nephew Arlo donated the book, he warned the archive that the final pages might be imagined.
The handwriting remained hers, but small initials appeared beside the weather descriptions. Guest registers identified several visitors with matching names. They had described the view while she wrote it down. What looked like solitary observation was a collaboration conducted over breakfast.
One guest remembered being corrected when he called the water gray. She asked whether it was gray like slate or gray like a spoon, forcing him to look again. He later sent her postcards describing weather in cities she never visited.
Arlo changed his donation note. The ledger did not need to be divided into reliable sight and unreliable imagination. It needed its contributors named where possible. On the final page, the weather entry ended with an unfinished comparison. He left it unfinished, beside the initials of a guest who had not yet been traced.