“Margaret,” Thomas said, his voice booming through the corridor, drawing the attention of a young clerk at the water cooler. “I thought we agreed you were going to rest this week.”
“I found something,” I said, holding out a photocopy of the Polaroid.
Thomas did not take the paper immediately. He adjusted the heavy metal strap of his watch, the links clicking against each other in the quiet hall.
“This is a cruel hoax, Margaret,” he said, barely glancing at the page before looking back up at me. “Some drifter trying to squeeze a few dollars out of a mother’s old grief. I see these kinds of tricks every winter.”
He shifted the folders under his arm, and I caught a glimpse of a red tab labeled *Emergency Operations 2006* sticking out from the middle of the stack. He noticed me looking and pulled the bundle closer to his ribs.
“The world is full of sick people,” Thomas said, his tone softening into that professional comfort he used at town parades. “Let me take that photocopy. I will have the deputies look into it, but you must promise me you will stop going out to the highway.”
“You have the original file in those folders, don’t you?” I asked, pointing to the red tab.
“These are active municipal developments, Margaret,” he said, his face tightening as he moved toward his office door. “Nothing that concerns the past.”
He stepped into his office and shut the door with a firm, deliberate click.
The post office on Broad Street was warm and smelled of packing tape. Walter stood behind the high oak counter, carefully balancing a heavy square box on the brass scale.
“That will be seven dollars and forty cents,” Walter said to the woman in front of me, his voice barely rising above a whisper.
When she walked away, Walter looked up and tapped his yellow pencil against his green clipboard. He looked toward the side door before leaning over the counter.
