When Donald returned to the room, he didn’t retreat back to his corner but instead crowded his body near his mother’s, as if whatever she and Darren were discussing, it damn sure involved him too. His mother took a sheaf of paper from his hand. “It was the woman who explained it all. She came to us from Leroy, who I guess got her name from Rosemary.”

“Monica Maldonado.”

The name didn’t immediately register for Margaret. But her son nodded.

Darren said, “Latina woman, about five six, long black hair.”

“That’s her,” Donald said. “She walked us through the paperwork.”

Darren took the document from Margaret and saw a petition to the Bureau of Indian Affairs for federal recognition of the Hasinai band of Caddo Indians of Marion County, Texas. Attached was a historical narrative of Margaret Goodfellow’s family and their connection to the land. The word ancestral was used more than once. Darren flipped through the pages, which held a story similar to the one Marcus Aldrich had told him but with a great deal less emphasis on evading the Texas law that had required them to relocate to Oklahoma. The whole thing seemed like a long shot, and yet someone had hired Chafee, Humboldt, and Greene, a firm that Lisa had assured him still had enough ties to Washington to push something like this through.

But none of the pages were signed.

Darren asked why.

“She said she was coming back,” Donald said.

“We sat right in this room and drank hibiscus tea with honey,” Margaret said. “A sweet little thing but nervous-like, fiddling with her watch, looking at the papers over and over like she was sure she was forgetting something.”

“It was something on the last page,” Donald said. “She kept asking us were we sure, saying she wouldn’t feel right if she left and then found out we didn’t really understand what we were signing. That’s why, she said, she wanted to talk to us first, and then she said she would come back with a notary in a few days. Maybe, she said, maybe some things in the document could be changed.”

“She kept looking at the document and shaking her head,” Margaret said. “She actually asked to use the washroom and came back looking like she’d been sick.”

“Or like she’d been crying,” said Virginia, who had wandered into the room.