She looked like a woman who had run out of places to hide.
“Michelle,” she said. “I need to say something and I need you not to stop me.”
“Sit,” I said.
She didn’t.
She opened the bag and took out a small green ledger with a cracked spine.
NOTARY JOURNAL, it said on the cover, in ballpoint.
“I was twenty-two,” Sherry said. “I’d been at Gilchrist Insurance six months. My mother was two payments behind on the house, and Uncle Herb had covered both. In March of ’96, he put a registry form on my desk and said, ‘Michelle’s got the flu in Dayton. She already told me it’s fine. Just stamp it.'”
Her voice shook.
“I knew it was wrong. I wrote it down. That’s the only brave thing I’ve ever done.”
She opened the ledger and turned it to me.
Entry 318. March 12, 1996.
Signer: M. Gilchrist.
Identification: none.
