Son wants to see him swam around her brain with the image of her driver’s license. Jesus Christ almighty. Her hands shook as she steered into a parking space in front of the beige brick building. It had to be today. The office would be closed Saturday and Sunday, and she didn’t have enough money to extend her stay at the hotel. Never enough time, never enough money. What Vivian did have enough of was questions. And more now than when she’d started out from the hotel that morning. She took the little brown notebook from her pocketbook with still-shaking hands, and flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for:

Clerk’s Office, Court House, Syracuse, New York—Ada M. Carr, Reg. Vital Statistics

Ada M. Carr. The gatekeeper of information at the Syracuse Clerk’s Office.

Chapter 32

Ada M. Carr sounded like a tidy woman. Someone sharp and efficient. She probably wore her hair in a tight bun and said things like “disclosures” and “proceedings.” Vivian made her way from the car to the front door of the building, taking careful steps up the narrow, icy walkway, and wondered if she should have a cigarette first.

Stop wasting time.

She crossed the threshold into the somewhat heated entryway and had to walk a little ways down an echoing hallway before coming to an internal door marked “City Clerk.” Her nerves hit again, the way they had as she’d climbed the steps to Mildred’s porch with her well-rehearsed Census Bureau story. She hadn’t prepared a story for this. With a deep breath, she pulled open the door and stepped into the office. The office appeared empty until she looked beyond the counter and spied a young man sitting at a desk near the back. He didn’t look up. She cleared her throat and leaned against the counter to keep her balance as she shifted from left foot to right.

“Just a minute,” the man called without looking up.

A minute passed. And then another. Vivian had removed her gloves and was tapping her Fire & Ice fingernails on the polished wood.

“I’m here to see Mrs. Ada Carr,” she called out.

“Do you have an appointment?”

Shirley Smith from the United States Census Bureau probably would’ve had an appointment. Vivian wondered if she’d be turned away without one. She hadn’t thought of that. Of course Ada M. Carr was a busy woman, and would have to schedule appointments. A woman who wore her hair in a tight, tidy bun would also run a tight, tidy schedule, wouldn’t she? Vivian wondered if she should lie. Was there an appointment book he could check to see if she was lying? She was tiring from all her earlier lies that day and took a chance.

“No, I don’t.”

The young man heaved a sigh, then pushed himself away from the desk and strode over to the counter, still in his shirtsleeves, his suit jacket hanging on the back of the chair.