No record.
No match.
No file.
When I finally came back to Bellmont and took a job as a bookkeeper at the county auditor’s office, I asked my parents about it, carefully, over Sunday dinner.
My mother cut her pork chop into small squares.
“We knew nothing about the arrangements,” she said. “It was handled by a professional.”
“Let it go, Michelle,” my father said. “You’re only punishing yourself.”
I stopped asking.
I never stopped looking.
Last Monday morning, I was sitting at my desk with a stack of tax parcels when the room tilted.
The copier down the hall was humming.
Someone’s coffee smelled burnt.
Then the floor came up and it was cold against my cheek.
After that, there were lights, and a stretcher, and a voice saying, “Stay with me, Michelle.”
I woke up on Tuesday morning in a bed at Bellmont Regional Medical Center, with a tube taped to my arm and a belly full of stitches.
