Olive asked see the voting rolls. The man selected a ring binder from a shelf, saying, “This is up to date,” but the name Mulgrave did not appear in any of its pages.

Olive said, “The family definitely lived in Floristan.”

“They own property?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Registrar of deeds—down the hall, just past the drinking fountain. They might have something for y’all.”

Olive rapped on the counter and a powdered white-faced woman appeared, her cheeks crimped like piecrust when she smiled at them. She was kindly beneath her makeup. She wore a yellow silken dress, a floppy bow at her collar, a blue flower pinned just beneath her billowy shoulder. She said she didn’t hear too good—“Hearing-impaired,” she clarified. When Olive wrote the name Max Mulgrave on an office While You Were Out pad, the woman said, “Give me some time-frame idea of the date you think he lived here, please.”

“Could have been fifty years ago.”

“That’s a help,” the woman said. She was perhaps sixty—old enough to be a contemporary of Max Mulgrave’s. But when they asked, she said, “I’m from Fayetteville. I married a Floristan boy.” In a softer voice, “He passed.”

She went to a cabinet and pulled out a drawer. Using the fingertips of both hands, she flicked through the cards, searching for the name.

“Little bitty old cards,” she tut-tutted.

The process took so long that Olive and Sharkey sat down in chairs by the wall.

“Y’all check the voter rolls?” the woman called out, still looking down at the cards.

“Yes. They sent us here.”

“No one by that name presently owns a residence in Floristan district.” The woman shoved the drawer back into the cabinet.

“But thirty or forty years ago, or more?”

“If they did, the records would be in the annex, where we keep the old files. I can look. I’ll let you know if I find anything. I’m fixin’ to do that after lunch. I’m Rose.”

“Thank you, Rose.”

“I love your accent, miss.”

“I love yours,” Olive said.

“But yours is like the movies.”

They traded phone numbers and set off for Floristan High School. Brick, squarish, as stately as the town hall, it was two blocks down Main Street. They walked, Olive wondering whether she should simply stop when she saw anyone of sixty or so and ask whether he or she knew the name Max Mulgrave.

“All this way from Hawaii,” Sharkey said, wondering at the town, shaking his head.

The receptionist at the high school took them to the office of the deputy principal, who was Black—a tall man in a dark suit and floral tie who introduced himself as Dr. Johnson.

“Those records would be in storage,” he said when Olive told him the graduation date. “You need to go online.”

Sharkey lifted his hands to his face and groaned into his fingers, turning away.