“Not too bad. One-ish. I prebooked a taxi back from the station.” She yawns once more and throws a sideways glance at me. “You left all the lights on when you went to bed, you know.”

“Did I?” I concentrate deliberately on backing out of the parking space. “I was pretty wiped, I guess.”

“What have you been doing with yourself?”

Suddenly I can’t think. What have I been doing? And how can whatever it is have taken all day? “Admin and sorting, very dull. And all of it seems to take forever. You’d be amazed by how much I haven’t achieved today.”

“How did the meeting with the lawyer go yesterday?”

“Fine. I guess. A bit strange.” We’re pulling away from the station now, and I marvel at the completeness of the darkness around us. There’s no moonlight to be found thus far this evening; Carrie would have needed a torch to navigate this had I not picked her up. The city dweller within me balks at the idea.

“How so?”

I shrug. “You know. Talking about my father. I don’t usually do that.” Talking about my father, without really talking about my father. We covered his date of birth, town of birth, occupation, last known abode; the barren facts that in no way construct a person. The lawyer—Mr. MacKintyre, a veritable mountain of a man—had them in the file already, but after so many years and now with a different plaintiff, a double check was warranted. I hadn’t expected there would already be a file. “The lawyer met Mum once, actually. Years ago. She looked into the process too.”

“Why didn’t she go through with it?”

“That’s exactly what I said.” Though what I was thinking was less charitable: Why couldn’t she have cleaned up this mess herself? Surely her mess, or his. Because the only other person that was there was a seven-year-old me, and I refuse for it to be mine. “But it was too soon. Without sufficient evidence pointing toward the person having died, you need to show they haven’t been heard of for seven years. I guess she never got round to it when the seven years was up.”

“That sounds remarkably like her.” There’s a caustic tone to Carrie’s words that surprises me. I throw her a quick glance, but I can’t deduce her expression in the darkness of the car interior. “Do you have to, I don’t know, come up with a theory? For what happened to him, I mean?”