“Ask him to check,” she said.
I could have asked why she hadn’t asked anything about Clara. Instead I seized on the possibility she had offered. Owen could have mistaken her for somebody else. Maybe I had found the wrong family despite the street and the gate. I knew how unlikely that was. I still needed to check.
On Monday I went to the county records office with the details Owen gave me and the birth details I remembered from knowing Clara. I told the clerk I needed to verify a death entry. Saying it that way helped me get through the request.
The registrar retained the death register there. When the entry had been located, the clerk let me examine it at the counter.
I checked the birth date first. I knew that date. I had once spent two weeks saving for a birthday present she said I shouldn’t have bought.
Then I checked her parents’ names.
They matched.
I went through the details again, looking for a wrong middle name, a different year, anything that would let me hand it back.
“Have you found the person you were looking for?” the clerk asked.
“Yes,” I said.
I had finally found Clara. I sat in my car afterward with the engine off, trying to understand that there was no next number to call.
Mom called before I left the car park.
“Did you get it sorted?”
I held the phone away from my ear for a moment. Sorted. As if I had gone to dispute a bill.
“It’s her. The birth date, her parents. Everything matches.”
“Well,” she said. “I did hear something last week.”
My thumb stopped against the edge of the steering wheel.
“What did you hear?”
“That she’d died. But it was just something someone said. I didn’t know whether it was true.”
“On Saturday you said you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t know for certain.”
“Who told you?”
“Does that matter now? You’ve checked.”
I wanted to pull her answer apart, but I was still seeing the entry on the counter. Clara’s name had been there before I arrived and would still be there after I drove away. Mom was waiting for me to speak.
“I need some time,” I said.
“Of course you do. But is this really a reason to put off deciding when I’m moving? My tenancy still ends next month.”
“You have the flat reserved.”
“I thought we’d agreed I’d be with you.”
“We haven’t agreed a date.”
“Daniel, you hadn’t seen this girl for twenty years.”
I ended the call without answering. Then I rang Owen and asked if I could visit.
He invited me for the following morning. I almost canceled while standing outside his door. The register had settled the question about Clara. Part of me wanted to stop there, before anything else became certain.
Owen opened the door while I was still considering leaving.
At his kitchen table, he put a clothbound book between us. One corner was rubbed pale. He opened it carefully, keeping a hand under the spine.
“Her funeral guestbook,” he said. “The original. I got it out after you called.”
There were pages of names. I found myself looking at each one, reluctant to reach the person I had come to find.
Owen turned a page and pointed.
Mom’s full name was there beneath the funeral date. She had written a condolence underneath it.
With deepest sympathy for your family.
The upward slant looked familiar. So did the way she crowded the last few letters together. I had seen that handwriting on school forms and birthday cards.
“May I take a picture?”
“Yes.”
I photographed the page without moving the book. Owen closed it afterward and kept it beside him.
“She says she only heard last week,” I told him.
He looked down at the cover, then back at me.
“She was there, Daniel.”
I called Mom. Before she answered, I asked Owen if he minded being on speaker. He shook his head.
“I’m at Owen’s,” I said. “He has the guestbook from Clara’s funeral. Your full name is in it. There’s a message in your handwriting.”
“Send me what you’re looking at.”
I sent the photograph and waited. Owen’s kitchen clock clicked through the pause.
“That could be anyone,” she said.
“Anyone with your name?”
“I’m not the only woman with that name. You can’t accuse me because somebody wrote it in a book.”
“I recognize the writing.”
“You think you do. You’re upset.”
